Earth Made: Rammed Earth Housing in Accra Organised Around an Old African Courtyard

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This article was written by UNI Editorial and published on uni.xyz, a platform for design professionals and creative thinkers.

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This article covers topics related to Housing, Sustainable Design, Rammed Earth, Earth Architecture, Courtyard House, Concrete House, Modern Housing. A shortlisted proposal stacks four apartment types around a planted courtyard, letting earthen walls and long openings do the cooling work.

A shortlisted proposal stacks four apartment types around a planted courtyard, letting earthen walls and long openings do the cooling work.

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UNI Editorial published Results under Housing, Sustainable Design on Oct 19, 2026

Affordable housing usually economises on the things that make a home worth staying in: shade, air, a balcony big enough to sit on, a neighbour you meet by chance. Earth Made reverses the logic. It treats those qualities as the brief and asks the cheapest, oldest material available, compacted earth, to deliver them in the West African heat.

Earth Made, led by Deniz Mahmutoglu, proposes affordable housing for local families in Accra, Ghana. The project was Shortlisted at Earth Made 2020. Its stated aim is direct: comfortable living areas, new experiences for families, and a building that answers the needs of everyone who uses it, residents and neighbours alike.

Collage frame with a circular crop of the stratified facade under clouds, a flock of birds and palm leaves in front. Image: Deniz Mahmutoglu

A Courtyard House Stacked Six Levels High

The building is a simple rectangular block, but its centre is hollow. According to the presentation boards, the form draws on old African houses built around a courtyard, which offered shared outdoor space and natural ventilation. Here that courtyard becomes a planted void with a small pool. The block sits in the middle of its plot, parallel to the main street, and the corners read as solid earth masses carved by deep recesses rather than as a uniform grid of windows.

Around the void, each floor is ringed by wide corridors with terraces. They do two jobs. They move air through the building, and they give residents a common space outside their front doors: a deck where children can play within sight of the kitchen, instead of a narrow, airless hallway.

Corner view of the stacked earthen block with recessed balconies and slim windows, young trees on the lawn in daylight. Image: Deniz Mahmutoglu

Corner view of the layered earthen volume from the road, with a lawn, hedges and a curved pool edge in the foreground. Image: Deniz Mahmutoglu

Four Apartment Types Fitted Together Like a Puzzle

The upper four floors hold the housing, planned on the same grid that sets out the whole building. There are four unit types: a 25 m² single, a 75 m² double, a 100 m² family unit and a 125 m² family unit with three bedrooms. Rather than stacking identical plans, the team describes the floors as coalescing these types like a puzzle, so the layout shifts from level to level.

That shuffling is what gives the facade its rhythm. Wherever a unit edge moves, a balcony recess opens up, and the result is a staggered pattern of deep loggias across the street elevation. Most of the homes get a large balcony out of it, which the project counts among its markers of comfort in affordable housing, alongside the green spaces and the separate public floors.

Street-facing elevation with staggered balcony recesses and vertical slot windows, pedestrians and a cyclist crossing the paved forecourt. Image: Deniz Mahmutoglu

Terracotta-toned block with offset balconies rising behind a striped lawn, hedges and young trees under a clear blue sky. Image: Deniz Mahmutoglu

Earthen Strata and Slot Windows as a Cooling System

The walls are rammed earth, chosen for its thermal mass and low environmental impact as well as for its look. The horizontal banding of compacted layers runs uninterrupted around the block, and the openings are mostly long vertical slots. The narrow proportion limits solar gain while still drawing air through, and the section diagrams show breezes entering the outer openings, crossing the units and corridors, and rising out through the courtyard. The planted void and its pool help cool that air before it moves on.

The proposal is candid about the limits of earth on its own. Steel columns and reinforced concrete beams and slabs support the structure, and the concrete is pigmented to match the colour of the earthen walls. It is a hybrid, but a sensible one, keeping the earth where it does the most work: in the envelope that faces the sun.

Elevation drawing of a six-storey timber-clad block with offset window bands and a double-height entrance, flanked by trees and a flock of birds. Image: Deniz Mahmutoglu

Two Public Floors and a Striped Garden for the Neighbourhood

The first two floors are given over to public life. At ground level there are a community hall, shops and a lobby, with large windows acting as shopfronts, the only place where the earthen skin opens up widely. The first floor adds a gym with changing rooms, another shop, a restaurant and a coffee shop. A double-height opening on the street side leads into the building and toward the courtyard, so the public spaces feel connected to its centre rather than walled off from it.

Outside, the landscape is laid out as a carpet of alternating concrete and vegetation strips, with young trees, hedges, a children's playground and heavy concrete benches. A pedestrian path links the block to the main street, and a walkway wraps the building so the shops face foot traffic on every side. In the renderings, someone walking a dog across the striped paving is the kind of everyday scene the plan is designed to encourage.

Ground floor of the layered earthen facade with a pedestrian walking a dog across striped paving beside concrete benches. Image: Deniz Mahmutoglu

Rammed earth facade with stacked balconies and narrow windows above a paved plaza, where a person walks a dog at dusk. Image: Deniz Mahmutoglu

Why This Project Matters

Earth Made shows that an earthen building does not have to be a small, rural or symbolic gesture. By pairing rammed earth walls with a conventional frame, it scales a vernacular material up to a six-storey urban block of mixed-size homes, and it uses the material's thermal behaviour as part of a passive climate strategy rather than as a surface finish.

Just as important is its definition of affordability. Large balconies, a shared courtyard, terraced corridors and two floors of public programme are treated as essentials, not extras. For cities like Accra, where heat and density put pressure on new housing, the proposal makes a clear case that cheaper construction and a better daily life can be designed together.