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