NATURAL BUILDING & ECO-ARCHITECTURE

A cob cottage house at SIEVE heritage center

Overview

The buildings at SIEVE are designed to fit the local climate and use materials found nearby. Instead of using standard construction methods that often ignore the heat and environment of Kajiado, we focus on low-impact “natural building” techniques. This keeps the structures cool and reduces the cost of transporting materials from the city.

Currently we have constructed  the SIEVE heritage center using natural building techniques such as cob houses and traditional Maasai house( Enkaji), all fully solar powered.The Heritage Center is an important section of the Heritage center as it is central to directly engaging the local community in promoting the rich cultural heritage of the Maasai community. It’s a place for story telling and dances, livelihood resilience projects such as modern beadwork work women, equipment of local youth with digital and entrepreneurship skills and provision of in-residence participants for young girls from far.

 

Natural Building at SIEVE

The construction of the resource room, training room and the two cottage houses was built using cob house technique which is a natural building technique and eco friendly. It utilizes natural and locally sourced materials such sand, clay soil, cow dung, straw and water.

The construction of the cob houses was led by Mr. Wilson Kimutai an experienced cob builder while the local community led by women played a vital role in bringing in their indigenous construction knowledge to enhance their traditional maasai houses. On the other hand, 15 women from Enduata Community led the sourcing of local materials such as sticks from specifically selected tree varieties, straw, clay soil and cow dung to build the traditional Maasai house.

The traditional Maasai house is not only a house for our beneficiaries and visitors to stay but also an integral structure for learning and preservation of the rich cultural traditions of the Maasai that are currently fading away. To further integrate traditional and sustainable construction approaches, we conducted a two-day cob building workshop for community members. The training was well received and demonstrated strong potential as a culturally appropriate and durable alternative for improving local housing compared to other emerging construction methods.

Traditional Maasai house at SIEVE heritage center
A cob house under construction at SIEVE
A group of Enduata women with the SIEVE staff after the Natural Building Training

Call for Support

The SIEVE project is calling upon all our supporters, friends of our supporters, partners and stakeholders to contribute their resources both financially and in kind towards the realization of the SIEVE project mission of building resilient communities.
Support our project through the GlobalGiving Platform here: 

https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/help-build-innovation-eco-village-in-rural-kenya/