The Sanctum: An Earthen Urban Village for Widows and Their Families in Qandahar

Shelter is the easy part. The harder question is what a protected place should do once safety is secured: how it helps a widow earn, a child learn, and a household slowly rebuild the confidence to step back into the wider world. The Sanctum answers by treating architecture as infrastructure for recovery, folding housing, education, water, landscape and community programs into one interconnected settlement for women and their families in Afghanistan.

Designed by Antorip Choudhury, the proposal was recognized as an Editor's Choice entry in Resile. Set in the dry, demanding climate of Qandahar, it rejects the isolated institutional block in favour of a dense, low-rise village whose walls, courtyards and passages draw on traditional Afghan settlement patterns. Its central argument is sharp: sustainability is a social instrument as much as an environmental one, tied to dignity, security and long-term self-reliance.

A Citadel That Stays Close to the Ground

The first renderings establish the project's tone. A mud-brick block rises in earthen tones with restrained openings, a cylindrical tank sitting on its roof, while figures in blue burqas and passing soldiers place the building inside an unsettled reality. In the second view, two brick towers with domed tops mark a threshold across a dry field. These taller entrance elements are the only parts allowed to break the skyline; the rest of the settlement stays deliberately low.

Choudhury describes the concept as a contemporary citadel, and the restraint is what makes it work. Horizontal massing and the colour of local earth let the complex read almost as a continuation of the terrain. The result conveys permanence and protection without the hostility of a fortress, which matters for a place meant to feel like home rather than a compound of last resort.

Program Gathered Inside a Single Protective Edge

The aerial axonometric reveals the full system against a backdrop of snowy mountains. Labelled volumes lift out of the walled compound to identify the prayer hall, housing, market and school, making clear that this is a complete settlement rather than a residence with amenities attached. Each program depends on the others: the school builds skills, the market turns those skills into income, and the prayer hall and shared spaces bind residents into a community.

The perimeter is the key move. By enclosing everything within one edge, the design draws the strong distinction between public and private territory found in traditional Afghan settlements, then uses it to hold vulnerable residents securely while still giving them a full civic life inside. The fine urban grain of closely spaced structures, courtyards and narrow passages keeps that interior from feeling institutional.

Thick Walls and Vaulted Rooms as Climate Strategy

Three sections, cut through the school, the community market and the housing, show how the environmental thinking lives in the construction itself. Vaulted brick rooms sit behind substantial load-bearing walls built from compressed mud blocks, potentially made from clay excavated on site during construction. Double walls with cavities add a further layer of thermal protection, while the mass of earth slows the swing of Qandahar's heat.

Rather than relying on mechanical systems, the proposal lets the urban form share the work. Dense building clusters limit prolonged exposure to direct sun, narrow routes stay shaded, and protected courtyards form small microclimates between buildings. Wind towers carry the strategy upward, channelling air into the residential spaces. None of this is added as a technical layer after the fact; climate performance is written into the spatial language from the start.

Housing Clusters Organised Along a Shared Spine

The housing rendering is the project's most hopeful image: clustered brick dwellings with round rooftop drums, boys playing in the grass, a kite drifting overhead. It suggests ordinary childhood returning to a place built around loss. The accompanying axonometric plan explains how that ordinariness is organised, arranging housing blocks, the prayer hall and a playground along a strong black spine.

Four dwelling types, diagrammed beside the plan, acknowledge that families arrive in different sizes and circumstances. Pairing this variety with a clear central circulation route gives the settlement both legibility and flexibility, so the village can house distinct households without fragmenting the shared ground that holds them together.

Why This Project Matters

The Sanctum is valuable because it refuses to separate environmental design from social purpose. Compressed earth, shaded passages and wind towers are not presented as green credentials; they are the means by which a fragile community can occupy a harsh climate cheaply, with materials drawn from the ground beneath it. That frugality is itself a form of resilience.

Equally important is the project's sense of trajectory. It is designed not as a permanent refuge but as a place where women and children gradually build the skills, confidence and networks to engage more independently with life beyond its walls. By rooting that ambition in a familiar architectural language, Choudhury offers a model of humanitarian architecture that protects without isolating and heals without erasing identity.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Antorip Choudhury

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Project credits: The Sanctum by Antorip Choudhury Resile (uni.xyz).