Supplementary Case Study: Sustainable Urban Housing in Fiji

This short case study is of the winner of the same competition (Building a Sustainable
World: Life in a Balance, RIBA/USA, 2007). The entry was submitted by Toby Kyle, a
British architect and Chris Cole, an Australian architect both of whom worked for
Kamineli Vuadreu in Fiji. In one sense, as a very practical, modest and immediately
realizable project it makes an interesting foil to the complexity of Boonah Two. Yet it
also carries another powerful message of redirection

Among the considerable number of serious problems a Pacific nation like Fiji faces, the
project addressed five:
1. Housing Shortage, especially in terms of affordability
2. The deteriorating condition of the fabric of the housing stock
3. Shortage and high cost of building materials
4. Frequent and potentially increasing exposure to extreme weather events
5. Economic underdevelopment and a lack of employment linked to a small
national skill base

Responding to all these problems in a site-specific way, Kyle and Cole put forward a
concept that linked the design of structures to the development of a micro economy.

Part of their selected site was allocated to grow bamboo. They designed a series of
high-density medium rise apartments with these structures to be surrounded by the
bamboo cropping areas. Large arched open plan buildings to accommodate individual
and collected workspaces were added as the third element of the project. These
working spaces were interspersed between the apartments and placed on the edge of
the cropping areas. The external and internal space planning of the project aimed at
meeting both the contemporary economic and traditional cultural needs of the
community.

To give the structures the ability to withstand very high speeds during extreme weather
events they were designed with steel frames (the supply of which they gained from
sponsorship from an Australian steel maker). All cladding and infill material was
conceived to be supplied from the site grown bamboo. Beside the cost-effectiveness of
this strategy, it also meant that any weather-damaged material could be replaced easily.
The concept, in relation to structure and materials, was thus based on two seemingly
contradictory design principles: permanence and sacrifice. At the same time, the
community was seen to be able to be economically sustained by making products from
bamboo to sell in and beyond local markets. This could be done sustainably because of
the manufacture of products could be aligned with the supply of bamboo, as it is a rapid
regrowth crop. So, in all the adopted approach can be seen as a local model of
relational thought and solutions able to act as an exemplar of redirecting local
construction and economic practice in the Pacific Islands and perhaps elsewhere.

Tony Fry: DESIGN FUTURING; Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice

Chapter 4, Page 68-70: Design as a Redirective Practice. UNSW Press
2009