Army mulls Lego-type houses for soldiers

MANILA, Philippines - For Army soldiers, 'Lego' will no longer be just about children’s toys. 

The Army is considering a low-cost housing program that will make available to soldiers Lego-type houses that do not require skilled labor.

Dubbed as 'Bahay ng Kawal ko' (house of my soldier), the project seeks to promote the welfare of troops by building unconventional housing units using affordable materials.

Army spokesman Cpt. Anthony Bacus said the houses are Lego-type since the materials being used are already built in smaller blocks or figures.

“All that is left to do is put or assemble it layer by layer, just like a ‘Lego’ game,” Bacus said in a statement.

“Its construction can be done by non-skilled laborers and with only a few teams of supervisors. Hence, expenses are minimized compared to that of the traditional building construction being done,” he added.

Bacus said each unit only costs P495,000, below the P500,000 to P700,000 range of low cost housing units in the country.

“With this Lego type houses, soldiers and their families can enjoy a decent and secured living at a much lower price,” he said.

A prototype of the house unit was blessed on Monday morning at the Army headquarters in Fort Bonifacio. The unit was a single detached two-storey building and has two bedrooms and two bathrooms with a floor area of 52 square meters.

Special materials, mostly made of a combination of styro, fiberglass, steel bar and cement, are designed to withstand the conventional setting of a tropical country like the Philippines.

However, an important material used to build the houses remains under wraps.

“There is a secret material being used in the construction of this special kind of housing unit that only the manufacturers in Malaysia knew," said Lt. Col. Maynard Camarao, chief operations branch of the Army Chief of Engineers Office.

A team of Army engineers was sent to Malaysia to study the project.

Bacus said Malaysia has adopted the Lego-type units for a housing program for its urban poor. Each unit can be built in just 30 days.

“If adopted by the Philippine Army, this will not only boost its effort in providing low-cost housing units to its personnel, but a giant leap for the Army organization as a whole,” Bacus said.