What am I doing?

An architect friend who had travelled and studied sustainable building in India recently asked... "Nyomi, what have you been doing?"

This is a good question and in summary I am a sustainable architectural consultant. I came to learn about sustainable technologies and share my knowledge and design ideas from my degree.  After my BA Architecture degree at Liverpool University my Masters at Oxford Brookes University was specilaised in sustainable architecture: vernacular / traditional / social architecture with questions about cultures and mannerisms why people behave the way they do and how a space can change the actions of the person. I chose International regeneration and design and thoroughly enjoyed the environmental and technology module where I designed and built many devices (including a water filtration device) based on scientific research and clever design to make people automatically want to use the machine and therefore live more sustainably (recycling the water). I believe the fast ugly concrete block architecture in London made teenagers misbehave. Apart from the depressing spaces created another factor as to why would be, they had no integration or ownership of the designs. People would never damage and ruin properties if they had taken part in building or designing themselves. Community participation throughout a design will solve many problems we face in the council areas in the UK and my research of traditional architecture proves this. Throughout a build the local people should always benefit with skill sharing leading onto employment and money to sustain themselves.

I was a volunteer with Landirani for 7 months and learned off the locals as to how they built with rammed earth. There is a guy from Mzuzu (up north) called George who is the site manager of Landirani Trust. He is an expert in rammed earth. Watching his expertise and learning many controversial things from my theoretical education to the practical hands on building was fascinating. There are many rules I could never even think about when designing back in the UK. For instance people in the village would NEVER grow thatch for their rooves because their precious land is used for subsistence farming and to grow the cash crop tobacco.


These factors and the costly equipment like solar panels make sustainability very expensive which is similar to UK. The only down side is that here very few local people have the money and because of this their care for the environment is a second priority. We also have the problem of education. The village people (including people in the UK) find it hard to comprehend that if you spend more at one time the natural energy provided will be reimbursed and repeatedly provide energy as a free source. There is also maintenance which people find hard, mainly because of poor training and misunderstanding.

Formwork must be built and designed for a certain building especially if there are curving walls 

The door and window frames must be centralised in the wall so they are structurally viable

The timber and thatch is ridiculously expensive so the overall cost of a large 2 storey rammed earth build is actually very high.

After volunteering for almost a year luckily I was accepted to be the architect of Sam’s Village which is an environmental training village. We build wind turbines with plastic bottles, use tyres to raise our pit latrines, will be building a plastic bottle compost toilet, and will test and try several different types of sustainable building techniques. We are currently filling maize bags with moist earth which is known as the super adobe technique.

There are currently 5 rammed earth buildings including:

Storage room / washroom / guards house and kitchen as one house!

CBCC - childbase care centre,

Community library,

Visitors accommodation (currently my house which I share with Shelby my peacecorp buddy!)

Site manager’s house – George

There are 3 more currently being built at present:

Training accommodation: to sleep a minimum of 7 people

Restaurant and Bar

Workshop : for vocational activities so people learn / share skills and build things that can be sold in the local market (20 minutes cycle away)

Lets not forget the chicken and pigeon house, and the 5 acres of land that has been designed for permaculture

It was a busy rainy season designing and a fun dry season overseeing the construction team and designs being built. Landirani have just bought a new plot of land in Lilongwe so I will be facilitating design workshops with all of the Landirani staff so we design the new building together. As there is often office politics and strange hierarchies and disagreements over miscommunication I think it will be a refreshing fun task for everyone to get involved with.

I believe a building should be autonomous so the first thing we did after buying the land was go and see a specialist permaculture friend about how we can design the landscape so it works to its full potential. I implemented Zones 1-3 (based on the permaculture theory) around the buildings of an unknown design and I designed a sustainable water system using the natural gravity of the land. There is a gentle slope on site that we are working with. There definitely needs to be a pump system for all year round irrigation in the dry season.

I have just assembled a simple activities sheet for the Monday morning meeting which includes an explanation of an open plan office with a justification of why we have chosen this design. Then there are spaces which will need priorities ranking scores, then a questionnaire and finally an introduction of designing with words, sketches and photos. Both in the office and in the field I am setting up 2 design boards so people can contribute whatever ideas they like.

This is how people feel satisfied and collective, throughout the design. Let’s see if my idealistic theories can work with our team.

All in all I can’t complain my working life is more exciting than my social life which isn’t so bad either!