Building back home and dignity can work with local, sustainable materials
Somalia faces one of the world’s most persistent displacement crises, with millions uprooted by conflict, drought, and climate-driven instability. As emergency camps grow into semi-permanent settlements, the need for long-term, affordable, and culturally grounded housing becomes urgent. A new proposal, Shelters of the Future, offers precisely that: a mud-brick modular framework rooted in Somali building traditions yet designed for resilience, dignity, and community.
Developed by designer Rabie Al Ashi in Saudi Arabia in collaboration with Kengo Kuma & Associates, Shelters of the Future won first prize in an international competition led by Somalia’s Ministry of Public Works, Reconstruction and Housing (MoPWRH), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and Young Architects Competition (YAC). It stands out for its elegant simplicity: a shelter system that relies on local materials, local skills, and local cultural logic.
With so much goodwill going into designing new refugee shelters from the western world –– see our 2014 article on refugee shelters from IKEA and designers in Jordan, we are still seeing Gazans and Somalis living under tarps.
Read our article: Refugee shelters we hate to love
Still, we celebrate ideas and appreciate this design because it works with vernacular materials and takes into account the local.
At the heart of the design is a flexible 4×4-meter module, a human-scaled unit pairing two enclosed rooms with a semi-open central space and a private garden. This small footprint is deceptively powerful: it gives each household privacy, a safe outdoor space, and the ability to arrange interior life according to Somali social norms. The module becomes a building block—units can be combined into courtyards, linear clusters, or circular compounds that echo traditional Somali settlement patterns. Compare this to the shelters Somalis have built in Yemen, below.
Materiality grounds the system firmly in place. Structures are built from mud bricks, acacia logs, palm leaves, and earth-based plasters—materials that are renewable, inexpensive, and readily available. Mud bricks in particular offer thermal mass, keeping interiors cooler during the day and warmer at night, an essential feature in Somalia’s hot, arid climate.
Construction is intentionally low-tech: shelters can be built by residents themselves, strengthening local craftsmanship and reducing reliance on imported humanitarian products that often fail in desert climates.
The design also incorporates passive cooling strategies—cross-ventilation, shaded openings, and breathable walls—to make life more comfortable without the need for electricity. Gender-sensitive layouts support safety and cultural expectations. Small gardens, livestock spaces, and shaded communal zones help rebuild livelihoods and social cohesion.
We’ve spent weeks in Sinai in the simple hushas there made from palm fronds and bamboo. They can be remarkably comfortable even at night when the cold winds blow.
Rather than treating displacement as a temporary emergency, this project is reframed as a human condition requiring stability, community, and dignity. By combining vernacular wisdom with adaptable modular planning, the project offers a model for refugee housing that is scalable, low-carbon, and deeply respectful of local identity.
For Somalia’s displaced families, a mud-brick home may be the most modern solution of all.
::IOM
