http://www.calearth.org pioneered this long ago, and its used worldwide.
folks still cling to old box structures though instead of earth homes, and closer connection to nature. Earth homes allow for full natural integrations with water features, covered with landscaping, and organic gardening in green oases now, not just austere tract structures or shanty towns.

See also, http://www.msnusers.com/alternativearchitecture for photos
of examples adn evolutions of this. plus hundreds of related links.

Mass produced homes are now possible using heavy equipment to make sandbags right in place even. See also
http://superiorsandbagsystems.com/images/onthejob/full/lafull01.jpg
Just add tamping team, barwire for mortar, and form team for windows and doors, voila ! a fine house in a couple days!

No more shanty town fires ! No more rip off mortgages !

God Bless
Steve

you must understand that the typical South African’ shack is simply a tin shed, constructed using corrugated sheeting on cruedly erected timber framework. Floors are usually just the ground on which teh shack is placed, or may have loose laid flooring (timber, plastic lids etc). Insulation, if any, is often one or two layers of cardboard boxes. Residents cannot afford anything more, and more than often ‘find’ the materials before having to buy them. It really is a recycling culture we have in South African townships.

Heating on the other hand is provided by liquid paraffin. As you can imagine, winter is unbearable at best, where temperatures can drop to minus 10 celsius or less. And the baking summer heat doesn’t make summer any more pleasant.

So the problems you raise are already present.

What the sand bag method of construction promotes is the idea that a dwelling can be constructed quite quickly, with little skill or resources. The cost above is still well beyond the reach of your typical shack dweller, so this would be deemed too expensive. However, the SA governement’s initial ideas – I’m going back 10 years now – was to provide low cost housing to it’s disadvantaged citizens. This has not been entirely successful, as these citizens amount to millions of people. If I’m not mistaken, they wanted to be able to provide housing that could be completed with all services for much less than R65,000 back then, and these were to be subsidised depending on income levels of the future home owners.

As I say, teh vast mojority cannot afford this, so this is an experiment into what teh government are able to provide its millions of disadvantaged people.

This house will provide a much superior shelter, will be more insulated, and more stable. For people who really do have nothing, a project like this changes their life a lot more than Westerners would intially imagine.

On the flip side though, improvement in typologies are necessary. D H Kay in another post (http://www.dezeen.com/2008/03/22/sand-bag-houses-by-mma-architects-4/) refers to this, and I’m surprised to see no development of the ideas he states, that were part of the submissions back when I was studying in SA in the early nineties – shared walls/services, higher density et al.

To see projects like this undetaken in truly rural societies is promising, but, I would like to see these ideas developed. SA, as I’m sure other countries in similar situations have discovered, has been subjected to a number of proposals and experiments like this, yet these seem to stop once the build is complete…

As far as social architecture is concerned, this is wonderful work.

Don´t get me wrong, I don´t mean to badmouth the project. If it puts people into reasonably decent housing, cheaply, and efficiently, then kudos to everyone involved.

But, wouldn´t brick be a whole lot better? I don´t mean commercially baked brick, like we see in the US, and Europe. That would cost a lot, because we waste so much energy.

History taught me that the Egyptians made brick long before the Euros bothered to record history. Without googling, I believe the ingredients were nothing more than clay, straw, water, and sun.

A sandbag is going to deteriorate quite rapidly, in comparison to a brick. Even a poorly formed, and inadequately baked brick has more substance and durability than a bag of sand, I would think.

Sand DOES have a beneficial characteristic – that of being a good insulation, after it is dry. So – how about a double walled brick building, with the hollow between the brick walls filled with sand? Kinda like a thick stucco or adobe, huh?

In reality, I have to reserve judgement. When hundreds and thousands of these sandbag buildings are finished, THEN I want to hear what the residents think of them. Hot? Stuffy? Decaying, after only a year or six? Hard to heat/cool? Hard to keep clean? (let us not forget that the hollow spaces in the sand can harbor pests, unless the sheathing is sealed properly)

Keep us posted.