Loxodonta Affordable Housing
Gauteng, South Africa
2007

LOWDO developed a '1.5-story' prototype of loft housing for Johannesburg-based Loxodonta Investments' entry into the affordable housing market in Gauteng Province, South Africa.

Post-apartheid South Africa inherited not only gross geographic segregation of housing and economic opportunity, but also morphologies of township settlement that aggregate units in repetitious matrices. The Government of National Unity has championed the right of every South African to basic shelter, while 'anti-slum' politics seek to normalize less-formalized architectures.

Given cost constraints of subsidy housing in South Africa, units are typically 3-4 room slabs at grade with construction quality at times worse than apartheid-era. This model of single-story construction tends to extend the same micro-sprawl of matchbox houses and self-built additions present in the highly ordered township grids that informal construction invades. As a low-cost challenge to this continuous single-story field condition, we shift the roof to allow for a small sleeping loft: inclusion of a staircase and upstairs window (future door) provide small-scale infrastructure for future auto-construction on multiple levels as households grow over time.return to images