Rahaman-Noronha hasn’t just reforested his land; he is passionate about ensuring the buildings on his farm are sustainable too. As you enter the farm a concrete house greets you – one of the older buildings on the land. But every other structure has touches of the earth. Clay, harvested from the land nearby; timber from the trees further back on the farm; repurposed glass bottles of all colours that glitter as the light hits them; rounded formations that only hint at the old, upcycled tires buried underneath to provide structure; and textured walls containing patchworks of dried grasses.
The farmer is embracing the old Trinidadian ways of building, when residents would use what was available to them, rather than mass importing materials. Not only is he putting waste products that would otherwise end up in landfill to use, Rahaman-Noronha is employing building styles that provide resilience against the island’s changing climate.
For a quick build, there isn’t as much time put into observing the environment: patterns of rainfall, plant and animal life, where the wind blows. “It’s these things that we have been disconnected from.” Instead, she says, it’s common to level the ground, remove any trees and start the build with a blank slate, without considering what is already there and how that can be integrated into the design. With deforestation and loss of native species being a widespread environmental issue, the practice of clearing what exists and creating something entirely new can have wider ripple effects on the land, like causing increased land slippage on slopes.
This disconnection from the environment is a feature of the “concrete culture” that became prevalent in Trinidad in the 1900s. Asad Mohammed, director of the Caribbean Network for Urban and Land Management, attributes this to “the impact of Western architectural inputs that have little relevance to the context we live in”. He describes a “modernistic style of square buildings” that are not climate-adapted to the intense heat of the dry season or the hurricanes and flooding of the wet season.
Concrete structures have great heat capacity and large surface contact with the land. They keep it cool in the daytime and warm at night. The tech for passive air movement is thousands of years old.The roof never leaks. Drains can be put indoors to prevent flood water accumulation and winds aren’t an issue at all. The biggest problem with concrete is that the resource investment is front loaded.
The biggest problem with concrete is that the resource investment is front loaded.
the biggest problem with concrete is we use too much of it and it’s severely environmentally destructive; just on its own, for example, its manufacture contributes anywhere between 4 and 8% of all CO2 emissions, and most of that is from the production process and not from secondary aspects like transportation.
How much of that 4-8% is used for homes? It’s a whole lot less than used for parking lots and excessive roadways. We’ve not even factored in heating and cooling, maintenance, or standard of life.
