Sustainable and affordable housing in Pushkar Home for $1,500 USD!

Solution

We set out to design and build a model home for rural, sustainable and affordable housing. We have since used local waste and natural materials to construct this home/community centre.
Here are some details of the build itself:
The foundations of the house are twelve foot stone pillars, sunk three feet into the ground and cemented in place with rubble. To ensure structural integrity, we have used a cement-sand mix in all foundation work.
The walls are made of glass bottles and bricks and finished with traditional mudding. Glass bottles are a globally available waste material, they are also strong and can be laid between bricks to lower the total number of bricks used. They also act as windows: glass bottles positioned outwards bring sunlight into the house by day and those positioned inwards bring in-house lights out, creating a glow from outside.
The mudding is a mix of local mud, cow dung and hay husks to bind the material, mixed by feet and thrown and smoothed by hand. The mudding goes on in several layers, building up thick walls that provide heat in the cold months and maintain a cool temperature in the summer, all without added fuel or air conditioning. Mud walls are a form of natural building found around the world. The floor is also mudded, resulting in a strong, smooth surface that can be touched up as needed. The roof is made of hand-woven grasses laid on a bamboo and wood-beam frame, mounted on a central metal pole. Both roof and walls can be maintained by hand on an ongoing process, and all the skills and materials to do so are available in the village in which we have done this build.

Our goal for this build was to provide a model for sustainable, locally sourced and affordable housing in rural contexts. For this goal to be met, zero waste thinking is crucial. By transforming our perception of waste from garbage to a usable resource—everything from construction site waste to household kitchen waste—we not only cut down the amount of material going to landfills/burning, we also decrease the need to buy new materials, thus increasing affordability and sustainability.
A key advantage to using local materials and traditional forms of building is: this means employing local people and drawing on indigenous knowledge. This is where ―local and ―sustainable come together.
Any material and all the skills required to build and maintain this house are available in the locality itself.
The design itself reflects the surrounding landscape and economy of materials. In terms of local impact, drawing on local methods and materials means ensuring ongoing employment to traditional natural builders, and providing a market for natural and otherwise waste materials.