A case has been presented for the adoption of vault forms for large-scale construction of low-cost dwelling units, using appropriate building components. A complete building system has been designed for a typical dwelling unit of area 25 m2, using coconut shell sandwich panels for the building envelope and coconut shell cellular blocks for the construction of cross walls. A vault-shaped steel frame-work system has been developed and fabricated to facilitate speedy and repetitive construction of the vaults. A prototype dwelling unit has also been successfully constructed using the developed technology.