Today, there are approximately 1.1 billion people living in Sub-Saharan Africa, which has the fastest growing population globally. The UN estimates that these numbers will nearly double to 2.5 billion by 2050. We estimate that two thirds of these additional 1.4 billion residents will live in urban areas and the remaining 460 million in rural areas. There will therefore be a need for approximately 90 million new rural homes (assuming a household size of 5 people per household) in addition to the upkeep, renovation or replacement of currently existing homes. If even a small proportion of these 90 million new homes constructed by 2050 could be influenced by the construction principles of the Star Homes*, this could result in widespread health benefits and reduction in resource usage in their construction and use. By improving the quality of rural housing, there is also an opportunity to slow down rural to urban migration, thereby reducing stress on city infrastructure and overcrowding of peri-urban areas.

In rural Sub-Saharan Africa, we are currently seeing that as a family’s wealth increases, they will typically replace their existing mud and thatched roof house with a single story, concrete block dwelling with corrugated metal roof. Building in this way is heavily reliant on concrete which has a high embodied energy and often leads to buildings that are reliant on air-conditioning to stay cool (due to a lack of ventilation and high thermal mass). Using BIM modelling calculations, we have compared the environmental performance of our design with a typical sub-Saharan house of the same area.

Per m², a Star Home* uses approximately 37% less embodied carbon, 40% less embodied energy and 70% less concrete. Given the significant housing demand in Sub-Saharan Africa in the coming decades, adopting similar construction methods could result in huge reductions in CO2, concrete production, and material transport emissions. The low operational energy and maintenance costs over its lifespan also unlocks time and resources otherwise spent on activities such as house rebuilding, dealing with preventable illnesses, and collecting water, which could enable families to lift themselves out of poverty long-term.

Following the construction of all 110 Star Homes* in June 2021, families moved in and began participating in the trial, in which children under 13 years sleeping in the Star Homes and neighbouring traditional homes will be followed over a three-year period, to detect episodes of malaria, acute respiratory infections, and diarrhoea. Through our detailed follow up study in the coming years, we hope to show that novel house design can significantly improve family health whilst reducing housing construction’s impact on the environment. We hope the project will signal to governments, developers and policy-makers that investing in well-built affordable housing can have a measurable impact both on public health and quality of life for communities living in rural regions. The ongoing study is to be completed in 2024.

The primary clinical objective of the study is to assess over a follow-up period of three years whether living in a novel design house will reduce the incidence of malaria in children compared to children living in traditional Sub-Saharan African homes.

Read about the Star Homes Project 2 (SHP2) Study:
Assessing the impact of a novel house design on the incidence of malaria in children in rural Africa: study protocol for a household randomized controlled trial

Photography: Lorenz von Seidlein, Jakob Knudsen, Otis Sloan Brittain and Hannah Wood, Courtesy of Ingvartsen Architects.
Drawings: Ingvartsen Architects