The global housing gap is expected to increase significantly in coming decades. Much of the housing demand will be concentrated in the expanding cities of Asia and Africa, where millions of urban poor already live in inadequate housing conditions.
This report proposes the greater use of low-carbon building materials in addressing the low-cost housing gap in cities. While this is not a technical design guide, it provides a framework to support material selection in the design stages for low-cost housing.
The study also takes a life cycle approach to material selection and minimizes the externalization of energy demands of materials throughout their life cycle, and presents some low-carbon materials that have been successfully used for home-construction, followed by a detailed case study of two composite materials.