Singapore-based Billion Bricks won a Holcim Foundation Award in 2020 for its self-financing housing solution with the flexibility to be scaled up and deployed in multiple parts of the world. Using solar panels to generate electricity for the homes and providing enough excess to be sold back to the grid, the project is being developed with rural communities in the Philippines.
“Today, the numbers state that about 1.8 billion people worldwide need housing,” explains Prasoon Kumar, co-founder and director of Billion Bricks. “We need solutions that can be replicated fast, making housing affordable and accessible to people.”
Kumar adds that Billion Bricks developed the idea of “income-generating homes,” where every house in the development has a solar roof producing about five times more energy than the house consumes.
“The house is 100% self-sufficient in terms of its energy needs. It harvests 100% of the rainwater, grows its own food, and also cleans its own sewage.”
Scalability is key for Billion Bricks. The company focuses on highly replicable solutions across geographies with housing shortages, such as India and the Philippines. “When the houses are replicated at least 1,000 times, they become both a community of 1,000 homes and a solar rooftop farm of about 10-megawatt capacity,” Kumar explains. This creates “a generation power plant on rooftops that can sell the energy like a power plant would do and offset energy worth about 5,000 homes of similar size.” Billion Bricks shares the revenue from the solar rooftop with homeowners, significantly reducing their mortgages and making homeownership more accessible.
One of Billion Bricks’ key principles is to not “design for the poor” but instead create attractive homes that promote the highest standards of livability. “We didn’t want any part of the experience to look like it’s affordable housing in terms of materials or textures. As you experience the house, the colors are very muted, so the space looks much larger. And this whole space becomes a canvas for people to make their own as they grow with it.”
The homes are modular, pre-designed, pre-engineered, and flexible. They are also safe, earthquake- and typhoon-resistant, with a lifespan of 60 years. “We believe that if the key problem is housing, and if we make it financially viable, then we can deliver and solve the problem quickly,” says Kumar. “This approach would be far more sustainable for society at scale.”
The Holcim Foundation Award provided critical recognition of Billion Bricks’ vision at an early stage. “We had just started our work in the Philippines. So it was a great recognition of what we were starting to build, and since then, we’ve actually built real houses. We are hoping that people join us in this mission that we are on because it’s something which requires a lot of resilience, and we really need partners who can stick with us in this journey.”
Read more about the project on the Holcim Foundation website
More Stories
An ecosystem regeneration and urban re-engagement effort that brings nature and people back to an over-developed corner of Istanbul. Find out more.
A catalyst for positive urban change that enables connection and enhances a community of 20,000 students in Dhaka. Find out more.
A re-use project in Los Angeles, exemplifying the art of extending the life of an old building while breathing new life into its architecture. Find out more.