26-year-old Youness Ouazri hopes his start-up, Eco-Dome Maroc, can help ease Africa’s shortage of quality homes, and having proved the financial, logistical and technical viability of his innovative designs, Ouazri is now seeking new investors to take his company international.
The firm’s homes are built using polypropylene bags filled with earth that are joined internally with barbed wire. Each room is a dome of 3-5 metres in diameter, which are connected in modular fashion in order to create a house that has running water and electricity. First, though, Ouazri’s team conducts a geotechnical study of the site’s soil in order to analyse its components and gauge its geothermal capacities.
“Once we know the main components of the local soil, we can determine whether it is going to be stabilised through lime or cement or asphalt or bitumen or so on. Then we can start mixing the soil, fill the bags and start construction proper,” he says.
Bag thickness, which depends on the soil and local weather conditions, varies from 40-70 centimetres. The eco-domes are so called “passive homes” whereby the earthen walls - through thermal inertia - absorb heat during warm weather and then release it in colder periods. In order to guarantee this characteristic, the company uses thermal simulation models to adjust the wall thickness according to the local climate.
As such, Ouazri’s buildings require less heating and air conditioning, so consume 60-70% less energy than conventional houses of the same size; his designs are inspired by the late Iranian-American architect Nader Khalili, who used unconventional, local raw materials to build emergency shelters.
Per square metre, eco-domes typically cost about 40% less than conventional homes, mostly through reducing logistics costs. By transporting fewer materials, the construction process also has a smaller carbon footprint than standard house-building. Morocco’s construction laws are similar to those of Europe – in order to obtain planning permission and building insurance, a building must have concrete foundations.
“We use local materials, so our costs for transporting materials is much lower,” continues Ouazri. “The construction method is relatively simple, so we can easily train the local workforce to build them.”
The company, which comprises a three-strong team of engineers plus three construction teams of 4-6 workers, is focusing on rural locations currently, before applying its techniques to urban areas. It has already built six homes, an ecological centre and has four more houses under construction.
The first house was 72 square metres and is now home a family of five. To build a house of approximately that size takes about two months. The largest house the company has built so far is 170 square metres, while it has also constructed a 250 square metre cultural centre in Agouim.
“In terms of design and interior and exterior finishes, we use some typical Moroccan techniques that bring architectural beauty to the building. The finished product is a traditional house with all the modern amenities of regular houses,” says Ouazri, who estimates houses constructed using earth can last hundreds of years.
Customers pay in instalments after certain construction milestones are reached, such as finishing the foundations or assembling the super structure.
Prices vary depending on the geotechnical study and accessibility of the construction site – harder-to-reach locations with poor quality earth would be more expensive – as well as the quality of the interior finishes. An eco-home with mid-range finishes would cost around 3,500 Moroccan dirhams per square metre before tax.
Ouazri initially funded the company through his own savings, having worked as a structural engineer for two years before launching the start-up. It has also won grants from various entrepreneurial competitions and has received funding from the World Bank.
It has raised $80,000 in seed capital and is currently seeking a further $120,000.
The company, which represented Morocco in the CleanTech world finals in San Francisco and received the Public Choice Prize at the 2018 Africa start-up awards, is also planning to expand its operations into other African countries and has conducted market studies in Tunisia and Ivory Coast.