Introduction
After Nicaragua was struck by two category four hurricanes, Eta and Iota, tens of thousands of people were left with almost nothing. These hurricanes from late 2020 highlighted a broader issue around Nicaragua’s housing crisis, which counts over 1 million people living without adequate shelter and with less than $3/day.
In this challenging context of climate disasters and poverty, there is hope: bamboo. Bamboo has over 1,500 different species and two of the strongest types (Asper and Guadua) are abundant in Nicaragua. Aside from bamboo’s ability to sequester carbon, grow rapidly and enhance ecosystems, bamboo is also an incredibly versatile building material.
Before initiating the design and planning of KuNa, the project team conducted multiple surveys with local community members and the architecture was defined through a participatory design process.
Casa Congo partnered with
ANF and INVUR to introduce guadua bamboo to the local building code and approve its utilization for social housing, which had typically been delivered out of less sustainable traditional building techniques. MARENA (local ministry of environment) was a key stakeholder to support KuNa due to the decarbonization potential of bamboo homes compared to traditional ones.
The first 21 beneficiaries to receive a KuNa home were selected within El Astillero based on poverty thresholds and family requirements, with a view to then scale the program in the following years to end the housing crisis in this village.
Typical household in El Astillero
image: public domain
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Impact
KuNa’s mission is not to give homes to communities in need, it’s to give communities the skills and tools to build their own homes sustainably in the long term.
Given Nicaragua’s lack of infrastructure and industry around bamboo, KuNa’s first step was to establish the country’s first complete bamboo supply chain – from farm to wall. The key to KuNa’s success revolved around the team “Construyendo Suenos”, which comprises of over 70 farmers, carpenters and project beneficiaries who rallied together to make their dreams come true.
We trained farmers in the Chontales region to improve the forestry management of 6 hectare of bamboo and established a salt based treatment centre with the community of Las Salinas of Nahualapa, where we leverage ocean tides to fill natural salt pools and cure bamboo. We trained a team of carpenters and built a prefabrication workshop and storage shed in El Astillero, where the dried bamboo is sorted in sizes and then transformed into modular panels following a series of standardized steps (150 poles / home).
So far, KuNa has given a home to 21 families in need and its impact in terms of long-term education and capability building is significant. Having a safe and well-designed house is a life changing asset.
Thanks to a collaboration with a student from the Polytechnic of Milan, each KuNa house will also have an agroecological garden with medicinal plants, food and water management systems.
So far, Kuna has indirectly impacted around 1000 local people and set a new case study for bamboo social housing in Nicaragua.
Core team
KuNa was a truly multi-disciplinary and international team effort that involved many private and public organizations.
The project was initiated and lead by Sol Rodriguez and Nicholas Kaspareck, co founders of Casa Congo and respectively an engineer specialized in mass timber and an architect experienced in sustainable development. Manuel Cortez, school director of Casa Congo, and Guillermo Lopez, El Astillero's best builder, ran the project locally and oversaw logistics.
Casa Congo formed a team of carpenters comprised of local men and women who saw KuNa as an opportunity to learn about bamboo. This team later self proclaimed themselves as “Equipo Construyendo Suenos” – the Team Building Dreams.
A critical part to the mission was the arrival of Don Oscar Ruiz. Don Oscar is a Colombian farmer with over 40 years of experience in bamboo silviculture who came to Nicaragua to train the farming cooperative in Chontales and handover his knowledge to Dona Rita, who lead the local bamboo harvesting efforts.
Jaime Pena, founder of Arquitectura Mixta, volunteered his time to design KuNa and then introduced Tacuara, a Colombian bioconstruction collective. Uraba Ponzone lead Tacuara’s team of bamboo masters in Nicaragua for three months and trained the local community in bamboo carpentry and prefabrication.
From the other side of the world, Francesca Aiuti, an intern from the Polytechnic of Milan, designed the KuNa agroecological gardens and handed a playbook over to the families.
Many more organizations and individuals were part of this epic effort - it really does take a village!
Bamboo project team after completing the first KuNa home
image: Camila Duque | © all rights reserved
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Image gallery
The first complete KuNa
image: Manuel Cortez | © all rights reserved
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Bamboo transportation with mules
image: Camila Duque | © all rights reserved
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Farmers in Chontale selecting bamboo
image: Camila Duque | © all rights reserved
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Nicholas Kaspareck, Sol Rodriguez and 6m lengths of bamboo
image: Tim Nathan | © all rights reserved
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Workshop in El Astillero with the project beneficiaries
image: Manuel Cortez | © all rights reserved
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Bamboo learning moment with Guillermo Lopez, Don Oscar and community members of Las Salinas de Nahualapa
image: Nicholas Kaspareck | © all rights reserved
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Truck loaded with guadua bamboo
image: Camila Duque | © all rights reserved
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Salt pools for treating and washing bamboo
image: Tim Nathan | © all rights reserved
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KuNa workshop in El Astillero
image: Camila Duque | © all rights reserved
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Creating a bamboo prefab panel
image: Camila Duque | © all rights reserved
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Truck loaded with prefab panels being shipped to a site
image: Manuel Cortez | © all rights reserved
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Bamboo Drying Racks
image: Manuel Cortez | © all rights reserved
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La lateadora - the machine to make bamboo slats
image: Mattia Bosoni | © all rights reserved
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KuNa on site assembly
image: Camila Duque | © all rights reserved
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KuNa panel assembly
image: Camila Duque | © all rights reserved
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Assembled house structure (1.5 days)
image: Camila Duque | © all rights reserved
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Panel cladding technique
image: Camila Duque | © all rights reserved
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Alberto Calero, local bamboo carpenter
image: Mattia Bosoni | © all rights reserved
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Technical drawings
Nicaragua community managed bamboo value chain
image: Nicholas Kaspareck | © all rights reserved
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Building methodology diagram
image: Tacuara | © all rights reserved
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Results from demographic survey
image: Manuel Cortez | © all rights reserved
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Map with location of homes
image: Mattia Bosoni | © all rights reserved
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KuNa Floor Plan
image: Sol Rodriguez | © all rights reserved
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KuNa garden sections
image: Francesca Aiuti | © all rights reserved
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