Case 1
The house that stayed cool
What my family remembers about my grandfather's house in the village
Why this house
Where it started for me
This is the first case study on Holitecture, and it could not be any other building. My grandfather's house (Fig.1) is where my interest in architecture began.
I think I was drawn to sustainable architecture before I had a word for it. For as long as I can remember, I noticed how comfortable certain buildings felt. I only learned it was called architecture at twelve, in a conversation with my dad. The noticing came long before the name, and much of it came from this house.
What stayed with me was a simple idea: that the way we built in the village could be carried into the city, made durable without losing the comfort. That is what I have spent my career working on.
Fig. 1: A side view photo of our grandfather's house. Photo taken by a family friend
The house
Fifty years of mud walls
My grandfather's house stands in our village in northern Nigeria, about 50 years old. The walls are mud, built by hand from local earth, and the roof was once thatch. A wide verandah runs along the front, shading the walls and giving the family a cool place to sit through the day.
Today the thatch is gone, replaced with zinc, and family friends live there. But the mud walls still stand, 50 years on.
Why I asked
Testing my own memory
I remember that house as far cooler than the concrete home we lived in. But fond memories can mislead, so I sent my brothers and sisters a short survey and asked one question: how did the house actually feel to live in?
Eight replied. Most knew the house as children, so these are memories, not measurements. What stood out was how closely they agreed.
What my family remembers
Cool, shaded and no fan needed
8 of 8
said it was cooler than our concrete house with a zinc roof
8 of 8
never needed a fan inside
8 of 8
found the verandah cool and shaded in the hot afternoon
7 of 8
found it cool and comfortable at night
Six of the eight also found the room itself cool even during the hot afternoon. Not one person remembered the house as hot. On every question about heat, the answers pointed the same way.
In their words
How it felt to be inside
Inside was cool when the outside was hot and vise versa
It was weather friendly. Cool in hot season and warm in cold season, especially inside the rooms.
We never had to take off our clothes because of heat
Everything felt calm, secured and natural
One answer showed a limitation. "There was no electricity, so the rooms could be dark, and a lamp was used when needed".
In practice this mattered little, as the room was rarely used during the day. Most daily activities happened outdoors.
The roof that was lost
The best part was modernised away
The family remembers the thatch roof never leaking and keeping the rooms cool. It has since been replaced with zinc, the same material that makes modern houses so hot in the afternoon.
So the part that worked best is the part that was changed. The earth walls stayed, and they still hold the house up after fifty years.
What they would choose now
Not the old house, not the concrete one
I also asked which they would choose today: the mud house with thatch or concrete with a metal roof. Most chose the mud house, and several reached for the same phrase unprompted, a "modernised mud house." Not the old house, not the concrete one, but the comfort of the old, built to last.
One preferred concrete. It is fair to note that someone raised in concrete may prefer concrete and keep the village as a place to visit. But the pattern is clear: given the choice, my family does not want to abandon what worked. They want it made durable.
What it means
One house, one family and a clear signal
This is one family's memory of one house, not proof. But it agrees with the building science and with what communities told me during my PhD fieldwork. A home built from local earth, shaded by a verandah and a deep roof, stayed cooler than concrete without any electricity.
The point is not to romanticise mud, but to carry forward what it did well, the heavy walls, the shade, the local materials, into homes that also last and give people the light and durability they want. That is the "modernised mud house" my family described.
This is the work Holitecture is here to do: to showcase examples where sustainability was already being practised but never called by that name, often just because it does not look like what people picture. My grandfather's house is the first of many to showcase.
The house also points to what comes next. Local materials become far more appealing when our own experts work to make them more durable, so an earth wall lasts without constant upkeep and a roof performs like the thatch did without the leaks. Those techniques then need to be shared and taught rather than left to memory, so this way of building is within reach for anyone, not just those who grew up with it.
Fifty years on, the walls still stand and the family still remembers it as the cool house
This article is based on a short survey of eight of my siblings, August 2026, shared with their knowledge and kept anonymous. Their memories are a signal, not a measurement, but a consistent one and a reason to measure a real house properly.
