Design Indaba 08: Cape Town architects MMA have started work on a pilot project of ten affordable houses built using a sand-bag construction system.

Each house, being built at Freedom Park at Cape Flats on the outskirts of Cape Town, has a budget of just 65,000 Rand (£4,300/$8,600).

Work started on site yesterday (Monday) and the first house should be substantially finished by the end of the week. These photos show construction of a demonstration wall on the site using the sand-bag system that took place on Sunday.

Above: Luyanda Mpahlwa of MMA architects. Below: women from Freedom Park filling sand bags.

The houses will be donated to former shack dwellers with the first house going to the Jonkers family, who have until now been living in a single-room tin shack.

The sand-bag system, developed by a Cape Town company called Eco-Beam, allows communities to build their own homes using extremely cheap materials.

In this case, the sand comes from dunes located a few hundred metres from the construction site and the bulk of the manual labour is being carried out by women from the Freedom Park community.

The project is part of the 10×10 housing project initiated by Design Indaba, which pairs ten teams of South African architects with international designers to pioneer new affordable housing systems. See Dezeen’s story from last year for more info.

MMA Architects were initially paired with London architect Will Alsop, although Alsop has not been involved in the final design of the houses.

Here’s a press release from Design Indaba: