When: Thursday, 2nd of December, 6pm (GMT)
Where: M416, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS + Online (see tumblr page below for link)
“A derivative of the Northern Togolese language, Lamb-Kabyè, Oxara means, ‘Gathering and Community’, bringing the actors of the construction ecosystem together to collectively create an innovative and sustainable industry is a key ingredient to make our business scalable and to achieve our vision of providing safe and decent housing to all.”
Gnanli Landrou
Gnanli Landrou is a materials scientist and entrepreneur. He was born in Togo, and when he was a young boy he travelled with his uncle in West Africa watching him build earth houses. Later, whilst studying in France he researched the challenges facing the global construction industry – energy and CO2 intensive production of cement, dwindling supplies of construction grade sand and gravel, and the high cost of concrete, unaffordable in many countries. Gnanli had experienced the benefits of building with clay/earth but also understood how labour-intensive and time-consuming traditional clay brick construction was. As a doctoral student at ETH Zurich, Gnanli worked with mentor Professor Guillaume Habert and together, they developed a process to turn clay-based excavation material into an alternative cement free concrete. Importantly this material can be poured as concrete using the ready-mix infrastructure of the concrete industry.
His ETH spin-off company Oxara, is now developing a cement-free concrete made from clay-based excavation material with his main goal to solve the lack of affordable housing in Africa. In 2019 Forbes magazine listed Gnanli as one of Europe’s 30 most influential entrepreneurs under the age of 30.
This talk is co-hosted and kindly supported by the Engineering Club http://engineeringclub.org.uk/
https://technicalstudies.tumblr.com/
For details contact: Will McLean – w.f.mclean@wmin.ac.uk