Jaco Booyens Architect
  • Projects
    • Buffelsdrift Gold Medal Domus International Restoration Awards
    • Contemporary Mud House Buffelsdrift
    • Buffelsdrift Renovation
    • Buffelsdrift Staircase
    • Buffelsdrift Pumproom
    • Subsistance Farm Rysmierberg
    • Damaraland Clay Project
    • Big Tiny House Glencairn
    • House Yzerfontein
    • Project Phoenix
    • Walvisbay Container Terminal Entrance
    • CAM Plywood Structure
    • Fort Haasbroek Swakopmund
    • Rammed Earth Desert House Swakopmund
    • Off the grid house Prieska
    • New BP Green Headquarters Cape Town
    • African trade mission in Rome
    • Vertical Village on the River Tyber
    • Staircase house du Plessis
    • Olijven Hof brick vault Montagu
    • Cape Town Offgrid Scyscraper
    • Gate to industrial park
    • Furniture design
    • Thesis 1996 - Emergency center for earthquakes
  • Design Philosophy
  • About
  • Publications
  • Sketchbook
Fort Haasbroek Swakopmund

​Just as brick, stone, concrete, wood, glass and steel are building materials with their 
own properties, advantageous in some respects and disadvantageous in other, 
earth-based materials like clay, mud and rammed earth are the same. Once the 
structural parameters are known and accepted with their pros and cons the use 
of these materials become in a sense ordinary. Earth as a building material is 
generally seen as a cheap and unreliable material favored by bohemians and 
homesteaders. With earth in some form available on all building sites it seems to
be the most obvious choice for a building material for low structures. 

This building is a work in progress being built by an owner builder without a 
bank loan with limited cash flow on the outskirts of Swakopmund Namibia in 
a desert landscape with very little vegetation. It is the result of a 2-decade long 
conversation between me and the owner and friend philosophising and exploring 
ideas of off-grid living and self-sufficiency. 

The fort has rammed earth walls and a roof made of a series of very thin ferro-cement 
vaulted modules. The compound has one central entrance similar to medieval villages 
and walls just high enough to not be climbable by a human. The openings along the 
periphery's width are determined to be just small enough so a human head cannot 
fit through but still allow light to enter into the inside spaces.  
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  • Projects
    • Buffelsdrift Gold Medal Domus International Restoration Awards
    • Contemporary Mud House Buffelsdrift
    • Buffelsdrift Renovation
    • Buffelsdrift Staircase
    • Buffelsdrift Pumproom
    • Subsistance Farm Rysmierberg
    • Damaraland Clay Project
    • Big Tiny House Glencairn
    • House Yzerfontein
    • Project Phoenix
    • Walvisbay Container Terminal Entrance
    • CAM Plywood Structure
    • Fort Haasbroek Swakopmund
    • Rammed Earth Desert House Swakopmund
    • Off the grid house Prieska
    • New BP Green Headquarters Cape Town
    • African trade mission in Rome
    • Vertical Village on the River Tyber
    • Staircase house du Plessis
    • Olijven Hof brick vault Montagu
    • Cape Town Offgrid Scyscraper
    • Gate to industrial park
    • Furniture design
    • Thesis 1996 - Emergency center for earthquakes
  • Design Philosophy
  • About
  • Publications
  • Sketchbook