Economic housing project designed on ecological (or bioclimatic) principles for Rodrigues, at a time of climate change and water shortages that the island is experiencing.
Building as much as possible with locally available materials (e.g., stone, eucalyptus wood, vetiver), based on local know-how, respecting the best orientations in relation to the prevailing winds or the sun, by using solar energy (domestic hot water) and water (by simple gravity by placing the tank supplied by runoff water from the roof above the shower room), without using expensive and risky machinery (pumps or air conditioning), adapted to the terrain (often sloping) and to the existing vegetation, or vegetation to be reintroduced.
The Ecocase is an evolutionary house: it can be expanded by adding rooms or technical elements (such as solar collectors or a domestic wind turbine). For the roof, depending on the financial capacities of the inhabitants, variations are possible: sheet steel (modern fabrication and with anticyclonic fixation), possibly with a roof underlay made of vaquoit mats, a sloping reinforced concrete slab roof (if possible protected from the sun by sheet metal or vetiver), or even vetiver alone laid on a eucalyptus wood structure (respecting a slope of at least 40°).
Its initial dimensions are modest (about 50M2 of built surface). It is economical and accessible to low-income families, as the construction would be done through the voluntary participation of the inhabitants, with a possible social contribution in materials and with public or private technical assistance.
Ecocase can also be realized by more private means, in an ambitious range of construction: to be a model for the promotion of an ecological architecture of the future, inspired by local tradition.