Designer Earl Forlales told SBS Filipino that he was forming a team to get his prototype for a sustainable low-cost and affordable bamboo house off the ground.

Last week, the 23-year-old's house design won the first prize from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) in its Cities for our Future competition.

Of the 1200 entries from across the globe, the judges picked 12 finalists, who were mentored by experts in specific fields.

The house, known as a CUBO, can be manufactured in a week and construction will just take up to four hours.

CUBO co-housing Facebook page

Mr Forlales' goal is to have the unit ready for public viewing by March 2019 and he is expecting to have commercially available units by the second quarter of next year.

He hopes that the first community will be set up and running by the end of 2019.

“The goal is to provide simple, easy-to-deploy, and durable housing using engineered bamboo. We got the much-needed upgrade for the construction to make it robust and fit for the city,” Mr Forlales said.

“We’ll start small, around 24 units for the first housing community."

Mr Forlales has designed a business plan that will provide local people with not just housing, but new skills, jobs, and community space.

He also proposes raising money for the project by selling waste plastic to factories.

“The goal is to house the incoming worker population in the short-term before it will be implemented to the rest of the city's slum community,” he said.

“It is vital that we demonstrate the actual features so we could get more people [to like the idea] and to [demonstrate] the viability of the solution.”

RICS website

In coming up with the design, Mr Forlales realised that the 'bahay kubo' or stilt houses were something that Filipinos were very familiar with.

To make his design eco-friendly, he opted to use bamboo as his primary building material.

Bamboo is an ideal material because it releases 35 per cent more oxygen than trees and can be grown on poor quality land and harvested annually without leading to soil degradation.

The bamboo used in his design is treated and laminated, meaning its lifecycle is 10 times longer than normal bamboo.

“Bamboo is natural insulator so you don’t usually get the heat that you usually get from shipping containers. There is also less need for energy to cool the place down,” he said.

Supplied

The standard unit is a 12sqm studio that can accommodate two people, which could be expanded up to 48sqm depending on the family’s needs.

“The CUBO housing units will have tilted roof that captures rainwater and reduces heat gain, and elevated stilts that prevent floodwaters from entering the home,” he said.

John Hughes, competition head judge and RICS president said: “There were many exciting, original designs among the submissions, however, Earl’s idea stood out for its simple, yet well thought through solution to the world’s growing slum problem.”

About one-third of the Filipino capital Manila's 12 million people live in slums, possibly the most in any urban area in the world.

Over the next three years, an additional 2.5 million migrant workers are forecast to move to the city.

Campaigners estimate that the backlog for government housing in the Philippines is about 5.5 million.

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