UN-Habitat Housing

Winning competition entry for new 5000 person settlements in Iraq

2011

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Winning entry for an international architecture competition by the United Nations for new 5000 person settlements in Iraq. The competition aimed to radically raise the quality of new housing districts for Iraq’s relatively young and growing population.

The scheme inverts the standard “estate” layout, keeping vehicles to the perimeter and provides a generous pedestrian landscaped spine connecting all sub-districts and social infrastructure such as schools, souq, administration, playing fields and mosque. Dwellings are typically apartments with generous plans and ceiling heights in three and four storey buildings with dark cool lightwells and shaded external spaces. Cost of construction was kept low by limiting plan types and rotating and combining these to create a great variety of narrow lanes, streets, and common courtyards. The construction is of EPS Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) creating ready-insulated wall forms insitu, greatly reducing cost.

Further to the United Nation’s aims for the project, the scheme aims for a balance between the particular and the general, to provide a quality baseline which permits significant adaptation to suit various sites in central and southern Iraq.