Projects

Pilot House

1985 was the first rammed earth build project we were involved with. A pilot earth home was paid for by the Commonwealth Secretariat, and the site provided by the Sierra Leone Housing Corporation. At that time the organisation was run by a Tanzanian under a Commonwealth agreement.
Freetown at that time experienced electricity supply extremely intermittently, petrol queues involved waiting for days at a time even for government vehicles. As a result even the most basic metal or woodwork involving machinery took weeks if not months to achieve.
Nevertheless and with no prior training but with a book first published in 1920 a building was built.
The black finish on the unfinished building was a bituminous emulsion which was finished with white paint.
With so much against it the fact that the building stood up, and in fact was shortly after turned into a night club seemed a good indication of the robustness of the technology.