SUDU–the Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit–is a full-scale prototype for an affordable two-storey house built with local materials and traditional building techniques in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Developed in a collaborative endeavour between the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development and ETH Zurich, SUDU ties in with the rich tradition of loam construction while at the same time taking a fresh look at how to adapt this tradition to contemporary needs. Recapitulating SUDU‘s idiosyncratic construction process in two lavishly illustrated volumes, this publication details the building techniques such as rammed earth, mud bricks and timbrel vaulting.

The first volume additionally explores the history of Ethiopian architecture, the postcolonial nature of its current construction industry and the challenges of the country’s rapid urbanisation.

The second volume, a manual with more than 600 detailed drawings and instructions, demonstrates how to build a house step-by-step, with the most readily available building material on site–earth. In order to understand, contextualise and eventually illustrate the particular methodology of the documented construction, it was crucial to research the process retrospectively towards the (actual and ideal) application of vernacular ingredients, tools and rhythms. The persistent exchange with participants involved in the realisation of SUDU helped to access the case study and to document its realisation by displaying the tangible nature of the project as an artisanal experiment during which both the physical assembly and the digital translation turned out to benefit from an acquired knowledge, unexpected circumstances and an improvisational approach to find solutions for occurring problems.

The final result of the guide–consistently drawn from the first-person perspective–showcases the undertaken steps to facilitate the potential reproduction of the housing unit in a specific geographical context without pretending to claim that the technical features for the realisation of SUDU ignore any (professional) experience on behalf of the (amateur) reader.