Regenerative Habitat Systems

There is a global urgency regarding the issue of waste. Consequently, ecological degradation is becoming pronounced in most parts of the world. Between 400,000 and 1 million people are dying as a result of such mismanaged waste, according to the charity Tearfund.

South African Townships are similar to other countries in the Global South. Even today, their plastic-filled landscapes reflect a history of Apartheid and Colonialism. As a result of structural inequalities in service provision and income, waste disposal in poor areas is more pronounced than ever.

Most of the waste we know finds its way to landfills. Even in industries that employ recycling, the processes remain somewhat energy-intensive. This project challenges the status quo by taking a simple yet elegant approach – What if we started to see value in the waste of one industry as the building material of another?

Our solution is a double-edged sword. It addresses the housing crisis while also resolving the problem of waste management. We designed and developed a system of building on the ethos of Regenerative Economics, where real-world waste was transformed/ up-cycled methodically into building components. The design of housing emerges from this language of giving ‘useless’ things a second life. For instance, borrowing from the automobile sector, even old car seats reincarnate as furniture pieces.
The second aspect is crucial in terms of social heritage. Our response was to mindfully preserve the essence of history while designing a new story.

Undertaken amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic, its passive design maximizes daylight with a tiny carbon footprint through the adaptive reuse of an Apartheid-era home. Hence, it transforms into a framework of cultural justice rooted in the humble poetry of everyday life.
We have upcycled a wide range of waste materials so far - masonry, wood, metal, glass, plastic and e-waste, into construction materials.

So far, our solution serves the people of South Africa, particularly those who have been marginalised by its erstwhile housing policies. It is broadly designed to be a system that can eventually be replicated across similar economic contexts in various countries.

The people we serve belong to an economically weak section. Because they
have little at their disposal, they are very aware of their needs, and
hence become extremely resourceful. The prototype is designed as a residential extension for Gogo Selinah who grew up in an era where Apartheid was prevalent in South Africa. To take care of her growing family, she tried extending the house herself. Now an 80-year-old woman, she still lived in the same dilapidated house with her granddaughter, Michelle. With a different vision for posterity, her community gifted her a refurbished home over the pandemic.

Our team is suited to delivering this solution because our members operate at both scales, local and global. Kevin Kimwelle, the team lead, is in charge of site management. Because he is very well connected to the communities, organisations and institutions in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, he is able to source materials and other resources with ease. Meanwhile, Alisha Raman and Sarvesh Singh operate from India, with an awareness that is grounded in systems thinking, heritage and innovations. Since we started working together during the pandemic, we had to integrate remote collaboration and digital modelling into our creative process.
Each step along the way, we developed a system of information modelling unique to our building processes. Through these, we have been communicating and refining our designs, across both contexts. Each iteration of the design process is informed as much by the local community in Port Elizabeth, as it is by a broader understanding and responsibility towards global waste consciousness. Talking with locals, it has become evident that their insight into what is best for their environment is most crucial to all our design processes.
The common link between both countries is the shared history of colonialism and the potential for collective healing, in a world where the responsibility of climate change cannot be carried out by the Global North alone.

Solve can help us develop a better understanding of how this pilot can be potentially scaled to serve more people, and contextualize the solution across different places and economies.
Our goal is not to simply raise funding but also to find the best partners who can replicate and grow the system, mindfully. It can also help us develop the metrics associated with growth and impact, as we move forward.

The USP of our solution is that it solves two problems at once. In Global South countries where there is a housing disparity, there is also a waste management problem. The root cause of housing is the increasing cost of conventional building materials. Both of these are understood as wicked problems, with no one easy and universal solution. Our approach comes from figuring out how the bane of one problem can be the boon of the other. If we start converting waste material into construction material, it subsidises the cost of construction in housing, altogether. Making this segment affordable opens up the potential for a huge group of marginalised people to have access to a basic sense of security. For this system to be scaled would also require generating employment and skilling for several people.

Our goal is to convert our pilot into a scalable format whose replication becomes seamless over the next few years. Having a secure foothold in some cities of South Africa, we are looking at expanding into the markets of the Indian sub-continent. These ecosystems also see the accumulation of a lot of waste, both domestic and from other countries. One of our main goals is to have on board a range of governmental organisations on board to have access to financial incentives, and minimize bureaucratic friction.

Moving forward we need mentorship on how to develop the metrics and indicators for assessing growth, impact and progress.

Our theory of change is to start small. If we are simply able to change the frame of reference for viewing waste from useless garbage to something potentially constructive, it has a multi-pronged effect on a range of crises. This small shift shall eventually snowball into solving the housing without depending on carbon-intensive materials like concrete. It would also make our neighbourhoods cleaner and more habitable.

The core technology that powers our solution is building information modelling, through open-source software environments. On a more tangible level, we work with old products from various manufacturing sectors. These are remodelled into new building components. For instance, the metal chassis of a car or shipping container finds second life as a structural floor plate in the building. This is done through a LEGO-like manner, with a digital double in the software ecosystem first, then replicated in real life.

We are a collaborative of two organisations - Studio atpX (India) and Indalo World (South Africa) working together through internet innovation.

Ours is a very diverse team, comprising people from both India and South Africa. Kevin is from Kenya, whereas Alisha and Sarvesh operate from different parts of India. From time to time, collaborators from different universities of Europe join us for consulting and volunteering on aspects of these projects.

We operate as a non-profit. Our projects are primarily funded through CSR, through organisations like ISUZU Motors and others. We also have local municipal and governmental organisations backing us.

Our plan for becoming financially sustainable is to attract CSR funding from many such organisations, operating in various places. One good example in India is the Tata Group with which Sarvesh is already well connected.

Our pilot project has been successfully built through complete funding by ISUZU Motors' CSR initiative. The budget for the pilot is 40000 Rand, or INR2.1million, or USD2750.