Built by Nature Prize Winner Wolf Bierens on Rethinking Housing in East Africa: A Conversation

In October, 2025, CSFEP partner Built by Nature awarded its prestigious annual Prize to six global projects–out of 297 applications. This year, the Prize was awarded to those projects that best exemplified its Principles for Responsible Timber Construction. Among the winners was Biobased Construction East Africa member, Easy Housing.

Easy Housing Founder and CEO Wolf Bierens accepting the Built by Nature annual prize.

CSFEP reached out to Wolf Bierens, Easy Housing Founder and CEO, to find out more about what it meant to him to win the Prize, why their project stood out–and what’s next for Easy Housing. 

Congratulations on winning the Built by Nature Prize! Where were you when you heard the news—and what was your first reaction?

Thank you! I was working from home at my own Easy Home near Kampala, the actual project that won the prize. I was very excited and honoured when I got the news. With so many amazing timber projects around the world, I really did not expect that Easy Housing would be selected as a prize winner. So I was very grateful that the jury recognised our efforts to propagate and introduce sustainable timber construction in places where it hardly exists yet, and with our ambition to scale. Obviously, this is a very challenging mission and ambition, so getting this recognition feels gratifying and gives our team even more energy to make our vision a reality.

For those who might not know: what is Easy Housing, and what problem are you trying to solve?

Easy Housing is a sustainable affordable building concept that uses locally and sustainably sourced timber to build circular and biobased homes in emerging economies like Uganda and Kenya. Our proprietary prefab building technology is optimised for local value chains and infrastructure and uses digital twins to ensure high quality and efficient building, while being cost-competitive with mainstream construction. This makes us unique in this context. Easy Housing envisions a home for everyone. Sustainable. Social. Scalable.

Your winning project—a two-bedroom home built with circular and biobased materials—stood out to the judges. What makes this design unique?

The design itself is a modest but elegant two bedroom home of around 95 sqm. It is fully made out of FSC timber and placed on foundation blocks made of recycled plastic and using our own Easy Housing building concept. This way, we used zero cement for the project and we realised around 15 tonnes of carbon removal through construction stored carbon. In addition, the home is fully self-sufficient with off-grid solar electricity and solar hot water, a biodigestor for sewage and a borehole for clean drinking water. The garden holds a variety of fruit trees; jack fruit, mango, orange, passion fruit, lemon and banana. The holistic approach makes this project unique for the region.

The Prize was awarded to teams that exemplify the Principles for Responsible Timber Construction. Why do those Principles matter?

These principles are incredibly important to tackle our climate and environmental crises. Sustainable forestry needs reliable regional off-take to safeguard its operations, and growing this demand side remains a big challenge for the forestry sector across Sub-Saharan Africa. Sustainable timber construction in Africa boosts regional sustainable forestry, with positive impact on climate mitigation, ecological conservation as well as rural green job creation. At the same time, it can provide sustainable affordable housing, which is critically needed in almost every city in Sub-Saharan Africa. So, these principles solve many problems at once and nurture a regenerative and climate resilient society!

You’re working in East Africa, a region that isn't always the first place named when industry leaders are talking about green building innovation. Why have you chosen to work there?

East Africa holds enormous potential for scaling its sustainable forestry sector. Its forestry sector is already quite well established and the climate of many regions in East Africa is great for plantations. For example, we use tropical pine for our homes, which has a harvest cycle of just 15 years because of the favourable climate. This makes fast scaling of forestry and biobased construction in the region very feasible. But the choice is also personal, I love being an entrepreneur, introducing sustainable prefab timber in places previously unfamiliar with it. This also holds enormous market potential to scale impact and business success. Next to that, Uganda is an amazing country to live and work; so rich in culture and nature, every day is an adventure.

What’s one moment—a conversation, a build, a breakthrough—that sticks with you from this journey?

There have been so many amazing moments in this journey that it is hard to make a choice. We have been honoured and supported with numerous awards and accelerators, and are often invited to events to share our work and vision, which I truly love doing. But to mention one project close to my heart, that would be our first Easy Home, which I built myself in Mozambique end of 2022. This project was truly pivotal, both for localising our value proposition and our concept development, but also for me personally. Working with local carpenters with my very basic Portuguese, exchanging knowledge and learning from the teams, partners and community, was so formative for me. And this project was foundational for the development of Easy Housing.

Finally, what’s next for Easy Housing? What can readers look forward to? 

We are working on a very exciting new strategy that we hope will be transformative for the sustainable affordable housing space in East Africa (and beyond). In partnership with Habitat for Humanity and the Affordable Housing Institute, we are developing an affordable biobased rental concept, called Tutajenga. It will unlock dignified sustainable housing for low-income families in urban context. Families will be able to rent for around $125 per month in these neighbourhoods, which is realistic for low income demographics. We are piloting this in 2026 and aim to raise $5M later next year to develop the first 500 sustainable rental homes in Kampala or Nairobi. And we aim to grow this to thousands of homes per year. This would truly scale our social and ecological impact!

To read more about Easy Housing, visit their website. To learn more about the Principles for Responsible Timber Construction or this year’s prizewinners, visit Built by Nature.