Higher Ground Initiative: Housing + Architecture

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Prepared for:

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF NAURU

Department of Climate Change & National Resilience

The Honourable Rennier Gadabu M.P., Minister for Climate Change and National Resilience

Under the leadership & guidance of:

The Ministerial Troika:

The Honorable Martin Hunt M.P.,

The Honorable Rennier Gadabu M.P.,

The Honorable Reagan Aliklik M.P.,

The Higher Ground Initiative Committee:

Marlene Moses

Berilyn Jeremiah

Reagan Moses

Novena Itsimaera

Chitra Jeremiah

Gabrissa Hartman

Yvette Duburiya

Newman Rykers

Dexter Bretchefeld

With support from:

Benedict Joseph Abourke

Chelsa Buramen

Minister for Finance and Sustainable Development

Minister for Climate Change and National Resilience

Minister for Nauru Rehabilitation Corporation

Chair Secretary for Commerce Industry and Environment

Secretary for Climate Change and National Resilience

Secretary for Finance

Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Trade

Secretary for Infrastructure

Secretary for Lands Management

Chair for RONPHOS Corporation

Chair for Nauru Rehabilitation Corporation

Operations Manager, Nauru Rehabilitation Corporation

Operations Manager, RONPHOS Corporation

Prepared by:

METROCOLOGY

Mallory Baches

Demetri Baches

and:

Project Director, Strategic Planning

Project Manager, Master Planning

MERRILL, PASTOR & COLGAN

Scott Merrill

David Colgan

Michael Dixey

Cecilia Hall

Lead Architect

Architecture & Design

Architectural Renderings

Formatting & Document Prep

Housing + Architecture

SECTION 1.0

PRECEDENT STUDIES

SECTION 2.0

LAND PORTION #230

METROCOLOGY MERRILL, PASTOR & COLGAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECTION 3.0

PROGRAMMING AGGREGATION STUDIES

SECTION 4.0

SITE PLANNING ON LAND PORTION 230

SECTION 5.0

PORT STUDIES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECTION 1.0: PRECEDENT STUDIES

A. Introduction: Summary Notes

B. Overview of the Process

1. The Four Phases of the work on Housing

2. General Comments on the Process

3. General Comments on the Sources

4. General Comments on First Phase Studies

5. A Comparison with Typical Precedent Studies

6. General Comments on the Second Phase Studies

C. Building Assemblies

1. Substrates, Footings and Ground Floor Slabs

2. Walls

3. Roofs

4. Prefabricated Houses versus Site Built Houses

5. Overall Conclusions

D. Questions for the Housing Committee

E. Appendix

1. 2011 Republic of Nauru Census Graphs

2. Historic Housing Photographs

SECTION 2.0: PROGRAMMING

A. Introduction

B. Programming

1. Three Ways to Think of Programming Houses

P.5

C. House Types

1. Proposed Single Family House Types

SECTION 3.0: AGGREGATION STUDIES

A. Three Aggregated Studies

1. Large One Hectare Block Studies

2. Linear Site Plan with Single Family Courtyard Housing

3. Block Plan with Larger Multi-Family Buildings

SECTION 4.0: SITE PLANNING ON LAND PORTION 230

A. Aggregated Studies for the Master Plan of Land Portion 230

1. Higher Density Blocks North of the Rugby Field

2. Public Buildings on the East Side of the Rugby Field

3. Dispersed Housing in the East Neighbourhood

SECTION 5.0: PORT STUDIES

A. Port Housing

B. Conclusion: Summary Notes

P.35

2. Notes on the Presentation by Fadhel Kaboub and the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity

3. What the Census, The Poverty Report, Existing Housing, and the Smart House Tell us About Programming

TABLE OF CONTENTS

P.57

P.85

P.94

SECTION 1.0

PRECEDENT STUDIES SECTION 1.0

Overview of the Work Presented to the Committee

November 12, 2021

Dear Members of the Steering Committee,

Thank you all for your time. After the session two days ago and after hearing some of the comments, I changed the way I want to introduce this material. First of all, let me describe why we started work so early and how the precedent study fits in with the overall housing effort.

As outlined in the precedence study, our work on housing will include four phases of work- this precedence study, the programming studies which are going on right now, the integration of the housing studies into the master plan efforts, and finally a fourth phase of redirection for us to make any changes to earlier work.

It might seem a little strange that we have started such detailed work so soon, so please let me address that. The first two phases of our work require no work on the part of the other members of the team- no mapping, not even a site- and it was something we could get started on right away. If we are discussing it in the same time frame as master planning and tenure, I don’t mean to suggest it is as important as these things.

The precedent study basically tries to understand current building methods on the island so that we might establish some kind of means for evaluating current methods, and affordable alternatives.

We have been careful not to recommend specific ways of building a given assembly but to provide a list of considerations for choosing from among reasonable choices. We start at the foundations of a house and work our way up to the roof. So for example, there are probably half a dozen types of foundations we have discussed in terms of materials, labor, ease of construction and substrate, or the ground on which a house is to be built.

The housing report is tough to work through. And unless you love construction like I do, it is probably dull material. It is for people who build and who make difficult decisions about how construction money is spent. It is not glamorous stuff, but it is important because money is always scarce.

The entire housing report could be boiled down to a plea to spend money intelligently and to good effect and to the benefit of those who live in those homes. This is the first and last point of reference for the housing report. Who is served well? And while this session is on housing, I would apply this measure to everything and to every scale. Who is served? Is the money spent to good effect?

The thing that is so tough about a construction budget is that you seldom choose between a good thing and a bad thing. The difficulty of this material, I think, is that you have to choose constantly between two good things that everyone wants, and so there have to be criteria

established for how these difficult decisions are to be made. This is genuinely hard.

Honest people will disagree on the options presented in the study because the tradeoffs described are often subtle. We can lay these considerations out, but we can’t give the appropriate weight to them. Only Nauruans can, and I want to be clear that people involved in these decisions will give these decisions different weights and come to different conclusions. By all means, let us all air our concerns and our opinions. But as you continue to assess options for how to build, please keep in mind that everyone will bring good faith to this debate.

So for example, cross ventilation and natural cooling, which everyone wants, is better in thinner house plans, but thinner house plans have less efficient building envelopes and so much of the cost of construction is in exterior walls. The most expensive parts of an exterior wall are the openings, and so good cross ventilation simply costs more. I can point this out, but I can’t tell you if the extra money is worth it to you.

This precedent study is not as important at this stage as the other work that has been presented this week, but it is not trivial, either. As an example, consider the remediated land on which we are building. Everyone says, yeah, yeah yeah, it is not a problem. But in considering the question of foundations the study is very clear about concerns of settlement in the remediated areas.

No one can afford for this to be that pilot project in which foundations crack and telescope through the block because dirt between the pinnacles settled more than dirt directly over a pinnacle that is covered by only 200 mm of backfill.

Is the material in the report difficult to wade through? Yes. Is it tedious? Maybe. Are the graphics a little dry? Yes. I wish I could make it easier to engage. Does it seem early to talk about this stuff. Probably. But issues of building are serious, and we have tried to take these issues seriously. And this stuff comes first, I think, before more fun and gratifying studies that will follow.

Last evening two or three members of the steering committee mentioned a trip to Abu Dhabi. Please send photographs of the project you liked. When I ask for people to give us photographs, I also ask them to explain exactly what they liked about the project.

Was the project beautiful? Was it practical? Was it affordable? Can you see the Nauruan government subsidizing a similar project? Could it last in the Nauruan climate? Could it be built with Nauruan trades? Or does it just somehow convey, at an emotional level, a sense of a new start for Nauru housing?

The references stuck with me because, I have worked on two projects in Abu Dhabi province - one in the city of Abu Dhabi itself and one in the city of Al Ain, which is the fourth most populous city in the UAE. They represent an interesting contrast. Abu Dhabi has the confidence to import ideas from all over the world. Al Ain, an inland desert city, thinks of itself

as the upholder of traditions in the UAE, consciously in contrast to Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Another way to characterize Abu Dhabi, is that it lacks confidence in the ability of its history and culture to solve modern problems, and I think this lack of confidence in their own traditions results in a vacuum that draws in ideas from everywhere. I would say this is neither good nor bad in itself, but it is worth thinking about.

I appreciated Al Ain more because it has pride in the country’s traditions, and while these traditions are sometimes not up to solving modern problems, sometimes they are, and this faith in their culture and traditions makes decision makers from Al Ain a little more skeptical about the ideas paraded in front of them.

I’m not sure that describing Abu Dhabi as an innovative city or Al Ain as a conservative city is very helpful. Ideally, you would not have to choose between the temperaments of these two great cities, and you would draw the best from both.

You want to have Abu Dhabi’s openness to new approaches, but I think Nauru also needs to bring some of Al Ain’s pride and worldly skepticism to bear on the matter of innovation that comes from other places. And it needs to ask whether something that looks different is really innovative, and whether something that looks familiar can be innovative.

Housing is unavoidably conservative. It is a family’s most expensive asset. You don’t take undue risks with that. The ministers want to create a block and concrete industry. We agree with that, but these are not glamorous trades or building methods.

Money is also always short in any country. We asked the housing committee about using plywood roof decks to help keep water out and strengthen the houses against wind and were told that plywood is unaffordable. I understand this and accept it. But if plywood would improve the quality of Nauru housing and it is unaffordable, what does innovative housing look like?

The pre-fab housing on Nauru, which I think everyone has concerns about, was likely the innovation of its day. How has it survived with its styrofoam sandwich panels? Were the houses easily repaired by people on the island or did it make Nauruans more dependent on foreign knowledge?

Did it save money through quicker construction time, or did it stunt the development of local concrete and block trades that the ministers now want? These are the kinds of questions I would ask when you are considering the idea of innovation now.

Regarding sustainability, I sense everyone wants to talk about it in the same terms it is discussed throughout the world- in terms of energy loss across an exterior wall. But I don’t think this is helpful in Nauru. There is little difference in temperature across a Nauru wall as there is across an Abu Dhabi wall, which exists primarily because of air-conditioning, so why talk about sustainability in terms of energy loss like every other country does?

If all this sounds too conservative, I’d like to close these opening remarks by telling you why I think this early report speaks to innovation in the right sense. In addressing sustainability, Nauru should

focus on the embodied energy of new construction and how to make buildings last as long as possible. Somehow we can’t manage this in the US. The competitive housing markets punish builders who want to build more durably. If Nauru could do this, it would be truly innovative.

Could Nauru housing focus on building in a way that would allow housing to be an asset after 20 or 30 years instead of having it fail and lose value? Durable construction costs a little more upfront and so it doesn’t happen naturally, and it requires you to look at longer horizons and this does not come naturally to any of us. But if you could do this, regardless of what the housing looked like, it would be innovative.

The other aspect of durability is adaptability. If housing is to be durable it has to have construction integrity, but it also needs to accommodate change over the life of its inhabitants- the growth of family size, or family income, children leaving and older parents coming back, income falling again, and renters maybe helping underwrite the cost of rent when necessary. This adaptability is a focus of the second phase of our work.

One of the words that kept coming up two days ago was ‘options’. You want options. The second phase of our work will lay out more types of housing than you can ever build. This allows us to be wide of the mark on a lot of things and still be on target enough of the time. This is the only way it seems to me that we can hope to address a range of aspirations that may not all move in concert.

The precedent report focused on building assemblies and on wall sections- on money and leaks and settlement. This is not glamorous stuff. It will not quicken your heartbeat. It will not stir your soul. But the wall section is not the scale at which innovation works best for Nauru.

In this next phase of studies we are working at the scale where responsible innovation is more appropriate- in the configurations of the houses, in natural cooling, in security, in the relationship of a house to a street or a block or a neighbourhood or a garden or a park; in a reduced number of car trips, in greater independence for people without cars. I know what is coming this winter and you will be presented with unimaginable options that don’t currently exist on Nauru. But I would like to get there through a responsible and methodical process.

I think I have told you this before, but I live at two meters above sea level, on a migrating barrier island. I am chased from my home periodically by hurricanes. Water starts to dissolve our buildings the day we take occupancy. Salt corrodes. Humidity causes mold. It is a beautiful place but a hostile environment, and it has probably made me a little wary of experimentation because I see new products and new assemblies come and go out of fashion all the time. Maybe this is why I identified more readily with Al Ain than Abu Dhabi.

But we build for some really wealthy people, and we build for them - with stolid, unglamorous materials and simple assemblies - the same way we are recommending you build.

Kindest Regards,

Scott Merrill

Dear Ms. Marlene Moses, Special Advisor for the Higher Ground Initiative,

As you know, housing is a small part of a larger master planning effort led by Demetri Baches and Mallory Baches, of Metrocology LLC. We are glad to be started and look forward to a collaborative process that belies our physical separation from you. Our work with you will be part of a nearly year-long process but we hope we can finish the work on the houses in much less time. The master planners have a lot more work to do, and they will be able to use our work with you as they start to consider the size of lots, blocks and streets.

We have proposed a very specific way of working, but we wish to have reasonable flexibility as well as some structure to our efforts. We will have lots of questions for you and it is not yet clear how soliciting your advice will affect the process. Let’s start with a process that is easy enough to describe and easy enough to modify. SECTION

SUMMARY NOTES

Dear Ms. Marlene Moses,

The following points will be developed in greater detail:

Notes on the Process and the Sources

■ The first two phases of the work on housing can be done prior to having a site plan.

■ This first phase of work will look at how various efforts have approached building on the island in the recent past.

■ The recurring emphasis is on relative costs and on how money is distributed throughout the construction budget. A secondary emphasis will be on upfront costs and ongoing costs.

■ The report is organized by building assemblies, from the substrate and foundation to the roofs.

■ People have had, and will continue to have, honest differences of opinion about the best way to build because the considerations and the tradeoffs are often subtle.

■ This report is based on framing the considerations that bear on each decision and not how these considerations are weighted. The Steering Committee and the Housing Committee will need to help us with this, and they have been very helpful.

■ The second phase of work, starting in mid-October and running through December, focuses on programming - the size and number of rooms, the phasing and expansion of houses, and the sizes of lots.

■ A major goal of the phasing effort will be to address a range of needs, now and over time, with a limited number of house types. This work will affect master planning this winter.

■ Three primary sources will be used for the first phase of work: A 1994 NAC study by architect David Whitfield; the 2011 RON Census, and the 2020 Smart House drawings.

Notes on Building Assemblies

■ The success of the HGI program rests on the quality of the substrate left after remediation of the phosphate mining. Housing and infrastructure will require good bearing and drainage. Differential settlement will strain foundations.

■ Building configurations and the efficiency of building envelopes are the single most important determinants of costs. They should be given weight, but thinner houses also improve quality of life.

■ Nauru has used prefabricated housing in the past. The 1994 NAC report cites a number of problems experienced with prefabricated housing, and prefabricated housing goes against Nauru’s wishes to develop the building trades.

■ A range of foundation types, and their advantages and disadvantages, have been described in detail.

■ There is an island preference for concrete slabs and block walls, which coincides with island resources, with construction durability, and with the determination to further develop the building trades.

■ Wall openings are the most expensive part of the walls, and so to a degree, economy and cross ventilation are difficult to reconcile.

■ Insulation is rare, and sustainability may be better thought of in terms of durability than in terms of thermal loss across walls, roofs and floors.

■ There are alternative ways to frame and sheath roofs, giving them more lateral strength and helping them protect more against rain but the current way of building roofs likely won’t change because of the cost of materials.

■ There are strong incentives to reduce up-front costs as much as possible, even if it means incurring inordinate maintenance costs later, or if housing, as an asset drops in value over time.

■ The HGI could distinguish itself if policy could recalibrate some of these short-term decisions so that Nauruans could afford houses built to be an asset after 20 or 30 years.

B. Overview of the Process

1. The Four Phases of the Housing Studies

There are to be four phases to our work. The first two are to be finished by the end of 2021, and the other two will unfold in the early months of 2022. These are the four proposed phases:

a) Precedent Studies

b) Program Diagrams

c) Aggregation Studies

d) Revisions and Final Presentation Drawings

These phases are in order, buwt they aren’t completely categorical, and they will overlap some on the schedule. We may start work on the next phase while we wait for feedback on the previous phase. Here is a further description of each phase.

a) Precedent Studies (Delivery October 2021)

We can start this work without waiting for mapping or planning studies. It is a phase that requires close communication with the members of the Steering Committee, and those who helped develop the Smart House.

A conventional precedent study will be difficult. There have been plenty of housing models since about 1949 but they are not well documented, they have not always held up well over time, and they don’t always reflect modern housing preferences.

There are precedents for different types of foundations, walls, windows, and roofs. There are arguments in favor of most any basic way of building because they each give slightly different weight to all the considerations. The precedent study will lay out these choices and the considerations for making decisions about each assembly. The Steering Committee will then have to make decisions based on how much weight to give each consideration.

Most everything will come down to how money is spent and moved from one part of the construction budget to another, and to finding the right balance between cost and effect. This does not preclude elective add on costs, which we will study in phase 2.

This phase will draw from several documents we have in hand, and from any additional information the Steering Committee can bring to our attention. We will start with the substrate - the remediated mines - and work up through basic assemblies, from foundations to roofs.

Image credit: Lorrie Graham

SECTION 1.B

b) Program Diagrams (Delivery December 2021)

Establishing the right number of rooms and the size of each room will be important early on. We are encouraged by the affinity between the valuable information in the 2011 RON Census and the plans of the Smart House from last year. The precedent phase should summarize these affinities and help establish a program.

The program diagram phase should demonstrate how variants and alternate configurations can help capture the full range of information from the census which shows that bedroom count, as an example, ranges fairly broadly by household.

Post-World War II housing types ranged from 67 square meters up to about 160 square meters. The Welcome Homes of 1987-1988 fell within a much narrower range of 111-121 square meters. The four bedroom variant of the Smart House is squarely in the middle of this range.

Apparently, a lot of Nauruans start with the overall size of the house they think they can afford and then back into the room count and room size. This is a reasonable way to program house prototypes. The ideal programming process will work from both ends - adding up room needs and deriving an overall size, and starting with an overall size and backing into a room count and room sizes. We will try to do both.

In this phase we should be gauging the need for variants, elective add-ons and phasing for household growth. There may be a need for a very small house, smaller than the two bedroom variant of the Smart House, that can be added onto as families grow and incomes increase. These studies can be undertaken before we have a site plan.

c) Aggregation Studies (Delivery February 2022)

This phase requires some preliminary lot and block sizes and configurations, which we should have toward the end of 2021. In this phase we will populate the blocks and the streets of the first phase master plan with the variants we study in phase 2. This phase requires the closest collaboration with the planning and the sizing of lots. It is the phase in which the variety of the work of phase 2 will become evident.

It will also be more clear in this phase what the average lot size, and the range of lot sizes need to be. This is the phase in which we will consider the lot beyond the house itself- the private outdoor spaces - and the streets. The relationship of the rooms and the yards will be more important, as well. Privacy and security will become more important issues. We will want the houses to contribute to the streets as well, without compromising their security.

The drawings for this phase will include block plans, roof plans, aerials, elevations, and eye level perspectives, including street perspectives.

Figure 1 - This document isolates the schedule for the development of housing from the schedule for planning but it shows milestones for the four phases described in the narrative.

d) Redirections and Final Presentation Drawings (Delivery Early Spring 2022)

This is a period in which all work can be reviewed by the Steering Committee, with the benefit of a little more time. It is assumed that previous approvals will be revisited in detailed but not fundamental ways. It is a period in which we can do our final drawings.

2. General Comments on the Process

The beginning of the process in the first phase, Section 1.0, will be very fine grained and methodical, and maybe a little tedious for people who are not responsible for building the houses. We will go from the foundation to the ridges of the house looking at different options. The houses need to be simple and durable. Additive options and elective assemblies will introduce more variety during the programming phase. A single configuration won’t address the full range of needs reflected in the census and so we will assess how flexibility might be introduced at reasonable costs. The Smart House is a great example of a plan that can accommodate two or four bedrooms.

Likely the needs of a given household might change over time and so phasing in changes or additions will be part of what we look at in the second phase. Generally, the promise of the work will start to show in this second phase, but it will only be fully apparent when we have a varied site we can drop houses into.

We need simple buildings that vary in a fairly narrow range in order to keep costs down. But everyone rightly wants variety and richness throughout a neighbourhood. It’s not that difficult to reconcile these two things. Simple individual houses can be laid out for a range of lots sizes, and lot configurations can vary, and block sizes can vary and streets can vary, all without additional cost. The richness and variety will come later in the third phase from the aggregation of simple house types.

3. General Comm ents on Sources

We will start with the benefit of three documents. We will benefit from as much additional information as we can get and hope the committee will bring additional documents to our attention. We are especially interested in the range of post war housing, and the Welcome House of the late 1980’s. It would help to have plans and walls sections, if they exist, and it would help to know how various materials and assemblies weathered over time.

The documents on which we will rely most heavily at the beginning are:

a) A n NAC paper by an Australian architect named David Whitfield, from 1994

Whitfield co-wrote this paper with an economist named Bob Carstairs. We like this document for two reasons. Whitfield is methodical and detail oriented and very practical. Carstairs contributes extended considerations of costs. Their priorities generally conform with what we know about your preferences to source as many things on island as possible, to limit shipping costs, and to train trades locally. They contribute some skepticism about pre-fab assemblies shipped in and assembled by off island trades. The report has some valuable information on programming. We agree with most all their conclusions except for the proper lot and block sizes, which we think are excessive for the likely number of houses we need to accommodate on a fixed parcel in the first phase.

b) The 2011 Republic of Nauru Census

Whitfield and Carstairs obviously did not have the benefit of the 2011 Census, but they explicitly recommended that a survey be undertaken on family income, number of family units, persons per household, and existing housing conditions. The 2011 Census answers most all of this. Like their own study, the census is fine grained, and it contains a wealth of information.

The survey is unique in the attention it gives to the houses and households of Nauru. Along with the Smart House and post war precedents, the census will help give a basis for the programming of the houses- the list of rooms and their sizes. The census captures a broader range of household needs than any one design can, and addressing this range will be a major focus on the second and third phases of work.

c) The Smart Hous e PDF of March 2021

The Whitfield document was a text. The census relied heavily on graphics. The Smart House initiative has incredibly detailed recommendations for how to build. If it did not draw directly from the Census of 2011, it is consistent with it. It is flexible and will be a model for our program and phasing alternates. It has an efficient building envelope - the ratio of envelope area to enclosed area - which is the most important determinant of cost.

d) Incidental Documents

We have received some historical photos from Mark Jariobka and from the housing committee. Whitfield describes a series of model homes since 1949. To this point we have no plans for these models, but the information we have on overall square footage from these prototypes is helpful.

SECTION 1.B

(Regarding additional sources for precedents: Note that Whitfield references modern housing types with great specificity. He references housing types 1 through 7, the size of the small type 1-67 square meters - and the subsequent growth in the size of the types; the type IV which is two stories and 163 square meters, and typically four bedroom but sometimes 5. It would help to find these types. There are no references to years but they are apparently just post-war programs.

There is a reference to a housing program of prefabricated kit houses started in 1987/8 and built in Australia and New Zealand. These houses were between 111 and 121 square meters, excluding porches. Porches were 1.8 to 2 meters wide. Whitfield cites lots of complaints about these houses, but we need to know more about both programs. The Smart House is closer to the size of the Welcome Houses of the late 80’s and early 90’s.)

4. General Comments on First Phase Studies

Part of the method in this phase will be to collate comments from these different sources. So for example, historical photos show model house programs with a range of foundation types. Whitfield acknowledges a range of possible foundation types but recommends slabs on grade for government programs. The Smart House has a hybrid foundation of piers and crawlspaces under the front rooms of the houses, and a matt foundation and a raised slab under the bedroom wing. The precedent study should help foster a decision between these choices

This first phase of work will characterize the advantages and disadvantages of each type. The Committee will assign their own weight to the considerations. There is always a range of reasonable options.

Another example would be the percentage of openings in the walls. Whitfield recommends a very high percentage of openings - 50 to 80%. Most of the money in a house is in the exterior envelope and openings are the most expensive part of the envelope. But openings admit daylight and afford cross ventilation, which was Whitfield’s focus. The Smart House has a much lower percentage of openings, probably because costs were given more weight. Likely Whitfield’s recommendation is too high.

Ventilation, whether it is through the walls or under the floors, is highly desirable but it is costly and every increase in cost will make housing less affordable or require smaller or fewer rooms. So we will frame these kinds of issues, and in phase 2 we will provide examples of a range of percentage of openings, and let Nauruans find the right balance of two inarguably desirable things.

5. A Comparison with Typical Prece dent Studies

This will be different from most precedent studies. Most modern Nauru precedents will fall short by some important measure, and so historical and current examples will be helpful in thinking about the performance of materials in the climate over time, or the capability of the trades, or the relative advantages of prefabrication versus site built housing, but we will need to rethink building on the island from the substrate on up.

If there are not enough precedents in Nauru, we will consider how people build in similar climates. We are half a world away from you, but we live and work on a migrating barrier island of sand and we live and work at two meters above sea level. We have high humidity. Water starts to dissolve our buildings from the day we take occupancy.

The heat blisters dark painted surfaces. High rainfall will migrate through our masonry walls if they don’t have a vapor barrier on the outside. We have seasonal breezes that shift from season to season. We build defensively and will bring this same conservative attitude toward building in Nauru.

But there are unprecedented things about Nauru. We will inherent unusual, remediated mining sites. Environmental considerations are changing rapidly. There is a history of health issues in the 1930’s. Cesspools are still common. There will be modern security issues. Nauruans build with little or no insulation, and plywood is too expensive to use. And so there will have to be alternate ways to provide resistance to wind loads, and other ways to keep water from penetrating the roof.

There may be more reason to look forward to the planning process this winter than to look back on housing precedents. The first phase planning will provide opportunities that don’t currently exist on the island, and so it is important to anticipate the advantages of attractive public streets and secure private yards. And it will be important to create variety based on minor variants of limited housing types, and on variations in siting and orientation and entry. It will be important to provide for changes over time, and it will be important to accommodate a range of family sizes and numbers of generations served by a single house.

6. General Comments on Second Phase Studies

a) Programming

The 2011 Republic of Nauru Census has figures on household size by district; on head of household by gender; on the percentage of owners and renters, on single and multi-family

SECTION 1.B

housing; on the age of housing; on the number of rooms, and the number of bedrooms; on how many households do or don’t have a dining room, or a kitchen and on whether bathrooms or kitchens are shared with other households.

The census has statistics on construction; on the percentage of concrete block houses versus wood houses; on metal and asbestos roofs; on guttering and gutter materials; on how any houses have downspouts and what percentage are connected to water storage and even the capacity of water storage tanks and what they are made of and whether they are shared with otherhouseholds.

On those dependent on catchment water versus desalinized water; on those who can depend on freshwater; on the use of gas or electricity or wood for cooking; on the types of toilets and whether they are shared; on the percentage of households on a sewer system versus on septic or cesspool; on the percentage with internet; on those with phones or cell phones, or refrigerators or freezers or microwaves or air conditioners or ceiling fans.

This census information will help with programming and with assemblies. Whitfield’s report is full of interesting programming guidance. He cites housing programs for which we have no plans but lists sizes and conventions for square meters per person, which he thinks is twice as high on Nauru - at 13 square meters per person - than on other Pacific islands. He mentions the Welcome Houses at 111-121 square meters. He mentions an older series of seven house types ranging from 67 square meters (type 1) to 163 square meters (type 4 with 4-5 bedrooms).

For comparison the one story two bedroom Smart House is about 75 square meters, just barely larger than the postwar, type 1 houses, and the two story four bedroom version is about 115 square meters, or right at the size of the Welcome Houses of the 1980’ and 1990’s, but smaller than the older two story, four bedroom type 4.

b) Programming Houses for Streets and Blocks and Public Spaces

The Smart House captures two different bedroom scenarios with admirable economy and efficiency. But the census shows household room and bedroom counts beyond these two scenarios. The programming phase will generate a flexible and phaseable range of programming options. These options would allow households to stay in the same house, should moving prove difficult, even as their income or household size may change.

Since kitchen and dining rooms are relatively fixed, according to the census, the principal programming variable will be bedroom count, but even for a given number of bedrooms, the configuration can vary. With identical bedroom counts, houses can be one story or two. They can be straight in line layouts, or L’s or U shapes. They can be one room deep or two rooms deep.

Their narrow end or their broad side can face the street. They can enter off courtyards or off streets. They could share a courtyard with households with whom they share toilets or kitchens or they could be the only units that face smaller courtyards. There can be very small starter houses for younger people or people with no credit. These houses could be expandable or, if a market for houses is in place, they can be sold over and over to similar households.

The census does not seem to address porches. Porches are a luxury, but they appear in a number of current and historic house types. Porches could be built with the house or added later. They could face courtyards so they are secure. Balconies on stacked plans could face the street. They could have wood posts or masonry piers. They could have their own roofs or be under a second floor with rooms.

The census cannot address things that don’t currently exist in Nauru and so house types might anticipate certain aggregations that could form courtyards, or line small mid-block streets, or have common end walls that can form rows of buildings. Densities could increase toward the centres of neighbourhoods and decrease toward the perimeters, so that lot sizes might vary naturally. Stacked house types could line squares or plazas and one stories spread over large areas.

The programming phase will be conducted before we have a site or a master plan and the programming and the configuration studies might help inform lot and block sizes. Whitfield suggested lots of 300 square meters and 10,000 square meter blocks. There will be a range of lot and block sizes that the programming phase has to anticipate but with the limited availability of land it seems likely that many lots and blocks will be smaller than this.

Since World War II housing programs have been developed without regard to a context. The programming and configurations studies of phase 2, will anticipate a context of varied lots, blocks, and streets.

(Note that we have heard more about the correlation of crime and density than about health and density. We need to know more about health concerns. Disease has devasted the island at times, including tuberculosis in the 1930’s. While Whitfield is clear that we do not know if housing conditions contributed to epidemics, he cites Australian studies that recommend against compounds housing extended families, and studies that recommend single family dwellings. This is probably why he suggests larger lots than we will likely deliver. The 2011 Census shows that there are still a number of people using cesspools and so we need to address concerns that correlate health and density as much as concerns about crime and density.)

SECTION 1.B

C. Building Assemblies

David Whitfield’s 1994 document recommended that a handbook for the guidance of self-help housing be produced. This should, he said, “simply illustrate the necessary elements of house construction technology and highlight important issues and options available so that informed decisions can be made.”

Our charge for a government sponsored program is a little different than a self-help guide, but this document lays out the basic choices for different assemblies so that the Steering Committee can make informed choices.

The recent documents described in Section 1.B differ in how they recommend Nauruans should build. The differences are relatively small differences, and honest differences; the differences of people all trying to arrive at the right conclusions. There is no reason to expect complete agreement about how to build.

The purpose of this document is not to recommend still another way to build, but to look at the choices, to consider the thinking that goes into the choices, and to help frame trade-offs. The reason there are honest differences about how to build is because the trade-offs are complex and subtle, and subject to change over time.

The Steering Committee alone can give relative weight to these trade-offs. And the building program may even start out with one set of assemblies and then switch to another as they are priced or fabricated.

Disagreement within a narrow range seems likely. Experimentation within a narrow range seems entirely reasonable. Responding to changing circumstances, to changing prices, to the progress of the port, to the development of the skills of the trades, or to the performance of materials over time, seems inevitable.

The description of building assemblies that follows provides good examples of why it is difficult and even undesirable to have complete agreement on how to build. You should try different approaches.

1. Substrate, Footings and Ground Floor Slabs

a) Substrates

The substrate, the footings and the slabs will be considered together because the slope, drainage and bearing capacity of the substrate will affect the selection of a footing type, and sometimes the footing and the ground floor slab are poured separately and sometimes they are the same pour. It’s hard to consider these things separately.

The discussion of the substrate from remediated mines has been debated for a long time. Geoffrey Davey of the Nauru Lands Rehabilitation Committee wrote a report in 1966. He cites a 1954 study commissioned by the Australian government that confirmed the feasibility of knocking down the pinnacles and covering them with imported topsoil, but it cited the lack of water for growing anything. A study by the British Phosphate Commissioners in 1965 estimated a cost of $7300/acre, but over an enormous area of 3500 acres.

Housing is typically mentioned as one possible use for reclaimed land, but there are specific concerns for housing that would not apply to other uses. The NRC RONPHOS diagrams from 2021 show the pinnacles in a typical Nauru open pit phosphate mine. The secondary mining and remediation process requires that a very unbuildable landscape be made buildable. This is done by leveling the pinnacles and filling in the cavities. This kind of aggregate substrate should drain well and if properly prepared, it should have good bearing capacity. There will have to be soil borings done to test the capacity of the substrate before buildings are built.

The engineers undertaking the remediation are confident about providing a buildable pad for housing, but other than the Australian Detention facility, we are unaware of where there has been experience building over this kind of landscape, and we are unaware of any observation of similarly reclaimed areas over time, that might offer insight into settlement issues.

Typically an engineer will want a substrate consisting of fill brought in in shallow layers that are then individually compacted, one layer at a time and over a large open area. The fill from secondary mining process, by contrast, is in small isolated cavities that can’t be rolled and so the mechanics of this compaction are unclear, and we don’t know the size range of the aggregate.

The combined topping layers over the leveled pinnacles from secondary mining is 200 mm and so an additional consideration is differential settlement, which may be just as important as the compaction of the cavities. If fill is not properly compacted, or if there is insufficient fill over the pinnacles, the fill may settle where the pinnacles do not settle. This kind of condition could put stress on the footings that does not occur in conditions of minimal and reasonable settlement of continuous fill.

Because the remediation is being undertaken by one party in one time frame, and construction by another party in a different time frame, there may be an incentive to prepare a site in ways that do not ensure a decent substrate for a building’s foundation. Some consideration should be given in advance of remediation, to aligning everyone’s incentives or there will be a risk that site preparation costs will be minimized by those preparing the site and shifted to those constructing the houses. And the worst outcome would be differential settlement that was only noticeable over time. The structural integrity of the houses depends on the proper preparation of the substrate.

b) Footings and Ground Floor Slabs

SECTION 1.C

■ Secondary mining will occur in a couple of stages. The pinnacles will be knocked down and this will make secondary deposits accessible. The secondary removal will create pinnacles again, and the pinnacles will be cut down and used for filling the voids of the secondary removal. Then there will be several topping layers totaling 200 mm.

■ The text raises question about differential settlement and the effect on the selection of a foundation types. It also raises questions about the incentives of separate parties for mining and site prep. The depth of the topping is probably not sufficient to allay concerns about differential settlement. Engineers should be consulted, borings taken and bearing capacities determined. The crushed rock should drain well and have good bearing, but if differential settlement takes place it will be cause of the difficulty in compacting crushed rock fill in these small but deeper cavities.

■ To our knowledge there has only been one building built on a remediated phosphate mine - the Australian Detention Centre - and we don’t know if the settlement of the substrate has been observed over time. We would like to have any drawings of the facility and the foundations, that might be available.

Figure 2

(3) Raised Wood Floors

Regardless of the foundation type, you want consistent bearing capacity through the building sites. This provides maximum flexibility in choosing a foundation type. Figure 4 describes several basic types of foundations that will be reviewed here - a monolithic slab, a single pour that acts as both slab and footing; a continuous spread footing with a stem wall and a raised slab on compacted fill; a pier foundation, a crawl space with a wood floor, a raised slab formed in place, and a thick matt slab in the event substrate quality varies.

Whitfield recommended a slab on grade. The Smart House has a crawlspace with a wood floor in one part and a matt slab and a raised poured in place slab in another part. Both portions are on poured concrete piers. So you have a range of choices and have to evaluate the tradeoffs of each one.

The housing committee, for example, advised us that the labor costs of the pier foundations of the Smart House came in relatively high. This, of course makes ventilation relatively more expensive and slabs on grade or raised slabs relatively more affordable. With this information the committee is better prepared to consider the tradeoffs of cost and ventilation. As you get more information on the costs of any assembly, you will make more informed decisions.

The bearing capacity of the site has to be considered. The fall of the site has to be considered. Runoff has to be considered. Humidity and rot have to be considered. The cost of the rough carpentry to form the concrete has to be considered. Sourcing and shipping costs have to be considered. Studies always cite the fact that there are sources of aggregate on the island, but concrete requires clean fresh water, clean sand free of salt, steel, and cement, and some of these components will be imported at great cost.

(1) Slabs on Grade

Whitfield didn’t clarify whether the slab he preferred was on existing grade or raised up on compacted fill. The least expensive option is usually a relatively thin slab on grade, where the slab thickens at the edges to act as a footing as well. This type of foundation combines two concrete pours into one pour. It requires a flat site, and it requires a comprehensive site drain age plan that will keep water away from a slab very close to adjacent grades.

(2) Raised Slabs on Grade

If you don’t have a flat site or if runoff from upslope is a concern you may need to raise the floor. This can be done with piers, or with a continuous footing below several block courses. If you have a continuous footing and continuous stem wall you can fill inside it, compact the fill, and use the fill as formwork for a raised slab.

■ Diagram A describes the composite floor framing plan of the two room deep Smart House. The other diagrams are the same size but illustrated alternate floor assemblies. The Smart House has a front tier of rooms with a raised wood floor supported by piers, and over the water tanks. A perimeter beam catches joists between piers. The piers provide ventilation required of raised wood floors. The bedroom wing is over a raised poured in place slab on concrete piers at small intervals.

■ Diagram B s hows a wood floor system over the same entire area. Piers are more widely spaced and fewer in number. This requires slightly larger perimeter beams. A centre row of piers would support the wall between the living room and bedroom wings.

■ Diagram C shows the same area with perimeter stem walls, like those of diagram B in the foundation types. Stem wall systems require two pours. The walls are above a continuous footing. The foundation walls would be filled and the earth compacted and a raised floor slab poured over the compacted fill.

■ Diagram D shows a slab on grade - a single pour for the footings and the thin floor slab. This is the most economical floor type, but it requires flat sites and sites that drain away from the house.

Figure 3

Figure 4

■ This is a series of cross sections describing different foundations. The upper left foundation, A, is a single concrete pour that combines the thin floor slab and the footing. This is a very economical foundation, but it requires fairly flat sites. Diagram B requires two pours, a footing and a separate slab. Between these pours, masons build a stem wall, within which compacted fill provides earth formwork for the raised floor slab.

■ Diagram C is a matt, or raft slab. Matt slabs use a lot of concrete. The matt slab at the rear of the smart house is 0.6 meters thick. This type of foundation would typically be used where the bearing capacity of the substrate is inconsistent. See the description of remediated substrates.

■ Diagram D is a raised poured in place slab spanning a continuous block stem wall. It has the cost of two concrete pours, but the floor slab itself has the considerable cost of temporary wood formwork and reinforced steel. It does provide a less permeable barrier between the crawlspaces and the first floor and would not be prone to the rot of wood rafters in unventilated spaces.

■ Diagrams E and F both have wood floor joists over a crawlspace. E is built on block piers, and F is built on a continuous stem wall. Piers provide the ventilation required for wood framing, but they require a perimeter beam to catch joists between piers. Continuous stem walls require vent panels. Both assemblies would support wood walls above. Owing to the humidity of the climate and the prevalence of termites, a crawlspace could be lined by a thin floating slab on grade.

■ Diagram G describes the foundation under the bedroom wing of the Smart House. It is a composite foundation containing a matt slab, poured piers and a raised poured in place floor slab.

■ Without doing detailed take-offs, you can think of each option in terms of the amounts of labor and material, sometimes moving money from one to the other. Concrete is either formed by boards of ply wood, or earth. There are either one or two or even three pours in these options. Raised poured in place slabs are especially costly because of the formwork.

The main rooms of the Smart House have poured piers and wood floor joists elevated from grade. (There is a variant with a continuous concrete block stem wall) Piers require a beam parallel to the piers to pick up joists that fall between the pier spacing. Raised floors requires a crawlspace and good ventilation to prevent the rotting of the floor joists. It is difficult to inspect crawl spaces for deterioration. Crawlspaces have to be kept clear of vermin. Wood floor joists will be sourced off island, and so they come with transportation costs and require minimal rough carpentry skills. The housing committee has told us that the grading of lumber is unreliable.

Whitfield and Carstairs acknowledged the advantages of piers, crawlspaces and raised floors for cooling but in the end recommended slabs on grade for economy. The foundation labor costs of the Smart House, and the inability to rely on properly graded lumber for floor joists both argue for either slabs on grade or raised slabs.

(4) Raised Slabs Poured in Place

There are two common ways to have a raised slab - with prefabricated concrete plank, and formed and poured in place steel reinforced concrete. While plank is cheaper if it can be sourced nearby, it is unrealistic in Nauru because of shipping costs and the setup costs of a plant are prohibitive.

The bedroom wings of the Smart House have a grid of poured piers at tight intervals that sup port a raised poured in place slab. A raised poured in place slab is still expensive compared to other options but some material can be sourced on island and if you have people skilled in placing reinforced steel, it will provide another trade for Nauruans.

Wood formwork for spanning poured in place slabs is more expensive than formwork for walls or piers. Whereas a continuous stem wall foundation with a slab on compacted fill uses dirt for form work, a raised slab will be formed in place with temporary wood form work. Likely this is why the costs of the Smart House foundations are high. Poured in place slabs, for all their costs, provide raise floors without the maintenance concerns associated with wood floor systems over crawl spaces.

(5) Matt Foundations

A matt foundation, or raft foundation, is a thick continuous slab at or below grade. It is expensive because of the amount of concrete that is required but is usually used to address substrates that might have differential settlement, like a remediated mine. It appears that the Smart Houses uses a matt foundation under the stacked bedroom wing, but it uses concrete piers above the matte slab and then a raised poured in place slab.

If the substrate of the remediated mine sites is properly prepared matt slabs should not be necessary. However, if it proves difficult to avoid differential settlement of the substrate, they might be necessary. A structural engineer should be involved in this decision.

c) Conclusion

Whitfield recommended slabs on grades. The Smart House has two types of raised foundations. Raised foundation generally cost more for one reason or another. But if skills are to be developed slightly, more labor intensive foundation types might be acceptable.

And if slightly more labor intensive foundations allow for systems with materials that can be sourced on island then higher labor costs might be offset by reduced shipping costs. But with regard to concrete it is necessary to consider its components- aggregate, clean sand, clean water, cement, and steel.

The housing committee said that aggregate from ground up pinnacles can be used for concrete. They said sea sand used to be used in mixing concrete. This is not an acceptable source for concrete but the committee also said that the pinnacles of the mine can be pulverized for use as sand. The clay required for cement has to be imported and according to Whitfield, the costs of imported cement are quite high. Steel will be imported at great cost. The housing committee has built in the cost of these imported materials.

So while block and concrete is nominally sourced on island, some of its components will still be imported and so in considering matt slabs, especially, but also poured piers, tie beams, tie columns, rake beams, and filled block cells, care should be taken to monitor the volumes of concrete for various foundations.

If more durable systems cost more at the time of construction, a life cycle analysis might justify greater upfront costs. On the other hand, any increase in the cost of construction may reduce home ownership and make renting relatively more attractive.

Finally, in a competitive building market, there is a disincentive for any one builder to incur unnecessary up-front costs, even if more costly methods increase the life cycle of the house. This is the case in mature real estate markets in the United States. If durable methods of construction are to be encouraged there will have to be incentives to build houses that will be worth more after twenty or thirty years, rather than depreciated. This won’t happen naturally and in the markets where we work, this problem is unresolved. If this is a sustainable initiative, incentives have to be in place so that durability is encouraged and not naturally disincentivized as it is here in the States. Part of having this be a model project should be thinking about how durable systems and longer term horizons can be encouraged. If durable methods of construction can be incentivized, you will leap ahead of the U.S. housing market in some ways.

2. Walls

a) Envelope Efficiency

An inordinate amount of the construction budget is in the building envelope. Therefore, one of the best measures of efficiency and cost effectiveness of a house is envelope efficiency. Envelope efficiency is the ratio of the enclosing envelope to the enclosed area. It can be an area to area calculation. It can be a linear to area calculation. It needn’t be tracked obsessively, but it is a good idea to understand its broad implications.

The most efficient house is square. Envelopes become increasing inefficient as plans thin and elongate. Some modifications are more expensive than others. If you widen an elongated plan the cost increase will be less than directly proportional to the area added. If you lengthen an elongated plan the increase in cost will more nearly approach a proportional increase in costs.

For example, if you widen a 3.5 meter by 10 meter volume by half a meter you will increase the area by about 14% but you will only increase the linear feet of building envelope by one meter from 27 linear meters to 28 linear meters.

Flooring or roofing will increase roughly proportionally to the increase in floor area. Building shell trades will increase by much less. Roof framing will only increase marginally.

If there were no offsetting considerations, rational housing would converge on square plans. But elongated plans get more daylight and better cross ventilation. And they may be better at forming streets or courtyards. We work a lot with thinner plans. They are small luxuries, and we might be better off scrutinizing other forms of inefficiencies that don’t offer off setting improvements in the quality of habitation.

Whitfield recommended plans a single room deep if possible, which means he gave more weight to the benefits of better light and ventilation, and relatively less to the increased costs of a thin house. The Smart House is two rooms deep, which probably means that envelope efficiency was given slightly greater weight than cross ventilation. This is one of many examples of how people arrive at different conclusions about how to build on Nauru. But everyone makes these decisions in good faith.

b) Materials

It was a little surprising to see in the 2011 Census how common wood and even metal houses were. Whitfield cites surveys that reflect a Nauruan preference for masonry. The Steering Committee may have a preference for a particular wall material or may want to encourage a mix going forward. Preliminary feedback from the housing committee suggests a preference for concrete block walls.

■ Wall openings are the most expensive part of the building envelope, which is the most expensive assembly in a building. Whitfield recommended a percentage of openings of 50-80% because he placed a lot of weight on cross ventilation. The Smart House, on the upper left, has a much smaller percentage of openings because they placed relatively more weight on costs. Keeping costs down increases the accessibility of home ownership. The percentage of openings will vary from one exposure to the next.

■ It is almost impossible to hit the high end of Whitfield’s recommended range. 80% would be like an enclosed porch, and maybe this can be an additive option. The percentage of opening in the Smart House could be higher because the plan is two rooms wider and less conducive to cross ventilation that the single room plans Whitfield liked.

■ It mig ht be low for reasons of security but when we have real sites and configurations, secure exposures in courtyards might have better ventilation without compromising security. In the next phase we will probably start with about 30% openings and go a little either side of that, depending on the sun exposure and the street and block setting.

Figure 5

Wood and concrete block should both perform well against winds loads provided there is sheathing on wood frame walls, but plywood is expensive and is not used on roofs. Sourcing, labor skills, transportation costs, and climate will be bigger considerations in deciding between wood and block. If you can set up a block plant and a concrete batching plant on island it will eliminate sea transport costs. Reinforcing steel would still be shipped. Wood is lighter but would be shipped in. According to the housing committee, grading of lumber is unreliable.

Wood can be used in most climates, but wood species vary in rot resistance. New growth generally underperforms old growth woods. Old growth woods are increasingly rare. Wood is renewable and block and concrete and cement have high embodied energy. But Whitfield is clear on the danger posed by termites- both flying termites and nests in the ground.

Either material should have a vapor barrier on the outside. With block this is generally obtained with paint vapor barriers. Stucco over block is more forgiving of the masonry skills and it covers transitions between block and concrete It looks like it is uncommon on Nauru but the housing committee says it is the customary. It doesn’t appear to be used on the Smart House. The vapor barrier for wood framing is straightforward and light weight. There is cost in the siding over wood walls. The siding is painted and provides additional moisture barriers. Both stucco and siding require ongoing maintenance.

Wood walls are more readily insulated to higher R values, but the housing committee says that insulation is unusual. Block walls are generally insulated by furring the inside of the walls and is thinner with lower R values but again, the housing committee says that the interiors of block walls just have a stucco coat applied directly to the block

When all factors are considered, block walls appear to be the more likely choice.

c) Wall Openings

If construction costs lie inordinately in the building envelope, envelope costs lie inordinately in openings in the envelope. Whitfield recommended 50 to 80 percent opening in the walls for cross ventilation. This seems very high. A low percentage of openings would reduce costs considerably and reduce heat gain. But the cross ventilation and natural light provided by a high percentage of openings is very desirable.

The jalousie windows used on the Smart House, and apparently common on the island, are distinct and attractive. We would be interested to know more about the performance of the openers in a salt environment, and about their water tightness. Also it would be important to have a supplier with the ability to service and repair any windows you use. For a given area of glass, windows are generally much less expensive than doors. The housing committee says that shutters are a common alternative to windows.

SECTION 1.C

■ This sheet shows the range of roof forms considered at greater length in the text. There are three basic types with different gable end eave conditions. Each roof form has construction assembly implications, which will also be developed at a larger scale. Hip roofs are easier to frame with trusses but possible to stick frame. They have the advantage of having continuous horizontal eaves and horizontal tie beams at the tops of the walls. Nauru has some examples of hips transitioning into gables. This would accommodate a porch, as an example, as a lower space and the main rooms under the higher open gable; the exposed gable providing ventilation.

■ The three middle diagrams show gables, which seem to be the most common roof form on the island. The variants are distinguished by that material of the gable end wall the relationship of the gable wall to the roof. Parapeted gables don’t seem to be used on the island. Raking eaves, which are hard to build, typically protect the upper wall from driven rain. There is an entire sheet dedicated to gable end eave construction.

■ Shed roofs, single pitches, are common and typically extend past both the end walls and the high side walls, like on the Smart House. Care has to be taken to keep water on the high side soffit from running back to the walls.

Figure 6

The housing committee says that insect screens are rare but that mosquitos and other insects are common. In considering window types, consideration needs to be given to allowable percentage of opening. Jalousies can open 100%. Whitfield cited complaints about the siding windows of the 1990’s kit houses for not being able to open more than 50%.

Windows and doors in wood walls are a little more expensive to flash and waterproof. Windows and doors in masonry walls are most prone to leaks where the frame meets the rough framing, and less likely where the frame meets the sash.

d) Conclusion

The Smart House building sections show both block and wood framed walls, just as they show both wood and concrete floor systems. We assumed that block would have an edge over wood but that will vary with the ability to produce block and concrete on the island, on transportation costs, the skills of the trades, the premium placed on relatively clean, renewable resources, the availability of durable faming species, and the ravages of the climate and environment.

The use of wood is appealing because it is a renewable resource, but fast growth woods are less rot resistant. When you add the cost of siding and flashing any price advantages may disappear. Whitfield cites surveys which say that the majority of Nauruans prefer block over wood. This may derive from the perception of greater durability. Life cycle costs will tilt cost advantages to block, and better maintain the value of initial investments.

Based on what we have heard from the housing committee, the energy performance of walls and windows is rarely considered. Wood isn’t reliably graded. Plywood is prohibitively expensive. If block is made on island and is preferred by Nauruan homeowners, the arguments for wood aren’t very strong.

3. Roofs a) Roof Forms

Historical and current examples of Nauruan houses show gable roofs and shed roofs, and flat roofs, and hip roofs and hips going into gables. The Smart House has a lower shed leaning against an upper shed sloping in the opposite direction. This variety of basic roof forms is evidence that, even with the benefit of time, there is no right way to approach a basic building assembly.

■ Gable roofs, which are common on Nauru, have raking eaves on the gable ends. This is usually a complicated assembly and can be constructed in several ways. Diagram A shows a masonry parapet extending beyond the roof. The top of the wall would be flashed. There would be flashing where the roof meets the raking gable wall. This is not a common assembly on Nauru for two reasons. Masonry gable ends are not common, and the upper walls is not afforded shade or protection.

■ Diagrams A and B both show plywood roof sheathing, which is prohibitively expensive on Nauru. The plywood extends to a rafter bolted to the wall. The sheathing is edge nailed to this rafter providing continuity between the wall and roof assemblies.

■ Diagram B shows a masonry gable end, which eliminates wood there, but it requires forming a concrete rake beam at an angle. The eaves project to protect the upper wall. The rafters extend to the roof sheathing. A short ladder is formed over the rake beam, supporting the cantilevered eave.

■ Diagram C reflects framing more common to Nauru and reflected on the Smart House. The Smart House has shallower rafters and deeper purlins, and the purlins form the eaves. There is a deep raking fascia that is essentially hung from the extended purlins. There is no plywood roof sheathing. The gable end wall is framed with wood.

■ All gable roofs have raking eaves. Hip roofs do not. Diagram D shows a continuous horizontal eave that can be open or closed. It is shown closed here to protect the roof truss extensions. Hip roofs can be stick framed but are more commonly framed by trusses, and the lack of trusses on the island may make gables more common than hips.

Figure 7

■ The top row of diagrams show roof trusses, and diagrams D through H show different forms of framing with dimensional lumber. Diagrams vary in how the eaves are framed and how the outward thrust of the rafter is counteracted. Trusses all have bottom chords at the ceilings that counter thrust. Trusses require engineering and a modest plant and may not be an option on the island.

■ Diagram A shows the eaves formed by an extension of the top chords of the truss. The soffit framing member would be added in the field. These eaves are enclosed and protected from the elements. Diagram B also forms the eaves with an extension of the top chord, but the eaves are open and subject to the ravages of the environment. Diagram C address this by scabbing a separate rafter tail onto the trusses so that if an eave assembly need to be repaired, the structural members of the roof are separate and protected inside the wall.

■ Diagram D has open eaves formed by rafter tails scabbed onto the rafters. It has a collar ties at the ceiling. The width of the span would be limited by the length of this collar tie. The flat ceiling hides the scabbing of the rafter tails. The ridge is nonstructural because of the collar ties. Diagram E has a higher collar tie and the roof framing is open to the rooms below in order to let warm air rise. The ridge is non-structural. When framing is visible from below, it requires better workmanship.

■ Diagram F has no collar tie because the ridge is a structural ridge which renders the rafters a simple span with no outward thrust. Structural ridges have to post down at intervals and so this affects the flexibility of the plan.

■ Diagrams G and H show shed roofs which are common on Nauru and used on the Smart House. Shed roofs work best when their high end leans against a taller volume like in diagram G, as they do in the front room of the Smart House. When the upper end is open as it is on H, water is prone to flowing down the underside of the eaves back to the wall. The eaves are more prone to rot and the walls to leaking. The Smart House addresses this with a small return pitch.

There are some basic considerations for making a decision about the form of the roof. First, virtually all roofs slope because water must be diverted. Even what we describe as flat roofs slope behind a parapet wall and are either drained internally or through the parapet.

Shed roofs usually lean against a taller volume. If they don’t, they are subject to water intrusion on their high side. The Smart Houses addresses this with a short return roof on the upper shed that forms a ridge. Gable roofs, with two equal pitches are the most common roof form on the island but the construction challenge is in building the triangle above the end walls. Hip roofs are harder to stick frame and easier to build with trusses, which may not be an option on the island, but their eaves are easier to construct.

Because it is harder to build block walls on an angle (it requires a sloping concrete beam just under the raking eaves), block houses with gable roofs often frame this triangle in wood. Hip roofs have slightly more complicated framing than gables, but they have the same height walls all the way around the house and avoid this triangle. Occasionally there are hip roofs that lean, like sheds, against the end of a gable.

While pitches on gable roofs vary, lower pitches seem more common on current Nauru house types. Whitfield acknowledged the need for relatively low eaves but recommended higher pitches of at least thirty degrees, for cooling the interior. Standing seam metal roofs work at very low pitches.

Hip roofs perform better in very high winds because they are better braced on all four directions. Low pitch hips perform the best in high winds. Historically, this has not dissuaded Nauruans from using the more common gable roof form on modern era houses.

Water can be collected from any of these roof forms. Any roof form can be framed with trusses or stick framed with simple dimensional lumber. Trusses, which are made from very small stick members, are typically made in a modest plant. Trusses are engineered and the small members are held together with gang nails. Trusses can span greater lengths and their bottom chords act against the forces that spread a roof outward at the top of the walls and provide framing for a ceiling.

Stick framed roofs have to counteract the outward thrust of the roof by other means. There can be a structural ridge against which the rafters lean. This eliminates outward thrust, but ridges have to post at intervals where trusses do not. Posting a ridge affects the flexibility of the plan. The shed roofs of the Smart House have short spans supported at each shed by a structural wall running down the middle of the plan. If there is not a structural ridge, collar ties can counter the roof’s outward thrust.

In the U.S. even expensive houses can be built either with trusses of stick framed rafters. There is no common agreement about the right way to frame a roof. It still varies greatly by region. We build in a part of the country where carpentry skills are more limited but there is a thriving truss industry. If you stick frame in Nauru, you just need plans that allow for shorter spans, like those of the Smart House.

b) Eaves

Eaves probably pose the most complicated considerations and if window openings are the most expensive sub-assembly of a wall, eaves are the most expensive sub-assembly of the roofs.

First of all, consider the differences between the framing inside the walls and the framing outside the walls that form the eaves. You can form the eaves with an extension of the roof framing or you can attach a separate framing system that forms the eaves. Forming the eaves with an extension of the roof framing - especially if it is stick framing - is less expensive.

The argument against it is that if the eave starts to deteriorate owing to its exposure it is rotting a structural member too, that is more difficult to replace. Separate external framing systems can be scabbed onto the structural roof framing and replaced separately but attached rafter tails are more expensive.

Second consider the difference between an eave over a wall with a flat top and the eaves along the raking wall at the end of a gable roof. Most Nauruan houses with gable roof, extend the roof over the end wall to protect it from rain. This is appropriate but these raking eaves are more complicated to build. Typically they are built like ladders, half over the inside of the building and half cantilevered beyond the wall. The Smart House appears to build the raking eaves with extensions of their purlins.

There is a variant for block houses where the gable end is built of masonry, and running above it- a parapeted gable. This eliminates the cost of the raking eave but requires flashing where the roof framing meets this wall, and it does not afford shade of protection from rain. If this eave type is to be considered, there has to be a concrete rake beam formed at the top of the wall.

c) Eaves, Gutters, and Water Collection

A hip roof would have a gutter on all four sides of a house. A gable roof has gutters on two side. A shed is like half a gable and collects water on one side. Eaves help throw the roof runoff clear of the upper walls but they need to be detailed to keep water from running back along the underside of the assembly. This is done simply with a drip edge.

The high side of a shed roof, by contrast, is more prone to water running back to the upper wall, which is why the Smart House has a short return roof to prevent this. Alternatively, this is sometimes done with a parapet wall that goes above the roof. Generally sheds make more sense make more sense when they lean against a taller wall, like the lower shed roofs of the Smart House.

Eave assemblies need to be detailed to carry gutters. Gutters full of water tend to overturn and so an eave provides a supported vertical surface, a fascia, supported by rafters, from which gutters hang. The Smart House has a deep fascia than accommodates the minimal fall of the gutter required for the gravity flow of water

Gutters, downspouts and cisterns are elective costs, but the 2011 Republic of Nauru Census shows how common gutters are even now. The collection of rainwater will be an important means of decreasing dependence on desalinized water and so the upfront costs of gutters and downspouts will be recovered over a relatively short period of time.

d) Roof Ventilation

David Whitfield noted the use of ridge vents in some Nauruan houses but also noted complaints about wind driven rain intruding. He expressed the hope that improved vent systems would allow for the release of warm air and the protection from rain and insects. The Smart House has a ridge vent but no plywood deck.

We build in a saline environment similar to Nauru’s and there had been a protracted debate on advisability of venting the eaves, which can be more protected than the ridge. But the recent consensus is that vented eaves allow corrosive salt air into the attics that rust gang nails and metal tie downs.

e) Roof Insulation

Roof insulation, like wall insulation, is uncommon on Nauru.

f) Roof Sheathing

Typically a plywood substrate lends resistance to lateral wind loads and it provides a surface for a moisture barrier. The Smart House does not use plywood roof sheathing and it appears most Nauruan houses do not use a plywood deck. The housing committee says that plywood is rare because it is prohibitively expensive.

The 2011 Census surveys roof material on existing housing and metal roofs and asbestos roofs predominate. Asbestos is being removed. Concrete tiles are too heavy to ship. Clay tiles are brittle. Fiberglass shingles require a substrate. Metal roofs, whose panels work well with the typical rafter and purlin roof framing, come in a range of prices and materials. The most expensive metal roofs are very expensive but the saline environment will make less expensive galvanized steel options subject to more frequent replacement.

In a saline environment ferrous based materials like galvanized steel roofs should be avoided if possible. Aluminum roofs are available, but they are more expensive. Whitfield recommended them even 27 years ago when they were less common. In either material, simple lapped and screwed panels are less expensive than interlocking raised seam panels, but standing seams

work on very low pitches. Metal roofing, according to the housing committee is shipped in coils and formed on the island.

4. Prefabricated Housing Versus Site Built Housing

Whitfield and Carstairs have a good extended treatment of the prefabricated houses that appeared in 1987/8. The even handedness of the discussion is something that distinguishes their entire report.

The housing was 111 to 121 square meters. There isn’t a reference to bedroom count like there is in the discussion of the earlier types 1 through 7. There were apparently shallow porches of 2 meters or less. This is interesting because the 2011 Census, for as thin as it slices housing issues, does not document porches.

The advantages cited for the prefabricated housing are the predictable ones of speed of erection and economy. The litany of offsetting problems is more fine grained. They are described as low and hot and the frames prone to rusting. They cited the use of foam sandwich panels. The report was written only a few years after the introduction of these units, but they express skepticism over the performance of the foam panels over time.

Whitfield and Carstairs are good on even the financial disadvantages of prefabrication-the cost of off island labor, the costs of shipping everything, even the lightweight frames; the cost of replacement parts and the labor to replace them.

The discussion of the Welcome House kits is instructive. Whitfield cites a cost per house of $90,000 or $740/square meter and says they were sold at a subsidized cost of $60,000. These numbers would have been from the early 1990’s. We don’t know the conversion factor into current dollars.

The Smart House program has an estimated cost of $3,000,000 for 20 houses or $150,000 per house. We don’t know if the basis of the Welcome House and Smart House is the same. But after accounting for inflation, it doesn’t appear that full upfront costs for the Welcome Houses reflected costs savings from prefabrication. The Island was wealthier in the 1990’s and we don’t know if subsidies will be in place for the Smart Houses.

Even before considering the benefits of island labor against off island labor, it doesn’t appear that the prefabricated kits of the 1980’s and 1990’s offered Nauru great advantages. In 2021, everyone agrees that the on island construction of Nauruans houses and the development of construction skills will be a key part of the island’s economy.

5. Overall Conclusions

The focus of this precedent study has been to understand how houses are built in Nauru. The next section will focus on how to program the houses.

While there is not complete agreement on how to build in Nauru the range of options is narrowed by circumstance and necessity. As we continue to work with the Steering Committee and the Housing Committee, we could focus a little more on how building might be different for the Higher Ground initiative.

At this point we don’t know how land for houses will be acquired or how mechanisms will be established for the transfer of ownership. Kate Fairlie on the Metrocology team will be working with the Steering Committee on these issues. We won’t know until the third phase of work what lot sizes are likely to be, or how security and privacy will be best served, but we will know soon and those concerns will be built into the first two phases of work.

We don’t know how houses will be financed. Housing programs in the past were heavily subsidized at a point when the island had greater wealth than it does now. We don’t know yet what this means, either. We don’t know if there will be multiple design options. We understand the Smart Houses would be built by multiple contractors.

The HGI is described in terms of sustainability. We don’t know exactly what this means in terms of the detailed construction questions addressed in this precedent study. In a narrow sense we could think of the issue in terms of energy savings, but all indications are that the climate is conducive to a lack of heating and air conditioning and that energy loss across the wall or roof or floor is not a big consideration.

Affordability seems to be much more important. Since it is more common to establish an affordable house size before thinking about room count and room size, it seems important to provide a broad range of house sizes and expansion options, so that home ownership might be maximized, regardless of income or means of financing.

The best way to think about sustainability probably has less to do with energy than about durability. Since World War II there have been a number of wood house types developed for the island but most everything argues against wood for the structures of HGI houses. There have been kit houses built off site and assembled on Nauru that are relatively less expensive up front but expensive to maintain and service, and everyone wants to use Nauruan trades to build these houses.

There is a preference for concrete slabs and concrete walls and natural ventilation, but the more durable methods of building cost more up front. If there are competing initiatives for HGI housing, there will be disincentives to serve durability through higher up-front costs. But

Nauruan homeowners will be best served by houses that last as long as possible and that are assets decades from now.

The policies that will serve Nauruan homeowners best will give competing parties incentives to all build to similar high standards of construction integrity. Financing mechanisms will have to ensure this because market mechanism alone won’t. As ever with housing, the challenge is to find the right balance between durability and affordability.

D. Questions for the Housing Committee

September 14, 2021

Dear Members of the Housing Committee,

I have included some questions we might consider on our call later this week. Any additional information will help but no single question is critical. We are just trying to understand what is common knowledge and common experience in Nauru. And if there is no strong consensus on some issues of building, it is helpful to know that, too.

There are lots of ways to build. The considerations and tradeoffs are often very subtle, and we always assume that any differences of opinion about exactly how to build, are honest differences between people trying to make the best possible decisions for people on the island.

The thinking behind the Smart House is important but it is not the only thing we might talk about. We know there have been a number of housing programs since World War II, and we would also like to know what you have learned from seeing that housing over a long period of time, since the durability of materials and construction assemblies will be so important to the success of the HGI. Also, we all want to make a case for sourcing as many skills from the island as possible, but we need a good appraisal of them. We need to understand the challenges of off island sourcing and shipping costs, and we need to know which trades are prepared for this first phase of building and which ones require a lot of training.

As our own country looks toward a major infrastructure effort, there is a shortage of labor skills in the construction trades that may impede that effort. When we work in other labor markets, like the Bahamas, we try to tailor design to the skills of the trades

I have previously asked about some of the housing types from World War II through the 1990’s and have received some information already. Here are some other questions:

■ This is a broad question, but what has been learned from the aging of the post war housing?

■ Older housing was on raised piling foundations. Later models were often slabs on grade. What considerations should go into deciding between these two basic foundations?

■ Is one foundation type better for termites? Do you have species of wood for floor framing that will last a long time in a ventilated crawl space?

■ Do you ever build raised slabs on compacted fill and could that be a good third alternate for foundations?

■ I have heard of preference surveys that suggest that concrete and block houses are preferred over wood but the 2011 Census says there are still lots of wood houses. This may be a carry-over from older house types. Do you think the preference is still for block over wood walls or should both be options?

■ A lot of people seem to assume that one advantage of block construction is that block can be made on the island. Do you agree with that? If there is not currently a block plant can one be built for a small first phase building program?

■ Block construction, of course, requires concrete and people cite the presence of aggregate on the island. Do you agree that the aggregate available is suitable for concrete made on the island?

■ Everything else required for steel reinforced concrete- the cement, the steel, maybe the sand will have to be shipped in so we assume block and concrete will require a lot of shipping expenses. Do any of these imported components pose a problem of cost or timing? Do you have a rough carpentry trade that is good at concrete formwork?

■ The smart house has jalousie windows. Is that the preferred window type for the island? It appears to be a common type.

■ What types of insulation are most common on the island?

■ With regards to roofing, almost every photograph, and the Smart House drawings, suggest that you do not use plywood roof decks under metal roof. Has it ever been considered for its strength or for helping to waterproof housing?

■ Have you ever manufactured roof trusses on the island?

■ Do you ever use fiberglass roofing shingles?

■ Is 3 meters your preferred ceiling height?

■ Did you price the Smart House by trade? Were any of the individual trades or assemblies found to be extraordinarily high - as in, are there assemblies that should be further assessed for costs?

■ The Smart House is very consistent with the programming studies in the 2011 Census, and it is very close to the average size of houses in the Welcome house types from thirty years ago. What did you use to size rooms and bedroom counts?

■ Whitfield’s 1994 report, which we find very credible, cites a survey that says the vast majority of respondents would prefer to live in a house with just a nuclear family and not an extended family. Do you have information on this as it will be very important in the programming phase?

We will consider questions about building to be open ended through the entire effort this year, so please feel free to contact us informally, or about single issues between calls. Please feel free to revisit or update things we discuss early in the process.

Thank you in advance for making yourselves available to help us understand how you build. We look forward to working with you and are grateful for your help.

Kindest Regards,

Scott Merrill

Meeting Notes From Call with Smart House Team

Call Date – September 16, 2021 (USA) 17 (Nauru)

On the Call:

Annalina Solomon, Director of Housing, CIE

Tim Denauga, Housing Consultant

Mark Menke, Local Builder Consultant

Waylen Capelle, Local Consultant

Alkali Thoma, Local Consultant

Ditrone Tom, Private Construction

Jora Dame, Technical Officer

Itema Moses, Project Officer

Creedence Halstead

Scott Merrill

David Colgan

T he following was discussed:

■ There were no other studies or documents besides the 2011 Census, Smart House and the Whitfield Report that the team assembled brought to our attention to shed light on Nauru precedents. If things come to light in the next few months we will incorporate any relevant examples.

■ Slab on grade foundations are common. Raised slabs on compacted fill are less common, but they are not unheard of.

■ There is currently no termite treatment available for sites or for wood. Termites are a problem in Nauru, and the team has seen wood houses ruined by termite infestations.

■ Wood walls are not a preferred building method. Grading of lumber is unreliable.

■ Concrete block is fabricated in Nauru using aggregate and sand from the NRC. Reinforced concrete block walls with a poured tie beam at the top of the wall is typical. Lime is not typically used as a component of concrete or mortar.

■ Concrete block walls are typically plastered inside and out.

■ Typical windows are jalousie, but many people use shutters in openings. Insects (mosquitos) are an issue. Screens are not in common use.

■ Insulation is not commonly used. When used batt and some rigid panels are used.

■ Plywood is not available and should not be considered an option for HGI.

■ Roof Framing is typically rafter and purlins with diagonal bracing let into the rafters

■ Metal roofing is sometimes aluminum and sometimes steel core galvanized. Material is brought in coils to Nauru and formed into panels by Eigigu Holdings.

■ Standard ceiling heights are 2.7M – 3.00m

■ Typical Room sizes were reported as 3.6m square

■ Pricing for the Smart House foundation indicated high labor costs for the foundation, owing to the form work for piers and raised slabs

■ In the context of questions about programming the Smart House, there was a discussion about housing sizes. Generally, an overall size is often determined based on affordability and then the number and sizes of rooms is backed into. There is a tradition of houses being expanded as need for space and resources converge.

■ The preference is for people to live as nuclear families but there is a tradition of houses being expanded to accommodate multi-generational families.

■ We expressed concern about differential settlement of the mediated mining sites. It was reported that differential settlement has not been an issue. But it is unclear how much construction has been built on remediated substrate to have a big enough sample or enough time to judge this.

(Note: we are trying to get plans for the immigration building, which is the only other structure that may have been built on remediated sites)

E. Appendix: 2011 Republic of Nauru Census Graphs

■ The 2011 Census is surprisingly helpful for any housing initiative. You can see that the market is overwhelmingly for homeownership and not rentals, and for single family residences and not multi-family. High rates of ownership are at least partly attributable to policies that subsidized the cost of houses like the Welcome Homes from the late 1980’s. This was a policy that encouraged home ownership.

■ Multi-family units and rentals would likely move in concert with one another. Whitfield cites a strong Nauru tradition of single family houses and a wish to live with nuclear families rather than extended families. We are interested in knowing if these preferences still hold true. In the programming and master planning phases, we may look at some forms of common walls, like rowhouses or duplexes, that could be consistent with home ownership, but afford some economies in construction costs.

■ Any new housing program will affect the ratio of home ownership to rentals. To the degree that costs are kept down home ownership will be bolstered. Likely the subsidies possible 30 years ago will be harder to offer now. Financing and down payments will also affect affordability and ownership rates.

■ Durable construction costs more up front, but has lower maintenance costs and is worth more as an asset after twenty of thirty years. There are natural disincentives to incurring these upfront costs that provide greater durability- competitive disadvantages and a wish to increase home ownership, for example. Ideally there would be offsetting incentives to encourage better construction for all houses.

Figure 9: Proportion of households by district and housing tenure (%)

Figure 10: Proportion of households by district and type of living quarters (%)

■ Housing is relatively old, and this is likely owing to the periods in which government housing was common. We understand that these initiatives tapered off in the early 1990’s, but that a lot of housing programs dated from after World War II. We are interested in knowing more about how these different housing programs have performed over time. Whitfield cites considerable criticism about the Welcome Homes from the late 1980’s. The economist, Bob Carstairs, who co-authored Whitfield’s 1994 report also said that the Welcome Houses were a good test of the relative economies of prefabricated housing. They were apparently heavily subsidized. The good thing about the age of the housing, which is ten years older now, is that the HGI housing would be replacing depreciated housing.

Figure 11: Proportion of households by district and period when building (dwelling) constructed (%)

■ This information will be more helpful in the next programming phase. Whitfield goes into some detail about the size of the houses built after World War II, and this information put the Smart House in good perspective. The four bedroom version of the Smart House is right in the middle of the range of the sizes of the Welcome Houses, which ranged from 111-121 square meters. Post war housing varied greatly from about 67 square meters to 160 square meters. The larger houses had as many as four or five bedrooms. Since the rest of the program varies within a narrow range, it will be the bedrooms that account for most differences. And it sounds as though the Smart House will accommodate 4 bedrooms in less area than the post war housing. There was no information on bedroom count for the comparably sized Welcome Homes.

Figure 12: Proportion of households by district and number of rooms (%)

Figure 13: Proportion of households by district and number of bedrooms (%)

■ Approximately half the houses on Nauru have concrete block walls and the other half is split between wood and metal. Whitfield seems to think there was a preference for block in the 1990’s. Wall materials and their prevalence are probably a function of the housing programs that stopped about thirty years ago. Whitfield suggests that the Welcome Houses were metal frame but that likely accounts for only a small percentage of the metal frames. We address the advantages of wood and block but not metal.

■ We would be interested in knowing the advantages that made metal relatively common on Nauru. Whitfield and Carstairs seemed skeptical of the housing that used metal, but that was as much for the sandwich wall panels as anything. We would also be interested in understanding what systems have been most common and most successful since Whitfield’s report. The Smart House uses both framed walls and block walls.

■ Asbestos and metal roofs predominated in 2011, so it looks as though metal roofs will be the most common roof material on new houses. Metal roof have lingering reputation for economy but roofs divide into aluminum and ferrous, and into lapped or standing seam. Galvanized roofs with ferrous cores are less expensive but will perform badly in salt environments. Raised seams roofs with hidden fasteners are more expensive than crimped and lapped roof with exposed screw heads. But the screw heads produce a nice pattern when installed correctly and a lapped aluminum roof is probably a good hedge on cost and durability. Screws and their seatings need to be carefully specified. Substrates are addressed in the text.

Figure 14: Proportion of households by district and main type of material used for the outer walls of dwellings (%)

Figure 15: Proportion of households by district and material used for the roof of dwellings (%)

Historic Housing Photographs

■ After World War II there was a long series of housing types built on Nauru. Whitfield refers to types 1 through 19 and he describes the smallest type at about 67 square meters, and the largest around 163 square meters.

■ This single family house, dated from 1951, and the multi-family housing, has assemblies common to tropical housing - sun shading, cross ventilation, ventilated crawl spaces, and ridge venting. Some of these assemblies add substantial cost to the buildings and so great weight was obviously given to the climate, and there was maybe less concern with absolutely minimizing construction costs, or to termites or rot under the houses.

■ It would be helpful to know more about Nauru’s experiences with this housing. The Smart House, for example, like these models, spends a little extra on a raised foundation that helps cool the house, but also spends less on wall openings for ventilation. Most every decision about your building program will revolve around cost and climate and the relative weight given to addressing each.

SECTION 2.0 PROGRAMMING

SECTION 2.0

Preface: Feedback on the Housing Precedent Binder

The housing precedent binder of October 15, 2021 was presented to the Steering Committee and comments and feedback were solicited during the scoping workshop, on November 12, 2021. The introduction of the report to the Committee can be found at the beginning of the precedent binder as an amendment of that document. The following notes summarize the discussion section that followed the introduction of the report:

■ There were concerns expressed that the report focused too much on the way housing is currently built on the island and not on how it might be different.

■ We clarified the purpose of the report and how it would contribute to work in subsequent phases.

■ Several references to more innovative projects can up in discussions earlier in the week of the scoping workshop and we pressed for information on these projects.

■ Upon clarification, the project referred to was Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. There were further questions about specific aspects of the project that were appealing, and the conclusion was that Masdar City was an expensive model.

■ We used this opportunity to re-assert that the questions of how money was spent, to what effect and to whose benefit, were central to the housing precedent study, and that by this measure economical precedents were important to the future of Nauru housing and that housing was inherently a little conservative.

■ Whereas the report has recommended building with concrete and block and with local labor, some of the members of the steering committee talked about the economy of some kits from Singapore recently purchased from a company in Singapore.

■ This housing post-dated any models we had mentioned in the precedent study, and so we asked for more information on the company and how the housing had held up.

■ We also mentioned the governments express wish to use the housing program to underwrite a block manufacturing plant, a concrete batch plant, and the masonry trades.

■ The Whitfield study of 1994 had looked at manufactured housing and concluded that there was no clear financial advantage to offshore prefabricated housing, but the Singapore housing, purchased seven to eight years ago cost a fraction of what site built housing is likely to cost, had a clear initial cost advantage.

■ Discussion of this more recent housing by members of the committee turned up some concerns about its durability and the capacity to add on to it.

■ The committee clarified that all housing is subsidized and that housing subsidies go to families with children. This is significant because the 2011 Census identified a large population of single Nauruan adults between the ages of 15 and 35. This single adult population might ordinarily be candidates for smaller, less expensive housing that could reduce the pressure on housing with large families. But with this policy the demand for small one-bedroom units, like those still found around the port for foreign workers, will remain weak.

■ One of the more controversial recommendations of the housing report was to focus less on energy loss across walls and more on lengthening the life span of housing and on the reduction of embodied energy attendant with housing that needed to be replaced at short intervals.

■ The recommendation to focus less on energy loss was based on information from the housing committee that walls did not have insulation, that interior finishes were plastered, and that air-conditioning was very rare. However, the steering committee did talk about sheet rock finishes, which require air conditioning and so in a follow up to the workshop session we pressed the issue of the prevalence of air conditioning.

■ Anecdotal information suggested that wall units are used on the island but that the cost of the electricity to run them is a luxury. If air-conditioning becomes more affordable and prevalent, there is a possibility - remote in our judgement - that energy loss across walls might become slightly more important relative to the embodied energy of new construction.

Introduction

The precedent study looked at the assemblies and building materials of a typical building, with an emphasis on balancing costs and building integrity. This next phase of work looks at the considerations that impact programming the housing and individual house types (Section 2.0); at aggregated studies without specific sites (Section 3.0); at specific sites in the Section 230 master plan (Section 4.0); and at select island perimeter sites (Section 5.0).

Each phase builds on the previous phase. The building types are based on studies of the assemblies of a building. The aggregated studies are based on the housing types. The master plan studies are based on the aggregated studies overlaid with the contingencies of specific site.

SECTION 2.A

B. Programming

1. Three Ways to Think About Programming

(The following was presented to the Steering Committee on a call on October 11)

We have submitted a draft report on construction assemblies, and the second phase of our work involves programming the housing. Programming in its most basic sense, just means what space needs a given size household might have.

There are several ways to approach the programming exercise. One is to understand what exists. Another might focus on what needs there may be that are not currently being met. A third might ask how other factors like savings, down payments, financing, subsidies, competition, lot size, availability of services and utilities, and the availability of land might affect housing.

If these other factors are important, it may make the first two approaches less important. Each approach is progressively more difficult.

a) What Exists

This is the easiest and most mechanical approach to programming. We have information from the 2011 RON census, and the 2013-14 Poverty Report which have a lot of helpful information about the sizes and make up of households. We have a rough idea of the sizes of housing models on the island since World War II. We have the Smart House alternates with 2 and 4 bedrooms. If the future of housing on Nauru is more of what exists, this approach needs to be given a lot of weight.

b) What Existing Needs Go Unmet

We can speculate on this, but we need a lot of help in answering this question. It’s hard to know if we are even asking the right questions. The census tells us, for example, that the existing housing stock skews heavily toward single family over multi-family, and to home ownership over renting.

We have heard there is a preference for living with immediate families rather than extended families but this is old information and we don’t know if it has standing anymore.

Although the census doesn’t tell us much about this, the history of housing prototypes since World War II tells us that ready-made housing mostly varies from 70 square meters on the low side, to 170 square meters on the high side.

Then the census gives us a breakdown of household size by percentage; averaging 6 people, but also with a high number of unmarried single people in the age range from 15 to 35, and a small percentage of households, but a significant number of people in households, of 10-15 people.

Does a range of 70-170 square meters correlate to the needs of the household sizes described in the census? If not, how is the existing housing inadequate?

Based on the number of single adults, we see a possible need for housing smaller than 70 square meters. Given the choice, maybe this significant group would live in very small houses for a time. Maybe, given the choice, they would still live in extended households. Regardless, the answer would be important to programming the housing.

We’d like to know if households of 10-15 people are extended families or unrelated to one another, or a combination. If they are extended families, are these large households the preferred living arrangements of just necessary for affordability? If it is the preferred arrangement, then maybe 170 square meters isn’t the upper limit of the needs.

c) What Other Factors Affect or Will Affect the Range of Housing

In 1994, David Whitfield made two observations that he didn’t explicitly connect. He said that housing prototypes have been subsidized in the past, and he said that Nauruan housing is larger, on a per person basis, than housing on other Pacific Islands.

What if these two observations are related – that is, what if subsidies lead to modest overbuilding? It may mean that policy will affect housing in ways that are relatively easy to predict. Just as likely, policy will have unforeseen impacts, too.

In the first phase of the housing study, we suggested that Nauruan homeowners would be well served by building durable homes, but that there would be incentives to reduce front loaded costs which might, in turn, undermine durability and leave Nauruans with a depreciating asset. Does it make sense to create counterincentives for people to spend more money in the beginning so that their houses are of value to their descendants in a generation?

Nauru doesn’t have the wealth it had when Whitfield referred to housing subsidies. If subsidies don’t exist, how will that affect the programming of the housing? The housing committee has told us that homeowners don’t add up a list of rooms they need, then back into the overall size of a house. They work the other way- calculating the overall size they can afford and then dividing the house up into rooms. How does this affect programming, and how much does an analysis of existing housing help us program housing in the future?

Can an appreciable number of people save money for housing? What are down payments on loans and how does the size of the down payment affect programming? Would artificially lowdown payments have the same effect as subsidies – that is, would they result in larger average houses?

Is there, or will there be, a real estate market that allows homeowners to move with relatively ease? Does the small size of the island’s population create impediments to buying and selling homes? If there is a lot of friction in any potential housing market, how might this affect programming housing?

Does it require the ability to expand a house? Does it suggest rental outbuildings? Does it discourage small starter houses, or make them more important? Does it increase the need for family compounds?

Will there be a government effort like the Smart House that dominates the market, or will there be competition? Would a single housing initiative be the best way to benefit from scale economies? Could it address, with a limited number of models, the range of needs reflected in the census?

Would competition be the quickest way to root out problems? Would smaller builders have lower overhead that offsets their inability to achieve scale economies? Could minimum standards be maintained with competition? Could durable construction be better encouraged with a single or with multiple initiatives?

Should there be more multifamily options, despite the fact that the census says renting is relatively rare? If there are no subsidies, or if a lack of savings is an impediment to ownership, do rental options make sense where they didn’t in the past?

Is there a mechanism for placing value on unimproved land based on the size and location of the lot? If there is, could smaller lots increase the affordability of land with houses?

Is there anything about programming that could increase security? Does security lie in dispersion of housing on larger lots, or in smaller secured yards? Would usable and private outdoor space make it easier to build some smaller houses?

What kinds of unforeseen opportunities will be presented by the HGI and the planning of topside – the roads, the blocks, the lots, the public spaces – that Metrocology will provide this winter?

Many of the questions in this third approach are unanswerable. Even this inability to answer these questions right now has implications for programming the housing. Likely Nauru will require flexibility and as many options as possible.

(Note, the following was not presented to the Steering Committee, but might be thought of as a fourth way of thinking about programming)

d) Addendum on Programming

In programming a house, you can stipulate the space needs and derive a cost for the house. Or you can stipulate the cost of the cost, based on estimated unit costs, and back into the list of rooms. In reality, you informally do both and see how close needs or desires match up with the desired budget. Another way to think of programming is the reconciliation of these two processes – either the budget gets relaxed a little, or the space requirements are relaxed a little.

Take the example of the Smart House. Although its sizes seem consistent with historical models, the programming was apparently not based on precedents. The budget for the 20 Smart Houses is listed as $3,000,000, so it appears that each house has been estimated at $150,000. It’s possible this was the starting point for the exercise, or it is possible the size of the model was starting point.

We do not know what costs this number includes - if it is hard costs or soft costs - or if this is a full or subsidized cost, or if the entire cost of construction is to be passed through to the homeowner. Since there are two models that vary in size and since we do not know the programmatic mix, it is impossible for us to determine an estimated square foot cost.

If better information is available on the likely range of unit construction costs, it would help a lot to know that. Then you could work backwards from a total budget. This method is more consistent with how the housing committee described the process of self-built housing.

If some of the assemblies are more expensive than they need to be, like the foundations of the smart house, then their elimination allows you to either build a slightly larger house, move the discretionary money to other assemblies, or reduce the cost of the house.

2. Notes on the Presentation by the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity

October 12, 2021, for a call on October 11.

The import of this report for housing lies mostly in the findings that even the most optimistic models for government debt affor d little prospect of housing subsidies like those prevalent when the island was wealthier. Subsidies can have the effect of causing people to overbuild. Whitfield suggested in 1994 that Nauruan housing was generally larger than housing on other Pacific Islands and subsidies are one possible explanation for this.

Conversely, without the prospect of subsidies, which currently go to families with children, it is likely that Nauruans should be looking for housing types smaller than the smallest prototypes in the past.

Also relevant to housing is the report’s conclusion that solar electricity and island grown food is critical to reducing government debt. Solar panels and food production would unavoidably compete with topside land dedicated to housing. This, in turn, suggests that reasonably compact settlements be an option for any topside housing.

Fadhel and the members of the Institute presented three scenarios for future expenditures, revenues, and budget balances. Only the third scenario offered the hope that the budget could be balanced.

RCP revenue is currently about 55% of total revenue. It has been modeled at both zero, in Scenario 1, and at 50% of current levels in Scenarios 2 and 3. This is offset in Scenarios 2 and 3 by reducing money in imported fuel for electricity generation and on imported food.

Scenario 1 assumed zero revenues from the RPC and a continuation of past trends for expenditures on imported fuels and food.

Scenario 2 assumed future RPC revenues of 50% of current revenues and modestly increased generation of solar energy and food production on the island. This decreased expenditures on fuel and imported food but did not eliminate budget deficits.

Scenario 3 still assumed future RPC revenues of 50% of current RPC revenues, further increased electricity generated from solar, and further increased island food production to a point where budget deficits were eliminated.

Two important things are unclear: 1) how much land is required to increase solar and food production in Scenario 3 (There is an attempt to work through this below) and 2) whether the savings realized by increased production of solar energy and food included the costs and investments related to those increases.

Even in Scenario 3, and even if the projected savings are nets savings after infrastructure investments for food and solar production, there is apparently no revenue for housing subsidies as there was several decades ago. As noted above this will impact programming.

The final slides of the presentation stress the need for education and training, and so if construction skills can be built up, the HGI would contribute to building those workforce skills. It is unclear whether there would be a revenue increase from the wages of construction jobs the program would create. SECTION

8. The following table summarises the characteristics of the survey in terms of the estimates for the total number of HH and population in Nauru. The table also shows the estimated number of “adult equivalent” population which is used as the basis for the poverty/hardship estimates.

table 1: Households, population size and adult equivalents by expenditure level HouseHold

table 3: Number and proportion of children per household by expenditure level cHildReN

c.2 HouseHold exPeNdituRe

14. Household total weekly expenditure averaged $665 AUD and the average total weekly expenditure per capita adult equivalent (p.c.a.e).was $125.38 AUD. For the lowest expenditure deciles (1st and 2nd deciles), the average weekly household expenditure was $384 AUD and $432 AUD ($43.25 and 67.39 pcaae), respectively, compared to $920AUD and $1053 AUD ($239.21 and 405.44 pcaae) per week for the highest expenditure deciles (9th and 10th deciles (Table 4).

table 4: weekly household and adult equivalent average total expenditure (Aud $ per week) by decile

3. What the Census, The Poverty Report, Existing Housing, and the Smart House Tell us About Programming

a) The Census

The 2011 Republic of Nauru Census draws a pretty clear picture of housing in Nauru as it exists –ownership versus rentals, single family as against multi-family, the distribution of household size, or the number of rooms and bedrooms, or the age of the housing, or car ownership.

It gets into detail about assemblies that were referenced in the precedents phase – the material of the walls, the types of windows, and the material of the roofs; even the size and the material of gutters, downspouts and cisterns, and the prevalence of types of kitchen appliances.

It is less helpful on the total square footage of houses, or the number of people per bedroom, or bathroom, or the size of bedrooms, or the relationships of those sharing a large household. Some of these shortcomings can be addressed by reference to historic housing types or to the Smart House.

b) The Poverty Report of 2012-2013

This reports average household size at 6.8 compared to the 6 cited in the census. This report breaks household size down by income decile. The average household is 11.1 in decile 1 and 3.1 in decile 10. (Table 1)

Children per household is 4.1 in decile 1 and 0.9 in decile 10. (Table 3).

16.8% of households were considered poor by the report’s measures. This included 24% of the population. Poverty among widows was 60%.

Table 22 cites 75% of households have concrete floors and 21% have wood framed floors. This breakdown is not in the census.

c) Other Sources

As noted, housing since World War II has ranged from 70 square meters to 170 square meters, but we have no plans of these houses and so have little information on the size of rooms. We have little or no information on self-built housing.

We know that the housing stock is aging and that some of it has not held up well. We know from historical photos that the assemblies of buildings change over time. In the precedents binder we noted that different ways of building usually reflect different ideas about how to assess the trade-offs of different assemblies. We assume some changes are based on experience and that still others are based on trimming costs.

For the sizes of rooms, for which so little information is available, we have relied inordinately on the Smart House and on some feedback from the housing committee. But we also got the impression that the Smart Housing programming was not the result of detailed surveying of needs than an informal averaging of what exists.

As mentioned previously, the housing committee said that programming is seldom an additive process of identifying space needs, but one in which the overall size is determined by affordability, and that the rooms are derived from that. At the same time, we do not know exactly how the cost of a given size house is determined, or if there are conventions for unit costs.

As noted earlier, we do not know if the existing housing reflects the range of existing needs, but it is likely that it doesn’t, and so we are left to guess about the needs that are unaddressed.

Most existing housing was built when Nauru was a wealthier nation, and the housing could be subsidized. It is likely that this encouraged overbuilding a little, just as low interest rates on home loans might cause people to overbuild.

As the housing is relatively old, existing housing would fail to capture any social changes, and it is difficult to tell if Nauruans would live the same way if afforded more choices in living arrangements. Would living with the immediate family be preferred as anecdotes have it?

Would younger singles move into smaller houses or rentals? Would the elderly move back in with mature children? Is there preference for thinner houses with more windows and better cross ventilation, or is cost the overwhelming determinant of window count and sizes? Could there be an inner yard that is walled and secured. Would porches be used and justify their costs? We have little information on any of this and don’t know if surveys could identify these preferences.

Finally, as mentioned above, we don’t know how policy might affect the programming of the housing. Likely subsidies – either direct subsidies or artificially low interest rates or down

payments – would be an incentive to overbuild. Is there a habit of saving for homes? Would a much smaller housing option make it easier to make down payments?

Can houses be bought and sold, or are they difficult to re-sell? If they are difficult to re-sell, how does this affect the sizes of homes? Is there a small-scale speculative market for houses?

Are they built only with a buyer in mind? We understand it has been a while since the last housing program. Has recent demand for housing created a private market for building that could be used to good advantage now?

Does a single large government initiative like the Smart House afford the best prospect of achieving scale economies, or are any potential scale economies offset by higher overheads and administrative costs? Would competitive initiatives be more responsive to housing needs and something like the Smart House? Would they be harder to monitor and regulate?

C. House Types

1. Proposed Single Family House Types

The following studies take a limited number of plan types with more or less constant cross sections and extrude them or bend them or change their orientation to the street. Houses are typically 4 meters wide on the outside and closer to 3.6 meters on the inside, a number the housing committee suggested that bedrooms converge on.

Bedrooms are usually about 3.6 meters on a side. Public rooms are 3.6 meters wide and variable in length but usually converging on the 10 meter length of the public rooms of the Smart House. Bathrooms are typically half the size of a bedroom.

The important constant for saving money is the cross section. Length can vary for flexibility. Wings can be extended. Straight houses can be expanded into L’s and C shapes. Frontages and setbacks can be constant or vary. Orientations can vary. With these limited and relatively inexpensive planning variables, neighbourhoods can achieve unlikely variety from a handful of house types.

The four-bedroom version of the Smart House is about 120 square meters. The two-bedroom version is about 80 square meters. There should be a smaller house type than currently exists, so we developed a 40 square meter type. We tried to keep all variants close to one of these multiples but that proved a little inflexible. If the cross section can be maintained as a constant, modules should be relative less important.

Roof forms can vary even as the plans stay the same. Gable roofs predominate, but there are some single pitch roofs like those on the Smart House. There was briefly a historic house type on Nauru with porches, and if used and if affordable and secured in inner yards, they might be an option again – a covered exterior space that might relive the interior spaces a little.

The percentage of openings in the walls is higher than that of the smart house, but lower than the 50-80% suggested by Whitfield. Window spacing is generally based on half a bedroom module or about 1.8 meters. Windows are relatively large.

Because the houses are thin most rooms would get good cross ventilation, and views on 2 or 3 walls, including at least one onto a secure courtyard.

Then on top of the plan types, assemblies can vary to give even more variety. Window types can vary. The percentage of glass or shutters can vary. Houses can be entered directly or from inner yards. Where there is a little extra money to be spent to good affect it can be used someplace prominent on the street, like around an entry. The minsters have talked about using limestone. It could be used in courtyard floors or around doors. Any discretionary expense should be used to great effect. SECTION

In the first phase of work, we looked at every assembly and streamlined the costs of hidden assemblies like foundations that added northing to the quality of life. The reason we did this was so that there might be a little money left of bring some pleasure, maybe as you enter or leave a house.

Maybe some trades can develop that specialize in solid doors or gates, or on shutters, or on stone surrounds at the front door, or on shallow bays that secure operable jalousie windows so that security and ventilation are both possible.

Maybe small inner yards of more or less constant sizes and with limited walls, can provide for secure outdoor life while unsecured outer yards that vary greatly with lot sizes and shapes can adjust to the variables of the neighbourhood plan and accommodate gardens or small livestock.

Small inner yards lend themselves to more limited landscaping that is attractive but requires less care and that can even be seen from the street over courtyard walls. Street trees, in turn, will be visible from private yards. Shallow setbacks can have small beds of plants in front of the house. The rest of the right of way can be publicly maintained to consistent standards.

a) Attached Housing and Multi-Family Housing

There is a separate study of larger buildings that should have lower square meter construction costs and, for a given number of bedrooms, smaller overall sizes. The larger buildings are twice as wide, at 7.5 meters, and the plans can be two rooms deep, which provides more flexible and more efficient plan layouts. Larger buildings can be one or two stories. Site coverages can approach 50%. The repetition that helps lower costs can be mitigated with careful site planning.

Whereas the single family houses are based on the programming of the Smart Houses, and older post war precedents, there are no specific Nauru precedents for this larger housing, though precedents from other countries are cited in the appendix.

b) The Importance of Site Planning

Good site planning is the key to multi-family housing. Indifferent or expedient site planning, like the housing built by the British Phosphate Corporation at the port, produces blocks marked chiefly by their repetition, and lack of privacy or security. This has given multi-family housing a bad reputation on the island. This means, in turn, that options for more compact and less expansive housing are harder for Nauruans to consider. But land is scarce and single family housing is relatively more expensive, and multi-family housing should be one option for Nauru in the future.

The aggregated multi-family housing in the next two sections tries to show how to benefit from scale economies, but without the inhuman repetition of the port housing.

House Type - Smart House

One Story Area 75m²

2 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

SECTION 2.C

House Type - Smart House

Two Story Area 115m²

4 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

House Type - I-1

Area 40m²

1 Bedroom

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

SECTION 2.C

House Type - I-2

Area 40m²

1 Bedroom

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

House Type - I-3

Area 40m²

1 Bedroom

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

House Type - L-1

Area 80m²

3 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

House Type - L-2

Area 80m²

2 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

SECTION 2.C

House Type - L-3

Area 75m²

2 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

House Type - L-4

Area 75m²

2 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

SECTION 2.C

House Type - L-5

Area 80m²

3 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

House Type - H-1

Area 130m²

4 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

SECTION 2.C

House Type - H-2

Area 115m²

4 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

House Type - U-1

Area 125m² 4 or 5 or 6 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

House Type - U-2

Area 115m² 4 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

House Type - U-3

Area 115m²

4 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

METROCOLOGY MERRILL, PASTOR & COLGAN

SECTION 2.C

House Type - Atrium 1

Area 130m²

4 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

House Type - Atrium 2

Area 130m²

4 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

SECTION 2.C

House Type - Block 1

Area 150m²

6 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

House Type - Block 2

Area 130m²

4 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

SECTION 2.C

House Type - Block 3

Area 130m²

4 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

House Type - Block 4

Area 115m²

4 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

METROCOLOGY MERRILL, PASTOR & COLGAN

SECTION 2.C

House Type - Cross 1

Area 90m²

3 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

House Type - Two Story 1

Area 115m²

3 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

SECTION 2.C

House Type - Two Story 2

Area 140m²

3 or 4 Bedrooms

Footprint 12.5m x 14m

Lot Size 14m x 14m

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

3D VIEW

FLOOR PLAN

ROOF PLAN

SECTION 3.0 AGGREGATION STUDIES

SECTION 3.0

A. Three Aggregated Studies

The three aggregated site plan studies in this section have been done without specific sites. In Sections 4.0 and 5.0, aggregated studies will be applied to specific sites in Section 230 and at the port. These examples may help for future unplanned sites, and they are good ways to describe how individual houses can combine to form streets and blocks and public spaces.

When you drop the individual house types into a setting that has common property lines and street frontages, it is easier to talk about how different types can be oriented to facilitate privacy at common property lines, or how to take advantage of longer off-site views.

1. Large One Hectare Block Studies

There are four variants of these studies – three single family studies and one multi-family studies. This is the first of three studies without a specific setting. Studies in Sections 4.0 and 5.0 will start to use these three studies in specific settings.

a) Single Family Lots

The individual house types, at about 14 meters on a side, including walled inner yards, form the building blocks of these studies. Typically four lots form a small block and nine of these small blocks can fit in a hectare. The small blocks are separated by footpaths or alleys

The middle block can either be fully developed, providing the most building sites, or it can be used for common purposes like parking or utilities or open recreational space. Or it can be a small park or plaza. If the middle block is vacated for recreation, it is relatively easy to give every lot either street frontage or park or plaza frontage.

When the middle block is developed with four lots, greater care has to be taken to give interior lots frontage on small landscaped areas along one of the footpaths. This also has the effect of making the footpaths more varied and pleasant.

When the middle block is developed with parking, one of the footpaths is widened to form an alley. The 2011 Census cites car ownership of 30%, and so 10-12 spaces can be provided to accommodate this rate of ownership. Higher parking requirements just require the displacement of some additional public areas.

There are two things that are infinitely variable - the size and location of small public spaces along the footpaths, and the size of private lots. The four examples here are representative but not exhaustive descriptions of how lots and landscaped space can be arranged.

Landscaped areas are located and sized to give all interior lots frontage on mid-block green areas. Lots reflect the capacity to develop full lots, half lots, and double lots. In the extreme, four lots could be combined.

Then there is the question of how to match lots with house types and there is a logic to this, too. All 14 by 14 meters lots have secure inner gardens, but two other conditions should be addressed – privacy at common property lines and maximum exposure to green common areas or street frontages. Generally wings extend along exposures fronting on a landscaped open space, and along common property lines.

Smaller forty square meter houses work well on half lots, and family compounds for large households require more than two hundred square meters, and so they are generally on combined lots where property lines have been vacated. Increasing small or partial lots increases density. Combining lots decreases density. Vacating the middle block decreases density, and so one hectare block can reflect a range of block coverages and lots counts.

The benefits of larger lots are obvious, but the case for smaller lots rests in the very scarcity of land. Blocks like these would be used in parts of a master plan that are especially desirable –probably coinciding with public spaces or commercial precincts.

(1) Trees and Landscaping

The shade in these blocks comes both from trees in the small public spaces and from trees in private gardens that overhang footpaths and can be seen over walls. One advantage of these smaller lots is that site development costs are lower, and what money there is for landscaping can be more concentrated. But each house should have at least one tree, over excavated to facilitate the growth of a root ball in the tough marl of the remediated site.

b) Multi-Family Housing on a One Hectare Block

On the multi-family study, the amount of land is held constant while the larger, wider, stacked buildings increase the number of possible households that a single hectare might hold, without diminishing the quality of life. Multi-family houses decrease land costs per household, and the more efficient building envelopes of the multi-family buildings should decrease building costs.

The site planning of the multi-family provides secure courtyards shared by several households. All households face a green space. The courtyards are separated by mid-block footpaths and served by a mid-block alley. The layout of the buildings and the mix of one and two story buildings achieves high land coverages without the repetition of the port housing. There is a public loggia on the street. This could be flanked by housing or commercial use.

SECTION 3.A

The following sheets show a number of ways blocks of a single hectare can be organized with varying lot counts, lot sizes, and block density.

This sheet shows an American precedent that started out as a very abstract idea of how to survey and organize the country’s frontier territory. The Northwest Ordinance of 1785-1787 provided for townships six miles on a side, with thirty-six one square miles. Each township provided for a school on one square and allotted four squares to soldiers in the war for independence.

Each square mile is divisible into quarter sections of 160 acres, and each quarter section can be further divided into four parcels of 40 acres. These 40-acre parcels became the module of real-estate transactions, but they could be divided up even further. The government could sell these parcels or give them away as incentives to settle the territories.

The drawing on the left shows the original divisions of the township. The map on the right shows what happens to these neat divisions after several generations of transactions. In places the original grid is still recognizable, and in other places it has been obscured by the dividing or combining of plots of land. Likely some divisions were to sell land, but others were to divide plots for succeeding generations of a given family.

The hectare block studies on the following pages represent a much smaller scale than the units of a township provided by the Northwest Ordinance, and so the studies here are characterized more by the combining of small lots than by the division of large parcels, but there is the same possibility that the master plan’s original blocks can achieve the same complexity, flexibility, and variety as the township map in green. High density lots will do the best job of underwriting the cost of infrastructure, but if you wish to draw down density and increase lots sizes in places, especially on the edges of the master plan, blocks can respond to unforeseeable needs, and unforeseeable combinations of housing types.

Lots and blocks can be relatively open, or they can be walled for security. Large lots can provide for family compounds and small lots with small houses can provide for the least expensive housing on the island. Decisions about housing needs can be made over a period of time. And blocks can be developed over a period of time.

This second precedent is much closer in scale to the Nauru blocks. The basic unit, the ward, is about four to five hectares. Each ward is 675 feet on a side, or twice the width or length of a Nauru block. The ward was repeated over and over again to create a network of streets, lots and blocks that could expand from the river. The cemetery is the only significant departure from the pattern.

Despite the repetition, the wards are capable of accommodating remarkable variety, and they have adapted over time to larger buildings and modern programs, without a modification of the street layout. Savannah is one of the America’s most beautiful cities and its plan and layout are universally praised.

Each ward is centreed around a public square and there are two basic types of blocks. The smaller 60 foot trustee lots are variously described as commercial of civic and they typically have very high lot coverage. The larger blocks on the corners each have ten residential lots, 60 by 90 feet, with an alley down the middle.

The street system makes Savannah’s lots less flexible and variable than the parcels of the Northwest Ordinance on the previous page, but by substituting mid-block footpaths for some of the streets, the Nauru blocks have much more flexibility, and lower infrastructure costs.

The alternates on this page are more or less suitable for multi-family, live-work or mixed-use buildings. This block has three courtyard buildings 30 meters on a side, and 20 single family houses.

Figure 16 -

This is a single large courtyard building, two lots by six lots long, which is probably over scaled.

Courtyard buildings cut four corners off from the courtyard, so part of the courtyard buildings are vacated so that every apartment has garden views.

SECTION 3.A

The master plan has several blocks facing main roads, with ‘L’ shaped multi-family or mixed use buildings along one edge of the hectare block, and another building facing a forecourt and overlooking the mid-block gardens.

This block shows live-work units with extra mid-block parking along the alley. A narrow green space separates the single family houses from the alley.

Figure 17 - With 32 lots there are four lots that face neither a street nor a park. One solution is to have small houses there with small park frontages.

Another way to provide all lots either street frontage or frontage on a small park, is to take these same 4 lots and combine them with perimeter lots, giving them street frontage.

The master plan shows a number of blocks with a larger setback along one side of the block. When these blocks are arranged in rows, they enhance the adjacent roads and either insulate houses from noise, or aggrandize an important road like a boulevard.

In the master plan there may be reason to thin the density of perimeter blocks where they meet the landscape or where they transition to blocks with fewer, larger lots. This block has 21 lots.

Figure 18 - This block has 16 lots that each combine two smaller 15 by 15 meter lots. Every lot has either street or park frontage and larger houses for larger households. Alternatively this could provide for larger outer yards.

This block has 8 lots but maintains the basic structure provided by the footpaths. Each group of four lots combines into a single larger lot and houses have secure inner yards, and larger outer yards that could accomodate smaller outbuildings.

This block has four lots. It eliminates some footpaths but keeps the common space midblock, and introduces even larger outer yards that could be used for livestock or agriculture.

This block has two lots and the footpath system is largely eliminated. Here the agricultural lots are still larger. The main houses, for the first time, are larger than the prototypes, and they are courtyard houses with an entry garden and outbuildings for relatives, and a porch that opens onto an outer yard. There is an opportunity to have small outbuildings on the far side of the agricultural plots that could be for family members or renters.

Figure 19 - A hectare block could also be organized as a large family compound with a range of possible houses. By way of illustrating one of many possible configurations, this plan shows a large lot and eight smaller lots of equal size. Like the land organized by the Northwest Ordinance, this could start out like a single large lot that gets subdivided into smaller more affordable parcels for extended family or for future generations. It could also have some combination of housing and agriculture. As lots get larger and the density is drawn down, the infrastructure gets more expensive. The family compound might be a kind of compromise.

Figure 20 - Several alternate site plans will be described on this and the following pages. The area being tested in one hectare, or 100 meters on a side. The drawing on the left shows the development parcels, and the public spaces and footpaths that divide the block. The footpaths divide the overall block into nine squares of four residential sites. The typical house lot is 200 square meters, but some lots have been reduced in size and the space given over to public landscaped areas. Some lots are shown re-combined.

The maximum capacity of these studies is 36 houses per hectare but this count and this density can be drawn down with the combination of lots. Subsequent studies vacate the centre square for public use. Perimeter lots all have street frontage. Interior lots have frontages on footpaths and the small public spaces. The house types are drawn from the Section 2.0. Types can rotate to maximize frontage on public spaces or to provide privacy from adjacent lots. Each lot has an inner yard that is secured by a wall.

Figure 21 - Aerial View

Figure 22 - In this study the centre square has been vacated for use as a public park. This allows for more lots with full 200 square meter footprints.

Figure 23 - Aerial View

Figure 24 - In this study the centre square has been re-claimed for alternate public uses – parking and utilities. There is still limited space left over for recreational use. The 2011 RON Census said that car ownership was at about 30% of Nauruan households. Perimeter lots would park right in front of the house. Interior lots can park mid-block. There is plenty of parking. This is the study that was further developed for the hectare north of the rugby field in Section 230.

Figure 25 - Aerial View

Figure 26 - This study shows a combination of multi-family lots and single family lots. Multi-family housing is organized around secure courtyards. The buildings can be one or two stories. The wings are 7.5 meter, roughly twice as wide as the single family houses. This reduces the cost of construction and allows a given bedroom program to be accommodated in less area because bedrooms can be arranged side by side.

Figure 27 - Aerial View

SECTION 3.A

2. Linear Site Plan with Single Family Coutyard Housing

The Smart House is basically two or three wings or floors of 40 square meters each. The twobedroom alternate is roughly 80 square meters, and the four-bedroom, roughly 120 square meters. The houses in this plan are based on these multiples of 40 square meters, but there are smaller 40 square meters layouts, too.

The lots can vary widely but all the alternates converge on a combined house and secure inner yard of about 200 square meters or 14 meters on a side. While we are waiting for sites, the linear site plan looks at one way to aggregate the lots to form a double loaded street.

One block is a fairly tight double loaded street. The other block pulls houses back on one side so the experience of passing through this group of houses is varied. The bigger setback creates a public green space, and it creates a prominent site for a public building, though it could also be a multifamily building with a larger scale.

The lots could run deeper off the road with unwalled out yards that could be used for animals of agriculture. The length of a site plan like this could vary, depending on available parcels. The narrow double load part of the site plan requires about 40 meters. The wider portion requires about 55 meters, both excluding any unwalled out yards.

The configuration of house used on any given lot is partly a function of taking advantage of open space and longer views, or of using the house to create quieter gardens off the road. Houses are also aggregated to minimize repetition and to provide a varied street front from limited house types. So for example, frontage is a higher percentage of a lot along the green so more rooms can look onto a small park.

Figure 28 - Linear Scheme Roof Plan

Figure 29 - Aerial view 1

Figure 30 - Aerial view 2

Figure 31 - Street Elevation 1

Figure 32 - Street Elevation 2

3. Block Plan with Larger Multi-Family Buildings

The linear site plan is comprised of detached housing of 40 to 120 square meters. The wings are as narrow as the wings of the Smart House at 3.6 to 4.0 meters, a single room wide. They would have great light and cross ventilation, but they don’t have the most efficient building envelopes.

The linear site plan is intended to be strung out along a street. This site plan is a block and intended to have streets on either side of it or along all four edges, as context may require, and it addresses entirely different problems. Like the houses of the linear site plan, the buildings in this site all have the same width or cross section, at about 7.5 meters. This additional width provides a lot more flexibility in the interior layout because plans can be two rooms deep, which allows for more possible arrangement of the rooms.

Generally, this housing has been designed to be less expensive than the single family houses. It requires less land. It has a more efficient building envelop. Whereas the two and four bedrooms in the linear site plan are around 80 and 120 square meters, these are 67 and 90 square meters for the same bedroom count, and so they are smaller and less expensive per square meter.

The buildings have a lower percentage of openings in the walls. More than half the building area is two stories, which is not necessarily an efficiency. Common walls reduce construction costs. Housing can be fee simple or rental apartments. There could be a mix of both. None of these efficiencies, however, would be worth it if the housing was mean. The site layout is guided by a few simple ideas. Site coverage is a little below 50%, which is pretty high.

All units can be secured as they all face onto courtyards. The mix of one and two story buildings and the different orientations of the ridges, is intended to maximize the variety of the grouping and to disguise the fundamental repetition that helps bring down the construction costs.

There are several porches in the plan, three of which face the central space, which is about 22 by 30 meters. These porches are public but separate from the secure housing. The green spaces of the plan are also distributed evenly throughout the plan, and they vary within a limited range from the major space to 11 meter lawns, 7.5 meter wide lawns and even 4 meter planting strips. The right of way is about 10.6 meters, and the pedestrian paths about 6 meters.

A site plan like this can work topside or as infill at higher elevations around the perimeter of the island. SECTION

Figure 33 - Block Scheme Roof Plan

Figure 34 - Aerial View

Figure 35 - Section through Street 1

Figure 36 - Section through Street 2

Figure 37 - Section through Side Road

Figure 38 - Section through Porch and Courtyard

Figure 39 - Section through Pedestrian Path

Figure 40 - Section through Building Courtyards

SECTION 4.0

SITE PLANNING ON LAND PORTION 230

SECTION 4.0

A. Aggregated Studies for the Master Plan of Land Portion 230

Housing studies have proceeded methodically from the assemblies of a typical house described in the precedent section, to housing types that respond to recurring program needs, to examples of aggregated housing that addresses privacy at common property lines, off site views on parks and streets, and the accommodation of footpaths, vehicular circulation, and parking.

1. Higher Density Blocks North of the Rugby Field

All four of these studies are based on previous studies of one hectare blocks but modified for the contingencies of the site. These blocks have the highest site coverages on the master plan for Section 230 because they are well situated near public buildings, public spaces, and commercial blocks.

2. Public Buildings on the East Side of the Rugby Field

The master plan provides a site for public buildings on the east side of the rugby field. This precinct, on a prominent site surrounded by main roads, has been developed with a building site for a church and a public hall. The larger setting is created by live-work units. On the east side of the public block there is a paved plaza. The master plan has two principal parks or fields but no other place for commercial activity. The ground floors of the public buildings are permeable, facilitating passage from one outdoor space to another – from the scale of the rugby field to the scale of the green courtyard and the paved plaza.

Aside from the church, the building types are flexible and can accommodate a number of uses. The ground floor can be a market or a public loggia. The upper floor can be a town hall or classrooms. The live-work units on the other side of the road are integrated into the plaza so there is a commercial and residential component to these spaces as well. The live-work units are important in providing a setting for the public buildings with a reasonable scale – smaller than the rugby field to the west and separated from the un-remediated landscape to the east.

The rugby field is a large generous space, but the public precinct is designed to provide a number of spaces at different scales, with different surfaces and different sun and wind exposures. Trees in front of the long colonnade on the field provide an intermediate scale. The undercroft of the buildings provides continuous shade immediately and throughout the day.

3. Dispersed Housing in the East Neighbourhood

If Nauruans are to be afforded choices in housing, both the sizes of the houses and the sizes of the lots need to vary. In the relatively compact studies in the hectare north of the rugby field, lots can be combined to increase lot size but the likely upper limits is four small lots combined into large lots of approximately 1000 square meters.

The perimeter blocks of the east neighbourhood of the Section 230 master plan afford the chance to build on larger lots with fewer common property lines, though if the housing is subsidized, there will be the problem of how to award lots that are likely to be fewer in number.

While the shapes of lots near neighbourhood centres are usually simple, neighbourhood perimeters also afford lots with a greater variety of shapes. Likely odd shaped lots will not require special types but will have the same house types – perhaps bigger compound types –with secure inner yards and unwalled outer yards of varying sizes and shapes.

SECTION 4.A

Figure 41 - Roof plan for Land Portion 230

in the public areas.

Each house sits on a small public space and these spaces, strung out along mid-block footpaths, vary in size so that the experience of walking through the neighbourhood varies. Generally, the site coverage decreases toward the perimeter of the first development phase. Here there is a small public space on both sides of the footpath. The long views are behind us in this view but several houses in the middle of this block are afforded long perimeter views because of these small public spaces.

Figure 42 - The single family housing north of the rugby filed is denser than housing in the east neighbourhood, but its density and coverage can be dialed up or down by recombining the small 200 square meter parcels that make up the small blocks. Each house sits on a 14 by 14 meter site separated from adjacent houses by a two meter buffer. Each house has a small secure inner yard that is walled. Footpaths and small parks are formed by a combination of building walls and garden walls. Trees in private yards hang over the footpath and become part of the views

The several buildings on the block form four public spaces – an elevated terrace overlooking the rugby filed, a courtyard for the chapel, a green lawn, and a paved commercial space on the east side of the block. These spaces are formed by live-work units with commercial ground floors and residential upper floors.

Figure 43 - The rugby filed, which can be used for most any purpose, is the largest public space in Land Portion 230. It is lined on the north and south sides by small, one-story single family houses and on the east side by a civic block. The civic block has a chapel and a multipurpose building lifted over a ground floor open space. Both levels are flexible and can be used for a variety of uses.

Figure 44 - One of the entrances to Land Portion 230 is from the south, and this view shows what it would look like to come upon the public buildings from this direction. There is a small hill behind the live-work units on the right. A raised terrace facing the rugby field is straight ahead, and at the north end of the terrace is the bell tower of the chapel, which is visible from every direction in Land Portion 230. The multi-purpose buildings lining the elevated terraces are both about 200 square meters and single rooms. The upper floors are shuttered and wellventilated, with views in several directions. The ground floors are also open, providing cover, shade, and also passage from one outdoor space to another.

affordable and therefore help underwrite the infrastructure costs of this east neighbourhood.

Figure 45 - This aerial view shows most of the east neighbourhood of Land Portion 230. The housing types are the same types used in the denser neighbourhood adjacent to the civic block, and the small blocks are typically two lots deep. But the public spaces in this east neighbourhood are larger, which draws down coverage and density. The geometry is also a little looser, and more perimeter lots afford long views to more people. The two neighbourhoods differ and so increase the choices afforded to Nauruans. The denser lots help make the infrastructure more

SECTION 5.0 PORT STUDIES

SECTION 5.0

On the upper side of the ring road, the wooded hillside is steeper and more expensive to develop, and the trees are an invaluable part of the setting. The housing extends to the hospital where a road descends from the upper site. The housing thins to the north as the main road descends and high elevation sites narrow.

Figure 46 - This overlay shows the relationship of the master plan area to the proposed port on the south edge and the hospital on the north edge. The new wharf and berth are downslope of the power plant. The container yard, for which there are two options varying in their extent, overlaps the southern end of the master plan area. The beach here is as wide as the resettlement zone and construction camp, providing a buffer from the container yard and views to the sea beyond it.

for those who need new houses but wish to remain near the sea and the lush vegetation of the coastal zone.

The scope of this infill study is bounded on the south side by the new port, on the north side by the hospital and community college, on the west by the sea, and on the east by the wooded slope above the island’s ring road. The bounded are corresponds roughly to the derelict housing built before independence by the British Phosphate Corporation. The site is on a nice, buildable 5% slope. The lowest housing, at about seven meters, is well above conservative projections for sea level rise.

The beach is about three times as wide as the existing beach. This serves several purposes. It keeps the housing at higher elevations. It increases a public asset. It absorbs temporary uses, like the construction camp for port workers. It provides a buffer where housing is upslope from the container yard, allowing views over it.

The upper portion of the site has larger development pads for multi-family housing. The lower site has the same small parcels and blocks used in Section 230 for single family houses.

There are provisions for open landscaped parcels next to most every home. Parking is in select areas, but vehicles can use the narrow streets that subdivide the site. Provisions have been made for public spaces and public buildings. Paths and small streets lead to the sea at regular intervals, providing access for all Nauruans.

Figure 47 - This is a proposal for the development of a key perimeter site that might provide an alternative to topside housing,

The principal focus of the master planning is Section 230, Topside, but we have been allowed to study select sites on the island perimeter where elevations are higher than projected sea level rise in 2100. This is a proposal for the site of British Phosphate Commission housing built in the 1960’s.

This site was selected for its depth from the beach to the ring road, for its elevation, and because of the condition of the existing housing. Despite the condition of the housing, the ownership of the site will present a challenge to any proposed new use, just as it has at the sites near the water just to the south, where there is a more modest resettlement plan for the new port facility.

This proposal extends from the island’s ring road, here at elevation 17 meters above sea level, 200 meters west to an elevation of 7 meters, and roughly 100 meters from the shoreline. The average gradient is five percent. In the north-south direction it is as wide as three rows of the BPC housing. The proposal covers roughly 4.5 hectares.

There is commercial and civic space along the ring road and around an upper plaza, multifamily courtyard housing just downslope from the ring road, and single family housing nearest the water. On the centre line of the precinct there is a hall on the high side and a chapel on the lower plaza, replacing two Pentecostal churches in the vicinity.

Site coverage and scale generally decrease toward the water, so the proposal does not present a phalanx of buildings from the public beach. Footpaths in four locations lead from the highest parts of the site to the water. The water can be seen from points all over the site.

The single family houses have walled inner yards and the multi-family housing has secure semi-public courtyards. At the same time, there is a significant network of public spaces bounded by these secure spaces.

The single family housing, on pads 14 meters on a side, is thin and relatively expensive but well-lit and ventilated. The multi-family housing has the dimensions of the BPC housing being replaced by the counter proposal. Unfortunately, the gradient, which makes the site so beautiful, also requires the burden of additional site costs.

Figure 48 - This detail of the overall plan shows how the slope is organized in more detail. Multi-family housing on the upper slope is organized around secure courtyards for a handful of families. Generally this housing is 7.5 meters deep, and capable of being two bedrooms wide. Single family housing is more typically 3.6 to 4 meters wide – less efficient building envelopes that afford the light and cross ventilation everyone seems to want. There is a rich network of open public spaces that vary in size, but each single family house also has a secure inner yard bounded by a wall.

As housing gets to the lower site, the density and site coverage, which is quite high near the ring road, thins out so that from the beach there is a seawall, but no phalanx of buildings walls. This should improve the quality of the public beach. There is open space next to most every house site that leverages the space of the secure yards, but which is more public.

Figure 50 - Longitudinal Site Section

Figure 49 - Site Elevation from Beach

Figure 52 - Transverse Site Section

Figure 51 - Street Elevation

- Footpaths at regular intervals extend from the ring road to the sea so that everyone can get the shoreline. These paved paths can also serve to get limited numbers of vehicles to the lower site and proximate to all residential parcels. These footpaths are lined by single family houses on 200 square meter lots and by walls enclosing inner yards that can be secured. Within these inner yards are trees that will make the footpaths attractive. The upper view looks up one of these footpaths toward the multi-family housing on the upper site; the lower view shows what it is like to descend to the sea from above.

Figure 53

Figure 54 - The site thins as you descend to the sea. The amount of developed land decreases, and the amount of public open space increases. Open spaces vary in size so that the experience of the overall site is as varied as possible, but on the lower site, the public spaces which can be planted or paved are generally larger and ringed by more houses. This view looks upslope toward the multi-family housing in the distance. The sea is behind us in this view.

This higher view, however foreshortened, shows most of the aspects of the site plan that have already been described – single family houses on the lower site, multi-family housing on the upper site, ample public spaces spread evenly throughout the site for everyone’s use. The housing thins toward the water to open up views from the land which also improves the quality of the public beach.

The height and cost of the sea wall is variable. It is high here because the lower public plazas have been leveled. This is a beautiful, sloped site but sloped sites do increase site development costs. On the hillside you can see a chapel on a prominent site reserved for public buildings. This wouldn’t have to be a chapel, but there are two churches in the re-development area that should be replaced. The World War II monument is just to the south of here, and this could also be a memorial chapel.

The wooded hillside in the upper portion of the view is a prominent part of this coastal setting. It will take a while for vegetation and shade to be restored to the topside, whereas the coast is already lush with irreplaceable canopy trees, and these trees should be incorporated into development sites wherever possible.

Figure 55 - This view looks upslope over the south portion of the master plan that lies partially behind the container yard (see the Google Earth overlay). The beach at this point is about 100 meters wide, or three times as wide as current shorelines. The beach in the foreground corresponds to the resettlement area required by the new port facility, or roughly three rows of the BPC housing. The beach to the left in this view is where the port requires a temporary construction camp.

Overview of the Work Presented to at Workshop

April 28, 2022

The following can serve as notes on our workshop call last night and as a general accounting for our work since last summer.

Our work, and our answers at the housing workshop, are guided by a few principles:

■ Try to avoid specific recommendations but lay out as many considerations as possible.

■ Let the Nauruans give each of the considerations we lay out the appropriate weight, something we are in no position to do.

■ Where two good goals or outcomes are in opposition, try to make that clear. Construction budgets are full of agonizing trade-offs, but decisions still have to be made.

■ Never distance yourself from the work simply because it is criticized. Defend good work.

■ Always keep the effective use of money foremost, as money is so tight. The measure for effectiveness is the positive impact on the dweller.

■ Accept intelligent compromises.

■ If requests are unreasonable by one of the measures above, say so.

In the fall workshop, the housing we presented was not received very well. It was seen as being too simple, too much like current buildings, and lacking in innovation. We asked for examples of what steering committee members wanted instead and buildings from the UAE were cited. This was helpful because it gave us something we could argue against, and the committee came to acknowledge that the Abu Dhabi models were inappropriate for Nauru – too costly, unbuildable by Nauruan labor, unwarranted by a very different climate.

We went through a similar process with pre-fab housing. Pre-fab housing is very inexpensive compared to site built work, but as the discussion progressed, Nauruans found pre-fab housing wanting in a number of ways, not least because it provides no work for Nauruans. The work we have done has to be put up against alternatives that are better.

Here are more detailed notes from the workshop’s second day. The format, which gave the secretaries more time to review the presentation and formulate questions, produced a good session. These notes are responses intended to be more cogent than responses during the live session, which was recorded. They also group some questions by topic. Let’s start with something really simple, then proceed to more complicated issues that came up last night:

Shade – We have argued for finding building sites at high elevations on the island perimeter. One main reason is the shade afforded there by the lush vegetation. One of our concerns about Section 230, by contrast, is the ability of the remediated site to grow trees. Our recommended solution is modest but practical – over excavate for a single specimen shade tree in each courtyard, and then irrigate it. Select trees can go along footpaths. We have tried to avoid formal planting. We were a little sheepish about drawing mature trees on our renderings, but a lack of shade was cited nonetheless. You can draw anything but that won’t alter the challenges of growing trees and plants in Section 230, and that should be acknowledged.

A Nauru Vernacular – Nauru had a distinct pre-colonial building tradition. Since World War II, Nauru housing has been largely pre-fab, some metal frames, as pointed out last night, and some block and concrete. Pre-fab has been criticized. The pre-colonial traditions are impractical, especially as a number of the comments and questions last night bore on the construction integrity central to our recommendations. Any modern Nauru vernacular will evolve from a list of very practical considerations that include construction integrity, the use of Nauruan labor, cross ventilation, security, adaptability, flexibility, and a reasonable balance of variety and scale economies. That is how we came to the language we developed.

Customization – As mentioned last night, the Smart House had two variants. We presented maybe a dozen, with many more permutations possible. We developed smaller and larger models than what exists on the island. We have made every effort to deliver variety while at the same time limiting the range of basic assemblies so that scale economies might be realized. The work presented already has rather incredible variety compared to the Smart House or any given wave of post-war modular housing. The rest will be up to owners, and we can’t represent that in renderings.

Density and Dispersion – As mentioned, there is more potential demand for the 80-130 houses studied for Section 230 than available land can provide. Therefore two solutions present themselves – reasonable, humane density which allows more people to move there, or some very difficult political decisions about who might live there, and who might have the preferred larger lots. As pointed out last night, density also helps underwrite the cost of infrastructure. It was very clear that Nauruans will decide about lot sizes and densities. We probably spent too much time on the more dense site plans, but a very broad range was presented, and it is easier to envision low densities than high densities so we drew high densities.

Parking – There is plenty of parking proximate to the lots. The best reference document is the master plan and not our site plan, which doesn’t show parking, or our renderings, which minimize cars to focus on buildings. We all emphasized not having private land duplicate the capacity of public land and rights of way. Parking on the lots will have the effect of displacing gardens and courtyards.

Metal Roofs – As discussed, metal roofs, so prevalent now, are fine. We reviewed a range of roofs and roof material costs – galvanized steel versus aluminum, low profile seams versus

standing seams with hidden fasteners. Nauruans will have to balance upfront costs against likely lifespans. We also discussed layers that could go under roof sheathing. We expressed concern about putting roofing right on purlins, but the housing committee said plywood was unaffordable. Plywood would help with lateral loads, which were brought up. A membrane under the metal and over the plywood, would help with leaking. Roof forms are relevant, too. Gables with overhangs on all sides help. That is common now.

Foundations – It was especially gratifying to hear how many people had focused on foundations because we had spent a lot of time and space on foundations in our first phase report last fall but gave it scant space in the presentation on the 26th. We reviewed the seven foundation types in the report and this time were a little more forthcoming about the disadvantages of several associated with the Smart House. Most of the criticisms bore on either costs or the humidity in crawl spaces, or on termites. While we gave the strongest endorsements to slabs on grade, for their single pour economy, and to raised slabs on compacted earth formwork, the secretaries seemed most responsive to the raised slabs, mostly for their protection from runoff. This discussion was a great example of the tradeoffs of construction. The preferred foundation is a little more expensive than the slab on grade, and so money would be moved from somewhere else in the construction budget in order to address the perceived need for raised slabs.

Block and Concrete Trades – It was asked if the skill existed to do block and concrete. This is important because the premise of the work is that the political will exists to develop these trades. They are relatively low skill trades. There is some skill already because block buildings exist. More will be required, especially with regard to steel re-bar and formwork. We assume the port will require a batch plant and the startup costs associated with it. We have been told by the housing committed that the capacity for a block plant is there. Materials will still be imported at great cost.

Fire Separation – Even without a building code you should build to conventional fire separation of flammable assemblies. So you should shoot for getting wood eaves three feet off a property line or assumed property line. You will start planning with an overall block size. We would like the capacity to get six houses at most along any edge of the block. House footprints can vary. Midblock footpaths can vary. Setbacks can vary. The length of eaves can vary – all in service of the stipulated separation you want. You can exceed minimal standards. You can reduce separation with parapets. The other fire issue to focus on is the wall itself – both its fire rating and its percentage of openings as a function of proximity to the property line. Block and concrete walls have good fire resistance. Openings close to a property line will be naturally limited by considerations of privacy, visual or aural, but the percentage of openings should be limited by code. Codes typically reduce the allowable percentage of opening close to the property line.

Construction Durability and Cost – We have stressed durability of construction from the beginning of the work, and this pushes up construction costs, with the hope that it will pay off over the life of the houses. Last night, we were very pleased that discussion focused on the last three pages of the binder that addressed construction. Many questions expressed a wish for even more durable forms of construction. But the housing committee we met with last fall described common building methods and even modest improvements, like plywood decks for the roofs which

we asked about, as unaffordable, and so we have not pressed durability beyond the use of reinforced block and concrete.

Nauruans have told us that pre-fab houses cost about $15,000. We don’t know the size or the lifespan and we can’t confirm a number like this. Nonetheless, it is likely that site-built block and concrete will be many times this cost. In trying to understand the cost estimates for the Smart House, it appears that the average house was estimated at $130,000, but because there was an unknown mix of two and four bedroom models, it is difficult to estimate unit costs.

Regardless of the mix, site-built houses will not be chosen for their up-front costs. We were very clear about that last might. We have discussed the likelihood that even the Smart House estimated costs are probably low, and they are built to more or less current practices and not the standards mentioned last night with regard to building codes and category 3 wind loading. So any discussion of additional construction costs has to take place in this context.

Every time you increase the cost of housing you disenfranchise people, and so the most agonizing part of a construction budget is weighing increased durability against more broad home ownership. Based on principles cited at the beginning of these notes we can only make clear how two worthwhile objectives work in different directions. Nauruans will need to place their housing somewhere along a continuum of reasonable trade-offs on this and other matters of housing design.

We designed relatively thin houses for good cross ventilation and good daylight, but the envelope is a little inefficient because of this decision. We mentioned the space required by stairs but stopped short of recommending against two story houses. We studied a range of percentage of openings and settled on one much lower than that recommended in 1994 by David Whitfield, but much higher than the Smart House. As we discussed at length last night, we described a range of foundation solutions and recommended against several that were very expensive but with no benefit to inhabitants.

Smart Houses and Innovation – We have consistently made an argument for very specific ways to address energy efficiency and innovation, but it goes against the grain of how these issues are normally addressed. It doesn’t make any sense to speak of sustainability in the terms of other countries where the focus is on energy loss across a wall or through the roof because in Nauru the temperature differentials across the wall – inside to outside – are relatively small. This is one reason why Abu Dhabi is irrelevant to Nauru. It is best to address sustainability in terms of embodied energy, durability, and adaptability.

It is best to talk about innovation in terms of settlement patterns, site planning, and master planning. Our recommendations have been almost formulaic – very simple buildings and openended complexity and variety at the level of the block and the master plan.

SECTION 5.B