The Paradox around the Social Representations of Compressed Earth Block Building Material in Burkina Faso: The Material for the Poor or the Luxury Material?

Ousmane Zoungrana,Maïmouna Bologo/Traoré,Philbert Nshimiyimana,Gautier Pirotte,Adamah Messan

doi:10.4236/jss.2021.91004

Abstract

Compressed earth brick (CEB) is a masonry material which has the thermal properties that are better adapted to the hot and dry climate of tropical and Sahelian context like in Burkina Faso. Despite these advantages, CEB are still not largely used in the construction sector in the city of Ouagadougou. In order to better understand the obstacles linked to this low diffusion of CEB, the present empirical study proposes a deep analysis of the social representations of construction using CEB in the urban place. The results show that four main categories of social representations coexist in the construction sector using CEB: 1) the perception of CEB as the “material for the poor”, 2) the perception of CEB as “improved or precarious adobe” inherited from successive public policies to rehabilitate the material, 3) the symbolic perceptions linked to the red color of the brick and the durability of the material, and 4) the contemporary post-materialist perception (luxury materials), according to a minority of wealthy elites who have built their houses using CEB. These social representations are essential to take into consideration for the implementation of new public housing policies in general and promotion for the usage of CEB in particular. This could accompany the studies which aim at improving the technical performances of CEB and lead towards the socio-economic acceptance of the materials.

Highlights

In Burkina Faso, a landlocked country with limited resources, banco has long been the most common technique used for housing construction in urban and rural areas (Kéré, 1995)
The results show that four main categories of social representations coexist in the construction sector using compressed earth brick (CEB): 1) the perception of CEB as the “material for the poor”, 2) the perception of CEB as “improved or precarious adobe” inherited from successive public policies to rehabilitate the material, 3) the symbolic perceptions linked to the red color of the brick and the durability of the material, and 4) the contemporary post-materialist perception, according to a minority of wealthy elites who have built their houses using CEB
This paper has shown that the contemporary resistance to the diffusion of CEB in Ouagadougou can be explained by the aggregation of four (04) registers of interconnected social representations: 1) The representation of CEB as “the cinder block for the poor” resulting from the autochthony of “Bancoville”

Summary

Introduction

In Burkina Faso, a landlocked country with limited resources, banco (construction using adobe: the hand formed and sun-dried earth brick) has long been the most common technique used for housing construction in urban and rural areas (Kéré, 1995). The city of Ouagadougou was built on the palace-market combination before the creation of the colony in 1919 (Fourchard, 2001). This dominance of the construction technique using adobe brick earned the nickname of “Bancoville” attributed to the city of Ouagadougou during the colonial era (Meyer, 2008; Duperray, 1992). With an estimated urbanization rate of 32% in 2016, this rate could reach 40% by 2025 (UN Habitat, 2014) This urban growth poses many challenges in terms of access to building materials adapted to the climate context for most households. In the urban context of Ouagadougou, the constructions made of local materials such as earth-based materials like adobe represent about 47%, against 57% for the so called hard or semi-hard materials such as cement based materials like cinder blocks and cement plasters (Delaunay & Boyer, 2017)

Methods

Results

Conclusion