ROOH Challenge

Roof Over Our heads is a global campaign that seeks to create resilient homes by empowering women’s collectives and their vulnerable communities. Our initiative focuses on equipping these groups to assess and mitigate the vulnerability of their homes to extreme weather, with the support of designers, contractors, material providers, finance experts, city officials, and mayors.

We invite young university students to take up this challenge and explore their potential role in developing innovative solutions to enhance the weather resilience of informal homes. This is a unique opportunity to address the issues faced by vulnerable neighbourhoods, particularly in the Global South, where homes are often built informally, with limited resources and despite these challenges, they design construct and finance their homes with what they know.

In Phase 1, ROOH Labs has successfully documented 17 informal settlements across nine cities in India, covering five different climate zones. We’re calling upon participants to craft an incremental upgrade or retrofitting solution for a dwelling unit in an informal settlement located in one of five cities across different climate zones. Your task is to tailor your design to meet the needs of a specific family and location, leveraging detailed climate and contextual data provided from Phase 1 documentation of the ROOH Labs. Your challenge is to select one of the five challenge components from the documentation and analysis our team has conducted and use your knowledge to create recommendations for resilient homes capable of withstanding extreme weather conditions like heat, wind, and water.

Your solution should incorporate enhanced construction techniques using locally available materials or propose alternative building materials that are affordable, accessible, adaptable, and community-approved. The aim of the design is to enhance resilience, sustainability, and liveability within the selected context.

The challenge is entirely VIRTUAL.