The project responds to the housing challenge of rapid urbanization, and develops a purposefully incomplete structure that is both affordable and rapid to assemble.

Within this process-oriented project, close to 90% of the building components including prefabricated concrete elements and lightweight eucalyptus frames are produced by local micro and small-scale enterprises. The approach creates the opportunity for skilled employment and capacity building, and also allows homeowners to complete the construction themselves, installing building components and finishes according to their needs.

This initiative started as an academic experiment with the aim to create a low cost housing typology that is easy to build. As part of the academic program, “Welcome to Africa” aimed at strengthening ties between Germany and Africa; the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development – EiABC-, the Bauhaus University Weimar and the University of Juba in South Sudan- joined efforts to build this prototype in Lideta- Addis Ababa. 

Addis Ababa is one of the fastest growing cities in Africa; this growth takes place mainly in slums and informal settlements where infrastructure and access to services are limited or nonexistent. [1] In Ethiopia, about 79 % of the population live in slums and by the year 2050 the country will have to accommodate 61.5 million urban dwellers.[2]

The Sustainable Incremental Construction Unit- SICU- is oriented to respond to this vertiginous process of urbanization. Born as a collaborative academic initiative, which merged theory and practical –hands on- work[3]; it is an exploration of alternative and easy to build housing solutions. In the first part of the project (the design stage), the students and academics from EiABC, the Bauhaus University Weimar and the University of Juba, seeked to combine theoretical knowledge with locally available resources; innovative construction techniques with local modes of living. Therefore, the output of this research was built and tested on the site. Other participants involved were local institutions and the inhabitants of Woreda 04 in Lideta. The objective was to create links between students, researchers and communities as an opportunity to combine and implement their different capacities. As well as to propose an alternative to the current governmental housing projects. The second part of this process consisted in building the unit; its design brings together the information and data collected during workshops, interviews and fieldwork. A beta model was built and tested in the EiABC lab to evaluate the structure and time required for full construction.

Thought as a ´hands-on´ assignment, around 42 students came together to build the SICU in Woreda 04 for nine days. [4] This was an opportunity for sharing knowledge, as Dirk Donath (architect, Bauhaus University) puts it “the house was a learning tool”[5] since most of the builders had little or no previous experience in construction. The “unfinished” two storey house has an open space in the ground floor, intended for commercial or working space, while the domestic activities are organized on the upper floor. It is up to the user when and how to expand the house which can be extended by 28sq. Incrementality is given by the possibilities of expanding the housing area vertically and horizontally as well as for its easy construction and replicability. About 90% of the unit´s components are prefabricated and produced by micro and small- scale businesses[6], an opportunity to catalyze the local economies. To communicate the methodology used and to propose different paths to replicability, the process was documented in every stage. This is showcased in a manual (including floor plans and details) “for simple and straightforward construction”[7] which is currently available here (http://icebauhaus.sudile.com/index.php/BUILD_YOUR_OWN_SICU) under a Creative Commons license.

The SICU- Sustainable Incremental Construction Unit is the second product of the Concept – Test- Realization CTR- Project executed by the three Universities in Ethiopia, Germany and South Sudan. The third experimental unit MACU- Mobile Automated Contemporary Unit will build on the SICU in order to “deal[s] with integrating new digital planning and manufacturing techniques into participatory design”[8] for dense and emerging urbanities in Ethiopia and South Sudan.