SLUM Lab MADE IN AFRICA

Sustainable Living Urban Model / Issue 9

ETH Zürich D-ARCH
Brillembourg & Klumpner Chair of
Architecture and Urban Design
ONA J17 Neunbrunnenstrasse 50
8050 Zurich Switzerland
+41 (0) 44 633 9080
urbanthinktank@mac.com
www.u-tt.arch.ethz.ch
www.u-tt.com
Mzukisi Kewana (MK), Khayelitsha
A double story, self-built shack in Khayelitsha
Constructing an Empower Shack prototype in Khayelitsha
 Phumezo's original shack (above) and the newly-constructed Empower Shack prototype (below)
strategies. Deeper problems call for more
FROM CASABLANCA TO expansive solutions. And this is where we
can play a role.
CAPE TOWN:
For architects, focusing on the urban poor
REIMAGINING URBAN POSSIBILITIES does not necessitate an impoverished ar-
chitecture. Our Empower Shack project
was conceived in the spirit of an alternative
Alfredo Brillembourg & development reality already beginning to
percolate through the townships of South
Hubert Klumpner African cities. A reality that moves beyond
EDITORIAL

I don’t think Mandela died peacefully
because he saw people still suffering,
living in shacks without jobs. Mandela
died with anger inside because the
leaders he left behind haven’t fulfilled
his promise.
Nocawe, Khayelitsha Resident
building bore the weight of nation build-
ing – the eradication of poverty through
bricks and mortar development.
The aims of the new government were
embodied in the national Reconstruction
and Development Program (RDP). Its em-
blematic pledge, a housing grant for the
poor and promises of one million low-
cost houses within five years. Twenty years
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outdated prejudices against informal
settlements to recognize the value of in
situ upgrading, and the potential to work
intelligently and creatively with residents
to unlock existing potential. Through the
simple act of allowing the possibility of a
second floor – going vertical – our proto-
type creates additional livable space with-
in the urban environment, new prospects
for on-site commercial enterprise, and a
path towards controlled densification.
In Casablanca we saw how the slum as-

W hen Nelson Mandela passed away

at the beginning of December, we
were building a new shack prototype in
the Cape Town township of Khayelitsha.
We had come a long way since 2009, when
we first set foot on the African continent
amidst the souks of Casablanca. We were
in Morocco to visit André Studer’s hous-
ing complex Sidi Othman, built in 1952
on the outskirts of the city as part of Mi-
chel Écochard’s expansionary urban plan.
A collision of post-war modernism and
anti-colonial liberation zeal, the complex
began as a project to clear the bidonvilles
but had been appropriated in a way that
rendered the iconic structure unrecogniz-
able. Reinforced concrete plinths arrayed
in a rational grid had spawned a vibrant
informal city. The forces of top-down plan-
ning had met the infinite adaptability and
resourcefulness of bottom-up, organic ur-
banism. The formal had been swallowed
by the informal. The lesson for us as de-
signers was to map these facts and poten-
tials and translate them into provocative
interventions.
In South Africa as elsewhere, blanket me-
dia coverage of Mandela’s death verged
later, ‘RDP housing’ remains the center-
piece of South Africa’s response to a still
urgent crisis (‘shack-free cities’ another
sumed formal characteristics on its own
terms. In Cape Town, we see a role for
architectural tactics to bring some of the
lapsed dream). More than three million benefits of the formal city, so long as these
RDP houses have been built. An admi- tactics respond to the aspirations and
rable achievement, but a rate of delivery needs of residents. By taking a still-evolv-
dwarfed by the enormous scale of need. ing design from sketch to physical struc-
With a growing – and urbanizing – popu- ture, we have confirmed our assumptions
lation, the housing deficit blew past two about the need to rethink existing shack
million by 2009. Those facing the intermi- typologies. It is the inhabitants of Khay-
nable wait for a RDP house are locked out elitsha like Phumezo that will reimagine
of the formal property market due to esca- what their homes and city could be.
lating prices, limited access to financing,
and inflexible land regulations complicat-
ing private low-income development. And
for recipients, the dream has not always
matched reality. Newly built formal settle-
ments are often on the outskirts of city
centers, disconnected from public servic-
es and employment opportunities.
Increasingly, social and economic in-
equalities are built into the evolving ge-
ography of the contemporary African city.
But urban scarcity is not inevitable, and
nor does it necessarily demand a material
solution. What it does demand is the ener-
gy and willingness to creatively intervene
in the mechanisms that construct a par-

EDITORIAL
SLUM LAB

on the banal. While it was hard to avoid
cynicism with ringside seats to the coop-
tion of Mandela’s image and legacy, it
did focus our attention and energy on the
community with whom we were working.
Especially, on how the long, drawn-out
struggle Mandela led has manifested in
the built environment. After the storm of
revolution – violent or otherwise – comes
the calm of governing. Inspiration and
passion traded for incremental imple-
mentation. The forced removals and racial
segregation of the apartheid era ensured
questions of urban design carried heavy
baggage after the euphoria of 1994. House
ticular scarcity – reshaping the urban ex-
perience through a focus on process, not
product. Architecture spatializes and ma-
terializes uneven development – dynamics
that then feedback into the complex sys-
tem of the city to further fragment, segre-
gate and deprive. Yet people living amidst
conditions of everyday scarcity in cities
frequently demonstrate an innate capacity
to refashion the built environment. Using
the limited resources found within their
reach, they address to varying degrees the
failure of urban governance and resource
distribution that denies them spatial jus-
tice. These, however, are not long-term

8 9
 EDITORIAL AFRICA SOUTH AFRICA EMPOWER SHACK
Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner Andres Lepik Edgar Pieterse Introduction (164)
From Casablanca To Cape Town: Afritecture: Building Social Change (24) Pushing Against The Frontiers Of Urban Studies In (South) Africa (88)
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Reimagining Urban Possibilities (8) The Housing Context (165)

Dirk E Hebel and Felix Heisel Peter Rich and Patricia Theron Research Phase 1 (166)
Formal, Informal And Forms Of In-Between (28) Mandela' s Yard, Alexandra: Documentation As A Research Tool
CONTRIBUTORS (12) For Learning About Space And Place (94) Swisspearl Workshop (168)

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Active Social Architecture Workshop Prototype (174)
Early Childhood Development Centers For Plan Rwanda (34) Sarah Charlton
CREDITS (14) Housing Dreams And Lived Realities: Research Phase 2 (177)
The RDP Program In Practice (100)
Harald Gründl Components Library (178)
A Slum Toilet (38)
PHOTO ESSAYS Thiresh Govender Two Story Shack Analysis (180)
Home Sweet Resilience: Lessons From Shebeens (106)
David Morton Materials And Structure (182)
Filippo Romano Chamanculo In Reeds, Wood, Zinc And Concrete (42)
The Vivigals (57) Liza Cirolia The Modular System (184)
The Architect Can’t Save Us: Some Thoughts On The Limits Of
Kéré Architecture Tech Fix Housing Solutions (112) Blocking Out (185)
Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler Designing For Climate: Future African Sustainability (48)
Bicycle Portraits (103) Spatial Analysis (186)
Kristen Kornienko
Yutaka Sho Finding Hope And The Spatial Dimensions Of Human Rights The Cluster System (187)
Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse On Membership (54) In The Urban Informal Vernacular (116)
Ponte City (120) Financing Options (189)

The ‘Ponte City’ photo essay appears courtesy of Killian Doherty Charlotte Lemanski In Situ Construction (190)
Goodman Gallery Strengthening Kigali’s Redevelopment Through ‘Hybrid’ Gentrification In State-Subsidized Housing Settlements (136)
‘Weak Urbanism’ (60) The Future (192)

Alexander Opper Exhibition (193)

Jenny F Mbaye Productive ‘Leakage’ And The ‘Folding’ Of The Studio
On The Biopolitics Of Hip-Hop Galsen: Into The Field (140)
Contestation Art And Democratized Imaginations (64)

Paula Meth
Jonathan Silver Security And Dignity For All: Informal Settlement Upgrading
The Geography Of Incremental Infrastructures And Experiences of Violence (144)
In An Accra Slum (68)

Ben Mansfield
J M Ledgard Urban Agriculture In Informal Settlements (148)
The Microscopic Safari: Into The Last Forest Of Nairobi (72)

Astrid Ley, Josefine Fokdal and Peter Herrle

Beyond Entropy From Beneficiaries To Negotiators: How Urban Poor Networks
Energy And Entropy (76) Bargain For Better Housing (152)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Laufen Manifesto (80) Zachary Levenson

Permanent Temporariness: Relocation Camps In
Post-Apartheid Cape Town (156)

[in]formalStudio: Marlboro South

The Processes Of Engagement Map (159)

10 11

C O N T R I B U T O R S
In Order of Appearance
CONTRIBUTORS
● Chapter: Africa ● Chapter: South Africa
Alfredo Brillembourg
Alfredo Brillembourg is founder of interdis-
ciplinary design firm Urban-Think Tank, and
holds a Chair of Architecture and Urban
Design at ETH Zürich.
Hubert Klumpner
Hubert Klumpner is Dean of the Depart-
ment of Architecture at ETH Zürich and a
principal of interdisciplinary design firm
Urban-Think Tank.
Andres Lepik
Andres Lepik is Director of the Architek-
turmuseum der Technischen Universität
München and curated the recent exhibition
AFRITECTURE: Building Social Change.
Dirk E Hebel
Dirk Hebel is an Assistant Professor of
Architecture and Construction at the Future
Cities Laboratory in Singapore and was the
founding Scientific Director of the Ethiopian
Institute of Architecture, Building Construc-
tion and City Development.
Felix Heisel
SLUM LAB
Felix Heisel is a researcher in the Chair
of Architecture and Construction at the
Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore and
was a lecturer at the Ethiopian Institute of
Architecture, Building Construction and
City Development.
Active Social Architecture
Active Social Architecture is a Kigali-based
architecture and design firm founded by
Tomà Berlanda and Nerea Amorós Elorduy.
● Chapter: Empower Shack
Harald Gründl
Harald Gründl is founder of the Institute of
Design Research Vienna and a managing
partner of Viennese design studio EOOS.
David Morton
David Morton is a PhD candidate in African
history at the University of Minnesota and a
fellow of the Carter G Woodson Institute of
African American and African Studies at the
University of Virginia.
Kéré Architecture
Kéré Architecture is a Berlin-based archi-
tecture office founded by Diébédo Francis
Kéré.
Yutaka Sho
Yutaka Sho is an Assistant Professor at
the Syracuse School of Architecture and
founder of interdisciplinary design firm
General Architecture Collaborative.
Filippo Romano
Filippo Romano is a documentary and
architecture photographer and member of
the agency Luzphoto.
Killian Doherty
Killian Doherty is founder of design and
research studio Architectural [Field] Office
and a lecturer at KIST Rwanda.
12
Jenny F Mbaye
Jenny Mbaye is a post-doctoral fellow at the
African Center for Cities in Cape Town.
Jonathan Silver
Jonathan Silver is a post-doctoral research-
er at the University of Durham and LSE
Cities at the London School of Economics.
J M Ledgard
Jonathan Ledgard is the East Africa cor-
respondent for The Economist and founder
of the AFROTECH initiative at EPFL in
Lausanne.
Beyond Entropy
Beyond Entropy is an independent collab-
orative practice founded by Stefano Rabolli
Pansera, who with Paula Nascimento
curated the first Angola Pavilion at the 13th
Venice Biennale of Architecture.
Edgar Pieterse
Edgar Pieterse is the South African
Research Chair in Urban Policy at the
University of Cape Town and Director of the
African Center for Cities.
Peter Rich
Peter Rich is a principal architect at Peter
Rich Architects in Johannesburg.
Patricia Theron
Patricia Theron is an architectural tech-
nologist at Albonico & Sack Metacity in
Johannesburg.
Sarah Charlton
Sarah Charlton is a Senior Lecturer in the
School of Architecture and Planning at the
University of the Witwatersrand in Johan-
nesburg.
Stan Engelbrecht
Stan Engelbrecht is a documentary pho-
tographer and cycling enthusiast based in
South Africa.
Nic Grobler
Nic Grobler is a documentary photographer
and cycling enthusiast based in South
Africa.
Thiresh Govender
Thiresh Govender is an architect and urban
designer at Johannesburg-based interdisci-
plinary design studio UrbanWorks.
Liza Cirolia
Liza Cirolia is a researcher and coordina-
tor of the Sustainable Human Settlements
CityLab at the African Center for Cities in
Cape Town.
Kristen Kornienko
Kristen Kornienko recently completed a
doctorate at the School of Architecture and
Planning at the University of the Witwa-
tersrand in Johannesburg.
Mikhael Subotzky
Mikhael Subotzky is a Johannesburg-based
photographer and associate member of
Magnum Photos.
Patrick Waterhouse
Patrick Waterhouse is an artist and Editor-
in-Chief of Colors Magazine.
Charlotte Lemanski
Charlotte Lemanski is a Senior Lecturer
at University College London and a Senior
Research Fellow at the University of Johan-
nesburg.
Alexander Opper Thomas Auer
Alexander Opper is Director of the MTech Thomas Auer is a partner and Managing
Architectural Technology program at the Director of Transsolar, an engineering firm
University of Johannesburg. specializing in energy efficient building
design.
Paula Meth Heinrich Wolff
Paula Meth is a Senior Lecturer in Town Heinrich Wolff is co-founder of Wolff Archi-
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and Regional Planning at the University of tects and a guest professor in the Depart-
Sheffield. ment of Architecture at ETH Zürich.
Arturo Brillembourg
Ben Mansfield
Arturo Brillembourg is President of
Ben Mansfield is an independent land- Farmington Asset Management and an
scape architect with project experience in economist interested in the economics of
Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. the urban poor.
Astrid Ley Andy Bolnick
Astrid Ley is a post-doctoral researcher in Andy Bolnick is founder of Cape Town-
the HABITAT Unit at the Technischen Uni- based informal settlement upgrading NGO
versität Berlin and visiting Senior Lecturer Ikhayalami.
at the University of the Witwatersrand in
Johannesburg.
Scott Lloyd
Josefine Fokda Scott Lloyd is founder of design and re-
search studio Deliver and coordinated the
Josefine Fokda is Senior Researcher in the Empower Shack project for the Brillem-
HABITAT Unit at the Technischen Univer- bourg & Klumpner Chair of Architecture
sität Berlin. and Urban Design at ETH Zürich.
Peter Herrle
Peter Herrle is a Professor of International
Urbanism and Director of the HABITAT Unit
at the Technischen Universität Berlin.
Zachary Levenson
Zachary Levenson is a PhD candidate in
CONTRIBUTORS
sociology at the University of California,
Berkeley.
[in]formalStudio: Malboro South
[in]formalStudio: Marlboro South is a
design and research initiative conceived
by Thorsten Deckler and Anne Graupner of
Johannesburg-based architectural practice
26’10 south Architects, and Alexander Op-
per from the University of Johannesburg.
13
 SLUM LAB ISSUE 9

EDITORS EDITORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY Thomas Bechtler, Natalya Critchley,

Alfredo Brillembourg (ETH Zürich) Daniel Schwartz (U-TT/ETH Zürich) Philip Block, Georg Hobelsberger,
Hubert Klumpner (ETH Zürich) Andreas Lange, Henri Muhr, Peter Steiner

SLUM LAB RESEARCH TEAM

GUEST EDITOR Giulia Celentano SLUM Lab magazine is a unique lab that
CREDITS

Alexis Kalagas (ETH Zürich)
EMPOWER SHACK
COORDINATOR
Scott Lloyd (ETH Zürich)
DESIGN
Floyd E. Schulze (W—THM)
Hans Rufer works as a nomadic enterprise, bring-
Ilaria Riscassi ing planners, academics, architects and
students from all areas of the globe to
converge and work towards an understand-
SPONSOR ing of the link between urban planning,
Swisspearl/Eternit poverty alleviation and sustainable urban
development. It was founded by Alfredo
Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner at
SPECIAL THANKS Columbia University and is now part of their
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Brillembourg curriculum at ETH Zürich.
Ochoa Foundation, Christine and www.slumlab.org

It is now more than 25 years since Eternit (Schweiz) AG first awarded the ‘Eternit Architecture Prize’ and
so made an important contribution to the education and advancement of young architects. Continu-
ing this tradition, the ‘Eternit Summer School’ has been set up in renewed close cooperation with ETH
Zürich. The two-week seminar is to be held every two years and is recognized as an official part of the
architecture study program. Project results are presented and published the following year. In every
summer school, the focus turns towards a current topic that represents interesting issues in architec-
ture and society. This is intended to encourage the students to reflect on their own position and respon-
sibility as an architect in relation to the social, political and economic challenges of our time.

In collaboration with the Brillembourg & Klumpner Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, the sec-
ond summer school – ‘Empower Shack’ – last autumn focused on informal settlements and their living
conditions. A prototype was developed on the basis of a real plot of land in Khayelitsha, the third largest
township in South Africa, meeting the requirements from both an economic and ecological point of view.
From the viewpoint of urban planning, the house also had to be able to form high-quality spaces, provide
security, and to respond to a diversity of surroundings. After further refinements, it was then constructed
in South Africa with a view to proving its suitability on a practical level. Time will tell whether the proto-
type will survive its baptism of fire and perhaps even go into series production some time in the future.

The forecasts indicate that it is high time to address the issue of increasing population density in devel-
oping countries and its effects. The world population is set to increase from seven to 9.6 billion people
by 2050. The largest increase is expected in Africa, where the population is likely to more than double.
This increase in population density will cause problems, especially in the townships and their informal
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settlements. How are we dealing with this issue? How can the industrial nations make a contribution?
The summer school endeavored to highlight initial approaches. We are only at the initial stage, however,
of the process. Mastering these challenges will be one of our most important tasks for the 21st century.

We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to all participants, especially to the
Brillembourg & Klumpner Chair at ETH Zürich, but also to the students for the many interesting and
exciting approaches, which not only made a contribution to the subject but also enriched and extended
our perspective.

Christine Dietrich
Head of Architecture and Communications
Eternit (Schweiz) AG Nobom, Matutu, Nontsokolo and Nahdipha, Khayelitsha

14
Sesethu and Nosiphelo, Khayelitsha Tumelo, Dunoon
AFRICA
Chapter One
Botswana hip-hop artists Mo and Khwezi
A braai stand in Khayelitsha

‘ARCHITECTURE IN AFRICA IS
NOURISHED BY A TRADITION THAT
IS THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD, AND
TODAY, IT IS ABOUT TO INAUGURATE
A COMPLETELY NEW PHASE’ –
UDO   KULTERMANN,
NEUES BAUEN IN AFRIKA.
By Andres Lepik
H alf a century ago, in a broadly con-
ceived overview, German architec-
tural historian Udo Kultermann observed
a breakthrough to a new architecture in
Africa. The majority of the examples he
describes, however, represent variants of
the architectural modernism that estab-
lished itself first in Europe, and then in
North America, beginning in the 1920s.
Architects from abroad, as well as others
from African countries, adapted these
concepts to locally specific climatic condi-
tions. Kultermann was nonetheless aware
that, with such buildings, no completely
new start had materialized. He refers quite
explicitly to many living traditions of ver-
nacular building and argues that a new be-
ginning for African architecture following
the acquisition of political independence
can only be achieved by African architects
themselves with attention to their own tra-
ditions and to local social requirements1.
But where does contemporary African ar-
chitecture stand in the early 21st century?
Have Kultermann’s aspirations and expec-
tations been fulfilled in the meantime? To
begin with, it needs to be pointed out that
in general, astonishingly little information
about current architectural production in
Africa is available. Although scholarship
and the media worldwide have focused at-
tention on African social, economic, and
cultural issues for many years and have fo-
cused in particular on the colonial histo-
ries of many African lands, there remains
a shortage of exhibitions and monographs
on contemporary architecture. Especially
in comparison to the countless reports
and exhibitions on architecture in Asia,
architects in the countries of Africa and
architectural production on the continent
are strikingly underrepresented. Why is
this the case? Is the problem an insuffi-
cient level of attentiveness, or are compa-
rable developments in architecture simply
not taking place in these countries?
Certainly, many regions of Africa are en-
joying sustained economic growth2, ac-
companied by brisk building activity. Rap-
id urbanization in particular is regarded
by UN-HABITAT as an indispensable index
of economic development. In recent years,
the swift expansion of large African cities
has emerged as one topic of academic in-
vestigation. This concern may be due, at
least partly, to the fact the megacity has
been a topic of growing importance for
economic, urban, and social research.
Central to the analyses of the ‘Harvard
Project on the City’, directed by Rem Kool-
haas and Sanford Kwinter, was the growth
of cities in China and then of those in Af-
rica3. These studies were followed by the
‘Urban Age’ conference at the London
School of Economics 4. Since 2007, with
the African Center for Cities, there is at
least one African institution examining
these urban developments, and not just
from the perspective of architects and city
planners, but also with the involvement of
sociologists, artists, and anthropologists.
Research into the growth of Africa’s cit-
ies has resulted in international exhibi-
tions and publications. But these have
dealt only to a limited degree with archi-
tecture – with concrete planning and the
realization of projects, which involve a far-
reaching cultural dimension. As we know,
‘building’ cannot be equated with ‘archi-
tecture’, and the African situation betrays
similarities with those in many Asian and
Latin American countries: where formal
planning measures are being implement-
ed, the breakneck growth of the mega-
cities is being guided to an overwhelming
degree by politicians, building developers,
and investors. For the most part, however,
such actors have little comprehension of
the cultural perspective of architecture.
In particular, the planning of entirely
new cities, so-called ‘new towns’, such as
Kilamba in Angola, covering 5,000 hect-
ares, which are realized with investor
25
funds and workers from China, exemplify
superbly how culturally alien approaches
are being implemented with no regard
for actual needs or indigenous traditions.
In the long-term, such projects can be
expected to fail or remain foreign bodies
in cultural surroundings that have been
shaped very differently.
Alongside such official building endeav-
ors, which are initiated and propelled by
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political decision-makers, one finds equal-
ly strong growth in the informal sector.
Currently around 61 percent of sub-Saha-
ran urban dwellers live in slums5. The cit-
ies, then, are also expanding through these
informal settlements, to some extent on a
larger scale than the urban districts being
planned by governments. It is precisely
these African slums that are receiving in-
creasing public attention, often through
best-selling volumes of reportage exam-
ining the topic as a global phenomenon6.
Similarly, through films like Kinshasa Kids
and projects such as ‘Women Are Heroes’
by French artist JR, who mounted enor-
mous portraits of women on slum build-
ings and walls, gaining coverage in glossy
magazines in Europe and North America.
These representations of slum life can be
regarded as a trend, one that contributes to
the removal of a taboo. The simplifications
these efforts often entail lead to claims
about journalistic exploitation of people
in precarious living situations. Concern-
ing the development of informal building,
however, we are seeing increasing num-
bers of subject-specific investigations as
diverse as the cities and countries where
they are conducted.
Afritecture: What Role
Does Architecture Play?
More than ever before, traditions of ver-
nacular architecture in Africa – which can
be traced back thousands of years – are in
danger of simply disappearing. Think, for
example, of building with clay or adobe, a
technique developed to the highest perfec-
AFRICA
tion by the Dogon people in what is today
the nation of Mali – a legacy threatened
more than ever before by a military con-
flict that has raged since 2012. But other
traditional techniques as well are being
displaced to an increasing degree by the
import of building materials and technol-
ogies requiring considerable levels of fos-
sil energy, and which can neither be pro-
duced nor processed by local craft workers.
After completion, such buildings generally
dictate the continuing reliance on further
energy-devouring technologies, such as air
conditioning. The warnings issued as far
back as the early 1950s by Egyptian archi-

AFRICA
tect Hassan Fathy, who cautioned about
the dangers of modernization for his coun-
try, have lost none of their urgency – and
they apply to Africa as a whole.
Too often, the numerous high-quality
buildings dating from the colonial era up
to modernism are simply devalued due to
their association with a history that fre-
quently involved oppression and violence.
The most urgent current priority, if future
African architecture is to discover its own
identity independently of developments
that are devoid of history and ideas, are
high-quality reference buildings. In re-
cent years, individual researchers have
attempted to identify such buildings and
to raise public awareness7. Similarly, the
website www.archiafrika.org is actively in-
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volved in assembling and disseminating
the findings of such projects. Especially in
the realm of socially engaged planning and
building, it is not difficult to identify im-
portant developments in African architec-
ture, including innovative approaches that
could serve as prototypes in other areas.
Exhibition And Catalogue
Under the title AFRITECTURE: Building
Social Change, I curated an exhibition
and accompanying catalogue focusing on
The new town of Kilamba, erected by Chinese firms 30 kilometers outside the Angolan capital Luanda
one specific development in Africa: 29 ar-
chitectural offices have realized building
projects in 11 sub-Saharan African coun-
tries that exemplify sustainable approach-
es to the social, economic, and cultural
conditions existing locally. These projects
include schools, kindergartens, health
clinics, and women’s centers, but also li-
braries, market and sports facilities, and
assembly halls. The focus on such build-
ing types is based on the observation that
the role played by designers and architects
has increasingly been scrutinized for its
social engagement.
Numerous recent publications have dealt
with the kinds of social change that can be
instigated and fostered by architecture.
Exhibitions such as Design for the Other
90%, shown at the Cooper-Hewitt Muse-
um in 2007, and Small Scale, Big Change:
New Architectures of Engagement, shown
at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010,
have taken up this topic. In the wake of
the financial crisis of 2008, it appears that
the tasks of architecture and design in a
global society are being called radically
into question once again. It seemed only
fitting, then, to showcase such buildings
in an exhibition on contemporary African
architecture – projects that examine the is-
sues raised by the local context, whether
in relation to materials or to ecological
and social conditions. Such endeavors
26
exemplify the ways in which architecture
in Africa can function as an experimental
laboratory for pioneering approaches. The
exhibition was confined to the countries
of sub-Saharan Africa, since the Maghreb
has been shaped by significantly different
histories and cultural orientations.
The Architects
While many of the buildings presented
were conceived and realized with direct
support from local communities, each
one nonetheless began with a planner
who was responsible for initiating and
guiding the process and for ensuring the
design was of the highest possible qual-
ity. Who are the architects who give birth
to these projects? The exhibition showed
that these initiatives, as well as the designs
themselves, represent many different ten-
dencies. They are characterized by a hori-
zon of knowledge that is global in the best
sense, one that provides the architects
with a broad theoretical – and often practi-
cal – basis for engaging in planning proce-
dures on location. Many of the architects
came from Africa, and a few had studied
or taught abroad. Approximately one-half
of the buildings were planned and ex-
ecuted, however, by architects who came
to Africa from Europe or the United States
(US), and who often returned there after a
project had been completed, some staying
for extended periods of time in order to
immerse themselves in local living condi-
tions. Such experiences with different cul-
tural contexts are always stimulating, and
sharpen sensitivities to local needs.
Because many of the buildings presented
were realized without the involvement of
official building policies, financing often
came from private contributions or aid
organizations. Some architects even set
up their own foundations to launch their
projects. During his architectural studies
in Berlin more than ten years ago, Diébé-
do Francis Kéré, who was born in Burkina
Faso, founded the association Schulbaus-
teine für Gando (School Building Blocks
for Gando) with the goal of building an
urgently needed school in his home vil-
lage, Gando. Architects from abroad have
also set up foundations, among them
Emilio and Matteo Caravatti with their
Africabougou. With its assistance, and
very much in the spirit of Hassan Fathy,
they have introduced the Nubian vault to
Mali – a technology that is ideally suited
to regional climate conditions and can be
reproduced and maintained by local resi-
dents. Sharon Davis, Nina Maritz, Peter
Rich, Laurent Séchaud, the architectural
practice tamassociati, and nearly all of the
other featured architects demonstrated
through their projects and initiatives that
the question is first and foremost one of
developing appropriate designs through
precise knowledge of local conditions.
Architectural Education
That many of the projects were instigated
and often designed as well by architects
from abroad is related to the special situ-
ation of architectural education in Africa.
In relation to both population numbers
and building activity, the density and
range of architectural schools in the sub-
Saharan countries is far lower than the
European average. As a consequence, the
ratio of inhabitants to trained architects
is extremely low. In countries like Kenya,
the figure is around 1:60,000 – in Italy, it is
1:600 8. In only a few countries, in particu-
lar Nigeria and South Africa, do we find
a more longstanding tradition of archi-
tectural schools, but as a rule, these have
consistently followed British or American
educational models. In South Africa espe-
cially, black students were not admitted
until well into the 1970s. In other areas, a
commensurate orientation of teaching to
the specific conditions of the country was
hindered for a long time by institutional
structures shaped by colonialism.
Precisely for this reason, it has been
deemed extraordinarily important in re-
cent years to establish new architecture
schools or departments such as the Fac-
ulty of Architecture and Environmental
Design at Kigali Institute of Science and
Technology (KIST) in Rwanda. There, with
assistance from innovative architects,
some of whom – such as Tomà Berlanda
and Killian Doherty – have been active in
residence for a long time, an entirely new
curriculum for architecture was devel-
oped. This new institution seems certain
to point the way toward vital tendencies in
the newly forming architectural commu-
nity in Rwanda. Through collaborations,
such as with the architectural faculty of
the IUAV in Venice, KIST has introduced a
broad spectrum of courses and now offers
students a wide range of technical exper-
tise and practical experience.
Also involving intensive collaborations are
the design-build programs – university-
based projects launched in particular by
institutions of higher learning in Europe
and the US, which make it possible for stu-
dents, together with local craft workers, to
gain practical building experience. These
are sometimes controversial, as local ar-
chitectural schools have rarely been inte-
grated 9. Architects such as Peter Fattinger
from TU Vienna, Bernadette Heiermann
from the RWTH Aachen, and Hermann
Kaufmann from TU München have been
active in Africa for many years, they imple-
menting diverse projects such as kinder-
gartens and schools. The learning effect
is reciprocal, and even if students from
abroad spend only brief intervals in Afri-
ca, the buildings remain and find concrete
social uses after being taken over by local
operators. In many instances, the success
and recognition of a building leads subse-
quently to expansions and successor com-
missions. Simply the fact that most faculty
members have built functioning networks
over periods lasting many years speaks to
the mutual benefit of such collaborations.
Tasks And Perspectives
It would be presumptuous to claim to
survey, much less fully explicate, contem-
porary architectural developments across
the entire continent – or even a region
such as sub-Saharan Africa – in a single
exhibition. In a recent book, architect Da-
vid Adjaye nonetheless dared to present a
radically personal view, and encompass
the continent as a whole. Precisely by cap-
turing diverse voices that report on a range
of personal and professional experiences,
it becomes possible to define exemplary
positions and identify new perspectives.
In the coming years, one of the central
27
planning tasks will be to deal with con-
tinuing urban growth, in particular of in-
formal settlements. Completely absent in
Africa today is an official strategy for deal-
ing with informal settlements of the kind
a number of Latin American states were
able to implement successfully begin-
ning in the 1990s. Even the government of
South Africa, which introduced a housing
program immediately after the demise of
apartheid, has not developed any truly ef-
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fective ideas to date for dealing with affect-
ed urban districts. In view of the dramatic
growth of cities anticipated, strategies are
urgently needed to bring formally planned
districts into some kind of functional har-
mony with informal settlements.
For these reasons, and given imminent
developments on the continent, a con-
sideration of the social dimension of ar-
chitecture is of compelling urgency. This
perspective is shared by all of the projects
selected, which qualified as prototypes
and reference buildings for a new archi-
tecture in Africa. They addressed central
questions of coexistence in human com-
munities and offered innovative designs
that nearly always possessed a model
character: striving simultaneously for
ecological and social sustainability and
anchored in local conditions while none-
theless remaining keenly aware of global
themes. But without exception, and not-
withstanding other indispensable factors,
aesthetic considerations played a vital role
in these buildings. Nor should the impor-
tance of this aspect be underestimated,
because only where a work of architecture
succeeds in translating all of the basic re-
quirements into a beautiful form does it
demonstrate its relevance for the future.
This essay was originally published in modified
form in the exhibition catalogue for AFRITECTURE:
Building Social Change.
1 Udo Kultermann, Neues Bauen in Afrika (1963)
9.
2 J O’S, ‘Growth and Other Good Things’, The
Economist (1 May 2013).
3 See Rem Koolhaas et al, Mutations (2001).
AFRICA
4 Published in Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic
(eds), The Endless City: The Urban Age Project
(2007).
5 See Kaci Racelma, ‘Towards African Cities
Without Slums’ in Africa Renewal Online (April
2012).
6 See eg: Robert Neuwirth, Shadow Cities: A
Billion Squatters (2005); Mike Davis, Planet of
Slums (2007); Doug Saunders, Arrival City: How
the Largest Migration in History is Reshaping
Our World (2011).
7 Antoni Folkers, Modern Architecture in Africa
(2010).
8 Information obtained from the Kigali Institute of
Science and Technology (KIST).
9 For an overview of the development of design-
build programs, see Dietmar Steiner, ‘The
Design-Build Movement’ (2013) 211 ARCH+ 152.
10 David Adjaye, Adjaye, Africa, Architecture
(2011).

WHILE A POSITIVE FACTOR IN POVERTY
REDUCTION, URBANIZATION REQUIRES
CAREFUL PLANNING AND INNOVATIVE
HOUSING DESIGNS CAPITALIZING
ON LOCAL RESOURCES AND
PRACTICES. EFFORTS TO DO SO HAVE
LARGELY FAILED IN THE FAST
GROWING CITIES OF AFRICA –
ETHIOPIA IS NO EXCEPTION.
By Dirk E Hebel and Felix Heisel
The Formal
B esides its strong efforts concerning
future urban development, Ethiopia is
missing a robust national urban housing
strategy, which addresses the incredible
housing shortage combined with the over-
whelming poverty rate of its inhabitants.
In 2004, the so-called ‘Grand Housing
Development Program’ was initiated to
intervene in the ever-increasing demand
for housing. This formal, top-down pro-
gram aimed to develop 200,000 new hous-
ing units within five years in order to ad-
dress half of the housing backlog, with
cooperatives, real estate developers and
individuals expected to fill the remaining
gap. Only a fraction of the original plan
has been realized, however, and contrary
to those initial ideas, development has
tended to consume an enormous amount
of urban land, introducing an inflexible
typology while neglecting the importance
of the surrounding space as a social and
economic base for its inhabitants.
The allocation of future tenants was en-
acted via a lottery system. It came as a
surprise to the housing agency when only
45 percent of lottery winners appeared to
sign and collect their houses. The majority
of the urban poor in Addis Ababa simply
cannot afford to pay basic infrastructure
costs for services such as water, electric-
ity, or garbage removal – all items of a
catalogue for formal settlements. Their
daily income is usually generated from
informal and local businesses, which are
vanishing constantly due to the renewal
approach of the condominiums. Higher-
priced supermarkets are replacing local
markets, raising costs and eating up the
profits residents might enjoy from renting
out their housing-lottery win. The strong
social ties and unique historical mixture
of income groups in single neighborhoods
has been threatened by homogeneous ty-
pology planning, leading to social and
spatial segregation – a trend that will only
worsen with increasing rural in-migra-
tion. Future housing programs must focus
on these socio-political issues.
The Informal
As a start, the informal settlements in Ad-
dis Ababa must be recognized as an inte-
gral part of the city’s fabric, with a wealth
of hidden potential. Despite the mas-
sive formal efforts to reduce the housing
shortage and provide new infrastructure,
the majority of inhabitants of Addis Ababa
still live in informal settlements. UN-HAB-
ITAT estimates an astonishing 80 percent
of all dwellings in the city are in ‘slum-
like, sub-standard’ condition1. Most of the
housing stock consists of so-called kebele
houses – nationalized dwellings from the
time of the Derg regime, which are rented
to the urban poor. Although incredibly
cheap, these buildings are 40-year old
mud constructions without access to ba-
sic infrastructure. Faced with the need for
shelter, Addis Ababa’s inhabitants have
thus started to provide for themselves.
Housing stress results in a number of dif-
ferent phenomena in Addis Ababa. Apart
from overcrowding, it prompts self-help
emergency solutions in the form of ex-
tending and subdividing existing houses.
The mushrooming of moonlight houses
known as chereka bet in the fringes is an-
other important consequence. The name
‘moonshine house’ relates to the time
of construction: at night, under the light
29
of the moon. In theory, these houses are
built overnight on government land, with
the goal to look finished and ‘old’ in the
morning, as if they had always been there.
While officials very often stop illegal con-
struction sites, the government rarely
tears down a finished chereka bet unless
the land needs to be used immediately for
a different, formal purpose. In 2002, such
informal constructions occupying land
illegally were estimated to cover roughly
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2,000 hectares of land, accounting for 4
percent of the city area and 7 percent of
the built up area2. In the period since, this
number has increased quickly.
To build a chereka bet, the future owner
usually buys a small plot from a farmer.
This transaction is of course illegal and
merely a sale of user rights between the
involved parties, since all land in Ethiopia
is government owned. Next, the occupant
will collect the necessary building mate-
rial and hide it on site. While mud and
stones can usually be found on the spot,
the eucalyptus for the structural frame
will be bought (although described as fire
wood). Doors, windows and corrugated
iron sheets can all be found recycled at
Mercato, the biggest open air market in
Africa, or any of the recently cleared in-
formal settlements in the city center. As
such, the construction uses only local and
affordable materials.
The construction of a chereka bet is a social
event in the community. Skilled carpenters
and builders, as well as neighbors, usually
come together to help erect the structure
within one night. Knowing that one day
the favor will be repaid in some way, this
labor is free of charge. Over time, former
farmland has evolved into settlements,
extending private housing construction to
informal town planning with roads, public
spaces, churches, schools and infrastruc-
ture such as wells and sewage – all built in
the ‘moonlight’. This effort, next to other
forms of self-provided housing, highlights
the incredible need that exists. But more
importantly, the potential that can be
found in the informal sphere, providing
labor, skill, local knowledge, time and pri-
AFRICA
vate capital to build cities.
The In-Between
Addis Ababa’s housing market operates
on two extremes. While the formal pro-
vides security of tenure and infrastructure,
housing is unaffordable for the majority
of tenants and provision too slow to close
the gap between demand and supply. The
informal, while demonstrating an incred-
ible potential to solve existing problems,
is providing housing with illegal methods.
 Constant insecurity of tenure is resulting
in low quality construction and missing
infrastructure development for the major-
ity of citizens. Alternative approaches to
urban planning could operate in-between
those extreme positions and place a pre-
mium on empowerment. The idea here is
to enable people to shape their own im-
mediate environment in a sustainable and
responsible way. The urban system is thus
future tenants. So far, four different proto-
typologies were developed, each two sto-
ries high, in order to produce a catalogue
of possibilities and alternatives to the
current tendency of multi- and high-rise
structures. In addition, urban neighbor-
hood layouts were developed, proving that
similar densities as the Grand Housing
Program could be reached with compact
standing, double story units.
tural values of different societies are left
behind. By accepting their uniqueness
and formulating an alternative aspiration
to go with the term ‘modern’, not only
Ethiopia, but many other developing ter-
ritories, would have the chance to learn
from their existing, intense urban density.
This could be used as a starting point to
develop a ‘reverse modernism’, where the
so called ‘North’ would start learning from

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The moonlight construction of a chereka bet informal dwelling The Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit (SUDU) typology
AFRICA

IN THEORY, THESE The Sustainable Incremental Construction Unit (SICU) typology

HOUSES ARE BUILT

OVERNIGHT ON
GOVERNMENT LAND,
WITH THE GOAL TO LOOK
FINISHED AND ‘OLD’
IN THE MORNING,
AS IF THEY HAD
ALWAYS BEEN THERE.
understood as a key ‘player’ contributing
to capacity building. Moreover, the term
‘modern’ takes on a new meaning – no
longer simply describing an architectural
feature, typology, or material choice, but
rather defining qualities of space and life.

A ‘modern’ Addis Ababa, according to this

thesis, would be a city for the people and
their unique cultural and social condi-
tions. It would empower society to activate
its own financial as well as intellectual re-
sources to develop the country and nour-
ish small production facilities within the
city. It would not shop elsewhere for an ur-
ban image associated solely with the ser-

AFRICA
SLUM LAB

vice sector and commodity consumption.

This would be modernization from within
and in-between.

An Alternative Approach
In 2009, the newly founded Ethiopian
Institute of Architecture, Building Con-
struction and City Development began a
long-term research project investigating
the possibilities of ‘double story urban-
ism’, by activating local building materi-
als, skills and the economic resources of
An Ethiopian saying states that ‘your next
door neighbor is more important than a
distant relative’3. Knowing your neighbor
and sharing resources are substantial
preconditions to building any society. Un-
fortunately, social ties usually decrease
with growing wealth and its associated ar-
chitectural representation. In this sense,
the globalized high-rise typology appears
to be a political as well as economic suc-
cess story, whereby unique social and cul-
the ‘South’. In our opinion, a low-rise en-
vironment could play an important role as
part of the three-dimensional network of
spaces necessary for such a development.
The four typologies each focus on a spe-
cial material or socio-political system.
While the Sustainable Urban Dwelling
Unit (SUDU) concentrates on loam as its
major building material and introduces a
ceiling and roof structure built in a vaulted
geometry without using any formwork, the

30 31

AFRICA
Sustainable Emerging City Unit (SECU)
was constructed completely out of com-
pressed straw panels. The Modular Urban
Living Unit (MULU) took the idea to use
disregarded shipping containers as the
basic material for a whole neighborhood,
a valid resource for the building industry
in an import-oriented economy. Finally,
the Sustainable Incremental Construc-
tion Unit (SICU) questions the role of the
architect. The project provides only basic
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building elements such as foundations,
structural two-story framing, a stair, a
roof, and rudimental infrastructural ac-
cess to fresh water and sewage or a septic
tank. At this stage, the structure can be
handed over to the client, who can de-
cide to finish the house according to their
specific needs and financial possibilities,
leveraging their own networks of help-
ers, skills and material acquisitions. The
house would grow with its owners, subject
to official supervision to ensure compli-
ance with rules concerning height, mate-
rial choice, safety regulations and daylight
exposure (for instance).
The aim of the research project is to create
an alternative approach to formal public
housing schemes, allowing homeowners
to identify with their immediate environ-
ment and avoid relocation from areas
in which their families have resided for
decades and where they can access eco-
nomic opportunities and necessary social
structures. At the same time, the project is
also seeking to address rules and regula-
tions that will guarantee safe and adequate
structures, such as those controlling foun-
dations, height, accessibility during emer-
gencies, and either centralized or de-cen-
tralized energy and water services (possibly
in neighborhood cooperatives). The proj-
ect therefore spans the full responsibility
of an architect, from mere construction,
to also developing regulatory processes
to guarantee the desired development of
urban settlements without destroying the
aspirations of inhabitants.
Even more ambitiously, the project ex-
tends the responsibility to develop socio-
political instruments for the provision of
32
The Sustainable Rural Dwelling Unit (SRDU) typology
TO BE ABLE TO MAKE SOMETHING
OUT OF BEING A CITY RESIDENT,
FOR MANY AFRICANS TODAY,
MEANS YOU HAVE TO FIND WAYS
TO NOT CONSOLIDATE, TO NOT
DEFEND, TO NOT HAVE YOUR
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SECURE LITTLE NICHE.
AbdouMaliq Simone
Urban Sociologist
housing from governmental programs
all the way to small and private investors.
Providing incentives to private house
builders and additional governmental
agencies to construct small and easy to
handle housing units could not only help
the Grand Housing Development Program
achieve its goals, but also shift the image
of Addis Ababa back towards a heteroge-
neous structure. Diversification strate-
gies should include support programs for
AFRICA
alternative building materials, as well as
new business and financial plans to acti-
vate public as well as private capital in a
hybrid approach.
1 UN-HABITAT, The Ethiopia Case of Condo-
minium Housing: The Integrated Housing
Development Programme, 2010 (2011).
2 See Jan Fransen, Kassahun Samson and
Meine Pieter van Dijk (eds), Formalization and
Informalization Processes in Urban Ethiopia:
Incorporating Informality (2010).
3 Felix Heisel and Bisrat Kifle, _Spaces Docu-
mentaries _ (2013) at http://www.spacesmovie.
com
33

A YOUNG PRACTICE FOUNDED BY TWO
KIGALI-BASED EUROPEANS TEACHING
AT RWANDA’S FIRST ARCHITECTURE
SCHOOL, ACTIVE SOCIAL
ARCHITECTURE IS COMMITTED TO
THE DEVELOPMENT OF INNOVATIVE
AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE
PROJECTS, ALONGSIDE THE IDEA OF
EDUCATION THROUGH ARCHITECTURE.
By Active Social Architecture
➀
Architects In Rwanda
The opportunity provided by our involve-
ment with the young Department of Ar-
chitecture at the Kigali Institute of Sci-
ence and Technology has granted us a
privileged vantage point to observe the
important physical transformations oc-
curring across Rwanda. This article dwells
on one particular story – our role in devel-
oping new infrastructure prototypes for
early childhood development with Plan
Rwanda, the country branch of a Swed-
ish NGO. In general, Western architects
pursuing projects in sub-Saharan Africa
oversimplify their approach to emergency
or aid-based work. The simple opposition
of affluence versus poverty, and its devel-
opmental logic, misses the very dependen-
cies and overlaps that – literally, given the
particular topographic, social, and cultur-
al conditions of the land of the thousand
hills – tie the different parts of the country
together.
A drawing presenting the full site scheme of the Early Childhood Development center in Nyabyihondo
35
Conceived as a challenge to the dominant
way of approaching ‘the African school
project’, which focuses mostly on issues of
development, disparate temporalities and
binary opposites such as formal/informal,
our projects look at early childhood devel-
opment centers in terms of ecology and
infrastructure. Employing simple means,
we focus on an integrated response to cli-
mate and territory. That is, we attempt to
link the basic human activities supported
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by and through these physical structures
by looking at how people live and sustain
themselves, and the role architectural in-
terventions can play at different scales. Ul-
timately, we are convinced of the ability of
architecture to add value to fundamental
social and development programs.
➁
Early Childhood
Architecture
The Rwandan government launched its
early childhood development policy in
December 2010, ‘to combat ignorance
and illiteracy, and to provide human re-
sources useful for the socio-economic
development of Rwanda through the edu-
cation system’. The architectural implica-
tions of this statement led us to realize
that whilst early childhood development
centers are building types for which great
need exists, this is coupled with the reality
of relatively little local experience. At the
AFRICA
 Site plan for the Early Childhood Development center in Nyabyihondo Side elevation of the Early Childhood Development center in Nyabyihondo

SLUM LAB
AFRICA

same time, like any other modification of
the environment with such strong social
significance, they need to be integrated
carefully with the physical and cultural
landscape of a place.
the pedagogical and social components of
the project, as well as the specifics of in-
teracting with, and raising awareness and
participation amongst, the community.
safe position, where children are brought
by their family, holds strong symbolic
value. On one hand, it conveys the idea
that the center is an important building in
the landscape. On the other, it conceives
of childhood learning as something that
can be used year round. Inside the main
room, the design is organized to enhance
the diversity and flexibility of different cor-
ners and activities, each with its own relat-
ed qualities and furniture. The space is di-
vided into wet and dry areas. A water point
➄
to careful revisions before the second wave
of construction activities was launched.
These include addressing and refining
Variations On A Theme construction techniques, and greater pre-
cision in graphic documentation for build-
ing crews, ranging from the initial laying

The design for the Early Childhood De-
velopment Center in Nyabyihondo (the
first of a collection of eight such centers
in the southern Bugesera district) aims to
provide a small rural village with a facil-
ity that stimulates the different senses of
its young users, while also engaging the
whole community and providing a valu-
able collective resource. The scheme is the
➂
touches upon and concerns the entire
community.
Forms of The concept for the first early childhood
center was to provide a safe and secure en-
Community Shelter vironment for holistic childhood develop-
ment. In our view, the discipline of design
In Rwanda, every hill is not only a topo- acts as an added educator – to engage in
graphical entity, but also a social space. parenting education, after school home-
lies close to one of the two entrances – to
be used after crafts or outside play, and to
teach hygiene and sanitation. The central
space is used for both messy and tranquil
activities, such as feeding and group work.
A second door connects the interior space
with the veranda and outdoor playground.
The seven variations on the original proto-
type, which are now nearing completion,
are inserted amidst different conditions
across the rural Bugesera district. From
flat terrain to very sloped sites, the build-
ings engage with their surroundings as a
means to address the interface between
natural and socio-economic environments
at community level. Ultimately, they rep-
out of the foundations across the sites, to
specific three-dimensional details of mate-
rial assembly. An effort has been made to
develop visual means to communicate to
laymen and relatively unskilled labor, com-
piled in a self-construction ‘handbook’ that
will hopefully influence national policies.
Despite the small scale of the projects, and

result of lengthy research, which began in Therefore, the mode of occupation and work, community meetings and female
2011 and was refined for over 12 months use of land – both historically and con- cooperatives. All along, the goal was to
prior to construction. Throughout the temporarily – depends on the specific geo- pass ownership of the facility to its vari-
process, collaboration with educational graphical and environmental features of a ous stakeholders, ensuring the center re-
and nutrition specialists at Plan Rwanda site, while also reflecting evolving systems mained socially sustainable and environ-
and other development agencies was ex- of social organization. Placing an early mentally efficient. The initial portion was
tremely important, in order to learn about childhood center in a conspicuous and completed in November 2012, while the re-
mainder is in construction as we write. The
A self-construction handbook is being compiled to better communicate to laymen main building consists of a square ‘stimu-
lation’ room with 9 meter walls – oriented
north-south in response to prevailing wind
and rain – connected to a generous roofed
veranda (7 meters deep) facing the main
path leading to the village center. An open
demonstration kitchen and garden are lo-
cated directly opposite, with compost pro-
➃
resent interventions intended to generate the even smaller ‘scale’ of the majority of
wider social effects and function as part of their users, we believe that in the context
a broader ecosystem – the result of both a of our holistic approach to architecture,
Construction Grammar plastic interplay between built volumes, strengthening mother-child and child-
and overall response to surrounding ter- child relationships – the basic units of
The center’s efficiency and sustainabil- rain. Lessons learnt from the original Rwandan society – will catalyze broader
ity are achieved through the use of lo- scheme have been very important, and led social change.
cally sourced materials – contributing to
the village economy – and the creation The exterior of the Early Childhood Development center in Nyabyihondo
of successful meeting spaces, such as
the veranda described above. All village
members, despite a strong culture of pri-
vacy, are able to use it throughout the day
and night, due to the use of solar powered
lights and access to water. The structure
is built with locally produced fired bricks,

AFRICA
SLUM LAB

duction and latrines placed on the side,
next to a playground. Together, the facility
promotes nutrition, sustainable practices
and hygiene education.
The veranda is the project’s core element –
the result of extensive research into avail-
able resources and climate, as well as the
community’s social background and tra-
ditions. It fosters important childhood
socialization, in addition to interaction
amongst all inhabitants. From the outset,
all community members, parents, teach-
ers and children of all ages have been ex-
cited by the potential of the space, which
and assembled with Flemish bonds and
vertical reinforcement bars to improve
stability and avoid the use of concrete.
The brick pattern and multiple openings
of varying size and heights contribute to
the sensorial stimulation and learning
of small children, while providing natu-
ral lighting and cross ventilation. As the
only building in the village with artificial
light thanks to the rechargeable solar
lamps, the center can fulfill a variety of
parallel functions. Similarly, a rainwater
harvesting system and hand washing taps
complete the environmental aspect of the
project.

36 37

EOOS HAS WORKED WITH BRANDS LIKE
ARMANI AND ADIDAS FOR ALMOST
20 YEARS. THESE CAN ALSO BE
FOUND IN SLUMS. FAKE OR NOT,
SUCH EXPRESSIONS OF A GLOBALIZED
CONSUMER CULTURE UNDERLINE
THE POTENTIAL FOR SOCIAL
DESIGN PROJECTS TO
LEVERAGE THE POWER OF STATUS.
By Harald Gründl
I n 2008, EOOS began a research project to
identify new opportunities in the field of
sustainable design, focusing not on prod-
ucts, but entire systems. It is nice to design
a bathtub, but where does the water go?
And where does it come from? These ques-
tions are usually not asked in the context
of a design commission. But these ques-
tions on a systemic level are key to real in-
novation. And innovation is also achieved
by changing the context of design. So we
travelled to Zürich to visit Eawag, one of
the world’s leading aquatic research insti-
tutes, to discuss opportunities for collabo-
ration. I met with Tove Larsen, a research-
er passionate about developing innovative
waste water treatment by introducing
urine separation (No-Mix toilets). She had
a very inspiring explanation for her idea:
in our body, waste streams are separate as
well. But at that time, there were only a few
suppliers for urine separating flush-toilets
in the developed world.
People liked the idea of smart waste water
treatment in the context of pilot projects.
But the usability of the toilets was bad.
Industry did not really take seriously the
challenge of reinventing the flush system.
And the waste water industry and com-
39
munal suppliers were not amused to see
prototypes emerging as an alternative to
centralized urban sewer systems. Urine
can be processed into fertilizer, repre-
senting a step towards a closed circle of
nutrients – a natural metabolism. In the
cellar of Eawag, a pilot plant is running
that creates fertilizer out of urine. This is a
blueprint for alternative, sustainable and
decentralized waste water treatment. It
would solve problems in places like Hong
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Kong – a growing city where the central-
ized waste water system has reached its
capacity limits – but also in many other ap-
plications in the developing world, where
centralized systems are difficult to intro-
duce and scale.
Reinvent The
Toilet Challenge
In 2011, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foun-
dation invited universities around the
world to submit ideas for transformative
technologies in sanitation. Eawag teamed
up with EOOS and received a grant. The
‘Reinvent the Toilet Challenge’ aims to
create a toilet that:
➀ Removes germs from human waste and
recovers valuable resources such as en-
ergy, clean water, and nutrients.
➁ Operates ‘off the grid’ without connec-
tions to water, sewer systems, or electri-
cal lines.
➂ Costs less than 5 cents per user, per day.
➃ Promotes sustainable and financially
profitable sanitation services and busi-
nesses operating in poor urban settings.
➄ Is a truly aspirational, next-generation
product everyone will want to use – in
developed and developing nations alike.
The criteria represent a considerable chal-
lenge: an outer space toilet affordable for
the urban poor, but aesthetically pleas-
ing enough for Bill Gates to want to use
in his own home. What is special about
our project was the early involvement of
design decisions in a technology driven
AFRICA
development process. Larsen became
principal investigator of the project, I be-
came principal designer. EOOS had the
opportunity to shape technology from the
beginning. To save on expensive building
costs, we decided to retrofit existing super-
structures. The idea was a product-service
system where the toilet hardware is rented
out to the users. The toilet is like a piece of
furniture that can be placed everywhere. It
is engineered for the use of ten people or
two families as a shared toilet. Although a
pedestal is more prestigious, we opted for
a squatting type toilet to ensure optimum
hygiene.

AFRICA
Technically, the engineers needed a dry
urine-diverting toilet where the faeces
and urine would be collected two times a
week by service persons, and treated at a
decentralized processing plant that could
fit in half a cargo container. The energy of
the faeces would run the process of gen-
erating fertilizer from the urine. But dry
toilets, especially urine-diverting toilets,
are not well received by their users. Smell
and dirtiness are the key problems. So the
project team came up with the idea to flush
the dry toilet, while adding a wash basin for
hand washing and a hose for bottom clean-
ing – everything a bathroom should have,
no matter where you are in the world. The
toilet recycles all the water through a grav-
ity-driven biological membrane on site. All
three streams – water, faeces and urine –
are kept separate. A valve in the urinal bowl
of the toilet automatically splits the water
from the urine stream when it is flushed.
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The Kampala Workshop
The project team travelled to the Ugandan
capital of Kampala at a very early stage in
the project. The workshop was organised
by Sandec, together with Makerere Uni-
versity. EOOS assembled the design model
with a local craftsman. It showcased the
water recycling wall with all its functions:
a pedal to pump the water, the hose, a
water tap and a big flush button. We then
presented the design to a focus group and
discussed the approach as well as aspects
of the service system and water recycling
Exploded perspective of the 'Blue Diversion Toilet'
module. The focus group approved. We
never intended to design a slum toilet, but
rather a solution we would like to use as
well. The color of the toilet was discussed
with social scientists at the university
before the trip. They asked us not to use
THE TEST FAMILIES
WERE SO PROUD OF THE
TOILET THAT GUESTS WERE
FREQUENTLY INVITED
TO SEE THE
LUXURY BATHROOM
THEY COULD USE.
any shade associated with local political
parties. I had never thought about color
in that way! So we came up with a special
blue, used to paint swimming pools. And
for the kids we brought color pens to help
us with alternative color designs.
The Gates Foundation liked the design as
well, so we received special recognition for
‘outstanding design of a toilet interface’
and $40,000. This allowed us to progress
to the second phase of the project – the
first field test with a working model. For
the first time the design and the techno-
logical modules had to be married. The
four water treatment modules tested in
Eawag's research lab already had a shape
that could be integrated into our design.
In a very short time, we constructed the
40
A public demonstration held during the Kampala field test
design elements of the working model at
EOOS, and combined these with the mod-
ules from the lab. We felt more like plumb-
ers than designers.
The Kampala Field Test
In April 2013 we had heavy luggage with us
on the flight to Kampala. At Makerere Uni-
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versity we reconstructed the toilet for pre-
testing. The controlling unit is an ‘Arduino’
microprocessor – an open source electron-
ic platform. A polarity reversal killed the
Arduino during setup. Days on the back
of a motorcycle taxi followed to find new
electronic components locally. Finally, a
former student delivered a new micropro-
cessor. The toilet was brought to the first
test site on a small truck, a sanitation cen-
ter in the slum of Mulago. Neighborhood
children welcomed us, but eventually there
were so many we had to shut the door of the
community center to complete the final
setup. The opening event was supported by
a local DJ playing Bobi Wines’ ‘Toilet Song’.
Eawag's social scientist took the chance to
recruit the first people for interviews. From
April to June, across four public events and
30 workshops, more than 300 interviews
were conducted to evaluate the design fea- dation secured, we are proceeding to the troducing new services in developing policy, ensuring good ideas spread with-
tures of the toilet. In a second stage, the next project phase. The water wall has countries. The availability of water is our out copyright restrictions. It is difficult to
toilet was tested in Kisalosalo slum in a been engineered for serial production in unique selling proposition. And luckily establish a business based on sanitation
specially built superstructure. Three fami- rotomoulding. This is an industrial pro- this point is so strong that considerable services in the developing world. So the big
lies used the toilet for two weeks each, and duction method used in septic tanks and interest exists from potential industry question will be whether local entrepre-
provided feedback. could be undertaken locally in African partners in the developed world. We still neurs will run such a business, or if it will
countries. We visited ‘Sanergy’, a pioneer- lack adequate sanitation solutions for require city authorities to introduce such
During the field test, more than 500 house- ing sanitation project designing and man- construction sites, open-air festivals and solutions. Based on information from the
hold surveys were conducted. As a result, ufacturing low-cost, high-quality sanita- similar applications. We hope this interest field test, families are willing to pay for
we had a good picture of the features peo- tion facilities and distributing them via a will ultimately accelerate the distribution their private toilet service. Our project is
ple liked and disliked, their willingness to franchise system. Sanergy has a well-func- of our toilet in the developing world. The only a stepping-stone to help improve liv-
pay rent for the toilet, and a deeper insight tioning collection service for urine and Gates Foundation has an ‘open access’ ing standards in informal settlements.
into the decision-making processes of fu- faeces through their ‘fresh life’ operators
ture clients. People were willing to pay for – a perfect setup to test our toilet in a real
good sanitation. And the test families were service scenario in a slum context. The
Transporting the 'Blue Diversion Toilet' during the Kampala field test
so proud of the toilet that guests were fre- field test has to prove that our toilet has
quently invited to see the luxury bathroom ‘TRL 7’. ‘TRL’ is the abbreviation for ‘Tech-
they could use. This was what we wanted to nology Readiness Level’, used by NASA to
achieve – a toilet that endows status on the evaluate the progress of rocket develop-
people who use it. When it is a status state- ment. The Gates Foundation uses the tool
ment, then people are willing to invest in to evaluate grants. Level 7 means the tech-
their health through sanitation. Over 2.5 nology has been successfully tested in an
AFRICA
billion people practice open defecation operational environment. The TRL scale
or lack adequate sanitation facilities. An has nine steps, and the next challenge for
additional 2.1 billion urban residents use the project will be a larger field test with
facilities that do not safely dispose of hu- many toilets to progress to level 8.
man waste. A substantial market for effec-
tive sanitation solutions!
The ‘Blue
The Nairobi Diversion Toilet’
Field Test Parallel to the preparations for field test-
ing, the design of the identity of our prod-
With this information gathered, and an uct-service system has begun. A strong
acceleration grant from the Gates Foun- identity is a key success factor when in-
41

CHAMANCULO IS AMONGST THE
OLDEST AND DENSEST INFORMAL
NEIGHBORHOODS OF MAPUTO.
ITS RESIDENTS HARBOR A RANGE
OF STORIES – AN EVOLVING
HISTORY THAT LIVES
ON IN THE PEOPLE AND STRUCTURES.
by David   Morton
M aputo’s origins as a city date to
the late 19th century, when the In-
dian Ocean port was known as Lourenço
Marques and Mozambique was one of the
African territories in Portugal’s far-flung
colonial empire. The beginnings of Cha-
manculo, ‘the place where the great men
wash’, may predate the city, but today it is
just another of Maputo’s subúrbios, which
are home to most of the metropolitan
population. In English the word ‘suburb’
connotes an area of less physical density
than an urban core. In Mozambique, the
Portuguese word subúrbio suggests less
urban infrastructure, usually far less.
The general outlines of Chamanculo’s
history of official neglect mirror the his-
tory of informal areas pretty much every-
where: the lack of piped water and sewage
systems, the frequency of flooding, the
high rate of disease. The hastily tarred
roads the Portuguese put through Cha-
manculo during the last years of colonial
rule were understood by residents at the
time to be a last resort rather than a be-
neficence. They helped police keep the
populace under closer surveillance. In-
dependence from Portugal came in 1975,
and by a decade or so later the roads had
crumbled to fine dust.
A few years ago, for perhaps the first time
in four decades, a road crew with its back-
hoe loaders and compaction rollers ap-
peared in Chamanculo. The workers are
laying a new roadway in durable brick
rather than asphalt, and it will be wider
than before. To make way for the widen-
ing, hundreds of residents whose plots
line the road have lost 2-meter-wide strips
of property to the project. Perimeter walls
and the façades of many houses have been
peeled away, and one can see in some
cases that behind cement plastered walls
are the fossil-like grooves left by reeds, the
material from which nearly all of the sub-
úrbios were once built. In newly exposed
yards, one can discern the many layers of
Chamanculo’s deep history, which is not a
single history, but many.
� good way to meet some of the most-estab-
In Chamanculo I have come across no
more than a handful of houses of more
than one level. One is the childhood home
of Mozambique’s president, which he re-
cently expanded for his mother. Another
is the bar and studio of a Canadian mu-
sician. Another, a small apartment block
built in the colonial era, stands out so
much among the crowd that people call
the area of the neighborhood where it’s
located Primeiro Andar – ‘First Floor’.
In the informal settlements of many
South American cities, building a house
with a flat roof is a mark of distinction.
It indicates that someday, somehow, you
plan on building a second level. The steel
reinforcing bars sprouting from the tops
of concrete columns look messy and give
homes an unfinished look, but that is the
point. These are families that aspire for
more – they are just not there quite yet.
But when I ask people in Chamanculo why
they do not build upward and thus free up
valuable space in their cramped yards,
they point to the universal but unwritten
rule that a second story is not permitted.
Why? Because most people have latrines
in their yards. Those toilets are screened
off to onlookers at ground level, but they
often lack roofs, and so building a sec-
ond level would violate a neighbor’s pri-
vacy. Though covering a neighbor’s latrine
would be relatively easy to do, and though
a number of people have the means to
build two stories of concrete blocks, and
though being elevated further above the
often sodden and trash-strewn ground
would have its obvious advantages (right
now many houses are slightly below grade)
43
it seems that some building traditions die
hard. In Chamanculo, houses are always
a single level, roofs are always pitched.
And it is the pitch and profile of the roof,
rather than its flatness, that demonstrates
upward mobility.
This was also true in the past. For most of
Maputo’s history, before it was possible
to build in concrete in Chamanculo and
in other subúrbios – when most people
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built in reeds – African families aspired to
build wood-framed houses paneled in cor-
rugated zinc. Many wood and zinc houses
are still standing. The low-end models
are simple metal sheds, and a question-
able upgrade over what used to be the
standard reed shack. The handsomest are
those with multiple gables and very high
ceilings (which help to vent the heat) and
expansive semi-enclosed verandas. All liv-
ing quarters are still located on a single
level, but the relatively high-peaked roofs
reach the height of treetops and give the
neighborhood the barest hint of a skyline.
Knocking on the doors of such houses is a
lished families in Maputo.
Castigo Guambe lives in one of the oldest
houses on Rua da Matapa, a street charm-
ingly named for a traditional dish made
from cassava leaves. Castigo’s father, Joch-
ua Guambe, built the house in the 1930s,
and though it is not the largest wood and
zinc house in the neighborhood, it is one
of the best maintained. The zinc panels are
painted a light green, it has two bedrooms,
a large living room, an interior kitchen,
a shaded patio out back, and a semi-en-
closed veranda out front. Within the walls
of the property are three rental units, a
yard where concrete blocks are made and
sold, a small grocery, a dovecote, a pen for
ducks, and a popular neighborhood bar
with a pool table. A half century ago, the
house was surrounded by pear and orange
and mango trees. The only surviving tree
(just barely) is the mango tree beside the
patio, where family rituals once took place.
The horns of slaughtered goats used to be
nailed to the trunk. The property was once
much larger – more like a soccer field –
AFRICA
but following independence, all the rental
properties the family owned were nation-
alized. Those houses now sit outside the
perimeter wall erected in the years since,
topped with chicken wire.
Talking to Castigo about his father induces
a kind of temporal vertigo. Castigo is only
63. Jochua was born in the early 1880s. He
left his home in rural Inhambane around
the turn of the century because he refused
to pay the Portuguese hut tax and to es-
cape forced labor. As a big game hunter,
he managed to never spend a day in his
life working for anyone but himself. He
 Chamanculo's chieftain Frederico Cumba and his counselors hear cases in an open-air court
AFRICA
was usually either in Inhambane hunting,
or in Durban, South Africa, where with
two other Mozambicans he sold leopard
skins and elephant tusks and lion claws.
Lourenço Marques, located about halfway
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between supply and demand, was merely
a convenient base. It was a home for his
family, a place to where he could even-
tually retire. Jochua was in South Africa
when his young wife, Castigo’s mother,
died soon after giving birth to Castigo’s
younger sister. The two children were
raised by an older sister and by neighbor-
hood women. The women called the boy
Castigo because of the burden Jochua’s
absences placed on them. Castigo, in Por-
tuguese, means ‘punishment’.
Jochua Guambe travelled to most places
on foot (even to South Africa), but due to
his legal status as a mere ‘native’, when-
ever he went up to Inhambane carrying his
Winchester he also had to carry his native
pass, on the pages of which were the official
stamps sanctioning his movements. Yet
the colonial-era legal regime that divided
Africans into the so-called uncivilized (the
many) and the civilized (the very few), did
not seem to hamper him much. In South
Africa, remarkably, he needed no pass ei-
ther to cross the border or to live in Dur-
ban – or maybe he just managed to avoid
being caught without one. He would pack
his animal skins into rolls, strap them to
his back, and head off walking through
the bush, across the frontier into Natal.
In Chamanculo, in Lourenço Marques, he
was able to become a substantial property
owner because his eldest son, Júlio, was
‘assimilated’ as a Portuguese citizen. Júlio
44
An aerial view of Chamanculo in 1969, when Mozambique was still a Portuguese territory
vouched for his supposedly uncivilized fa-
ther on all official documents, including
title deeds.
Jochua died in 1963, in his early 80s. In
the last years of his life, with his days of
stalking game behind him, he would stroll
around Chamanculo, clasping his hands
behind his back to help keep his posture
upright. In his retirement, he relied on the
income from the many properties he had
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amassed in the neighborhood. Some of
the properties had houses built by tenants
rather than by Jochua. On one property, a
tenant had built a house of wood and zinc,
but had stopped paying his land rent. The
tenant was one of the few Africans with
citizenship, Castigo says, and may have
calculated that Jochua, as a native, could
not do anything about collecting on the
debt. In fact, Jochua took the case to the
local chieftain, a man appointed by colo-
nial officials. The tenant simply ignored
the chieftain’s order to pay up.
Jochua resorted to a measure I learned
was quite common in landlord-tenant
disputes in neighborhoods where nearly
all housing was officially unauthorized.
He waited until a day that threatened rain,
and then dispatched his carpenter to re-
move the zinc panels from the roof of the
house in question. The rain destroyed the
tenant’s furniture and the drop ceilings
he had installed. Now it was the tenant’s
turn to be outraged and to take the case to
the chieftain. The tenant argued Jochua
had destroyed his house, to which Jochua
replied, 'prove the house was yours!' The
tenant could not prove anything without
a rental receipt, and Jochua won the case.
�
In the early 1970s, as a guerrilla inde-
pendence movement gained ground in
remote northern Mozambique, school-
teacher Alfredo Manjate engaged in his
own form of resistance in the subúrbios of
Lourenço Marques. But his stand against
the colonial regime did not involve guns or
AFRICA
violent revolt. Simply building his house
was an act of defiance.
In 1972, Manjate was 32 and living with
his wife and children in a small house
he rented in Chamanculo. It was a wood
and zinc house, which braved the wind
and rot better than the reed shelters most
people lived in, but it was nonetheless
cramped, sizzling hot when the sun was
out, and leaky in the rain. He was finally
earning enough to build his own house,
and resolved to do so in concrete block.
In Chamanculo, as in all the city’s African
neighborhoods, building in concrete was,
45
 with rare exceptions, prohibited. By main-
taining most of the city’s African popula-
tion in endlessly precarious conditions,
municipal officials could remove house-
holds at a whim and without advance no-
tice, to make way for the expansion of the
city’s formalized European core. Houses
built of reeds or of wood and zinc can be
dismantled, or knocked flat in moments.
A house built in concrete block will give a
bulldozer pause.
AFRICA
First Manjate ‘bought’ a piece of land.
Since all the land in the area was legally
owned by a Portuguese man named Nunes,
Manjate did not acquire title to a plot. He
simply purchased from the woman then
occupying the plot the unenforceable
right to occupy it himself. The local chief-
tain, who by an older set of norms was con-
sidered the ‘owner of the land’, received a
cut in the transaction. Landowner Nunes,
for his part, collected a small annual rent.
Manjate then worked with a builder to fig-
ure out how many rooms he wanted, what
size they should be, and how many bags of
cement and wood window frames and zinc
roof panels he would need to buy.
In Maputo’s neighborhoods, then and
now, you build little by little. When you
have some money you buy some concrete
blocks, the builders lay some courses of
wall, and then everything comes to a halt
until you save up more money to invest in
the project. A house that would take days
to complete if erected all at once can take
years in actuality, and this is without con-
sidering the rooms one adds as a family
expands in size over time and with added
generations. People are always building
their house, building on to it, or else think-
ing about building.
As the concrete block walls of Manjate’s
house went up, incrementally but surely,
neighbors told him he was crazy. Police
laughed and said that once the house was
done, they would have to come back and
knock it all down. This was how it worked,
Manjate says. It may have been illegal to
build in concrete, but the police waited
until a house was nearly complete to do
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something about it. Perhaps Manjate had
a better sense of timing than everyone else
did. When he started building, he estimat-
ed how long construction would take, and
he was optimistic that when the day came
to move the master bed from the zinc-pan-
eled rental into the master bedroom of the
concrete house, the Portuguese would be
gone. His new house was intended for oc-
cupation in an independent Mozambique.
And this is more or less what happened.
The house was ready in late 1974, dur-
ing the negotiated transition to inde-
pendence. One day in 1975, however,
sometime after independence, Manjate
received a citation. An envious neighbor
had ratted him out to the new authori-
ties. The municipality had greatly relaxed
enforcement of the colonial-era concrete
ban, but felt compelled to act when called
to task. Manjate went to the municipal
offices and found that one of his former
students was manning the desk. He paid
a small fine and returned home.
� paved road will get built, if ever. In Mozam-
One weekend, my friend Graça Ferreira
invited me out to Matola. Like thousands
of other Maputenses, Graça is build-
ing her dream house out there, about 20
miles from Maputo’s city center, on land
the government recently parceled out
for development. Graça used to be a civil
servant, and due to her position she was
able to live in a downtown apartment that
had been nationalized following the Por-
tuguese flight from the city. In the 1990s,
with the country’s adoption of free market
reforms, she bought the apartment for a
pittance, and then sold it years later, at a
INDEPENDENCE FROM
PORTUGAL CAME
IN 1975, AND BY A crew laying foundations on a neighboring
DECADE OR SO
LATER THE ROADS
HAD CRUMBLED
TO FINE DUST.
time when she was just scraping by sell-
ing clothes and meat. Now living in Cha-
manculo with her mother, Graça used the
windfall from the house sale to acquire a
Matola plot and purchase enough bags of
cement to get started on her own house.
We went out to Matola on that sunny Sat-
urday because her work crew was about to
lay the concrete foundations.
The laying of the foundations is perhaps
the most symbolically significant stage
of the home-building process, at least for
the builders. It is when the client must
perform a ceremony for the ancestors. At
considerable expense, the client cooks up
the head of a cow and provides whiskey
and beer, most of which will be consumed
by the work crew. If there is no cow head,
if no alcohol is poured out in the ances-
tors’ honor, the project is all but doomed.
Cracks, warn the builders, will likely ap-
pear in the foundation. Some builders
advise their clients that they must also
perform a ceremony when the roof is com-
46
pleted as well, or else cracks will appear in
the roof too. For the homeowner-to-be, all BUILDINGS SHALL YET BELONG
of this is in addition to the ceremony per-
formed when the plot is purchased, before TO THE PEOPLE, ARCHITECTURE
the builders even show up. If you are not
careful with your ceremony expenses, you SHALL YET BECOME REAL AND
will run out of cash for cement. And you
definitely need lots of cement. ALIVE AND BEAUTY SHALL YET BE
Much of Matola is hard to distinguish from WARM AND CONVULSIVE.
bush. When you build, you generally have
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to figure out on your own how to get wa-
Pancho Guedes
ter and electricity, and who knows when a
'Team 10' Architect
bique, all land legally belongs to the state,
and selling plots is prohibited. Nonethe-
less, few acquire land without handing
over the equivalent of thousands of dollars
to either the plot’s current occupant or a
local official (or both). In the tall grass on
every side of Graça’s property were houses
in various states of completion. Most are
just a minimal structure used as a marker
to demontrate to officials that the property
is being improved.
Graça recently told me she does not have
the money to complete the house. At the
time of the ceremony, though, she har-
bored no doubts. She talked about her vi-
sion for the finished roof, which was to fea-
ture an impressive pediment of her own
design. As the sun set and dinnertime ap-
proached, Graça’s work crew taunted the
property. 'We’re going to eat cow’s head,
and you’re stuck eating a fish head! Your
client is poor. Our's is rich'. Daniel, head of
Graça’s work crew, is called mestre (mas-
ter). Mestre Daniel received the first cut of
meat from the cow head, and his crew dove
into the alcohol. Mestre Daniel grew bel-
ligerent, decided that one of his workers
was not treating him with proper respect,
and fired him on the spot. The worker re-
ceived no pay, and no meat.
Graça got on her knees and poured whis-
key on to the ground. I asked if she was
going to say something. Her brother re-
plied, 'you think the ancestors need you to
speak for them to hear you?' I turned back
to Graça, and she was already back on her
AFRICA
feet. The ceremony was over almost as it
began.
47

THE FIRST SON OF THE HEADMAN AND
ONLY CHILD ALLOWED TO ATTEND
SCHOOL IN HIS VILLAGE IN BURKINA
FASO, DIÉBÉDO FRANCIS KÉRÉ
NOW FOCUSES ON PROMOTING
SUSTAINABLE, COMMUNITY DRIVEN
ARCHITECTURE THAT PRESERVES
AND DEVELOPS TRADITIONAL
TECHNOLOGIES.
By Kéré Architecture
Birds eye view of the planned Secondary School of Gando
A small firm based in Berlin with an
affiliate in Burkina Faso, Kéré Archi-
tecture is committed to a philosophy of
building with the smallest energy foot-
print while achieving genuine societal
impact. When still a student in Germany,
Kéré decided to build a primary school for
his village community in Gando, in order
to reinvest the knowledge he had gained
abroad and improve educational path-
ways. The design was shaped by the idea
of using and developing local materials
and techniques, adapting new technology
in a simple way to unlock the potential of
the local community. Completed in 2001,
the primary school in Gando was awarded
the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in
2004. The success of this project made it
possible for Kéré to plan and realize addi-
tional projects in his hometown – includ-
ing an extension to the original primary
school and public library, a secondary
school, and women’s center – which to-
gether constitute networked elements
of a broader educational infrastructure
strategy focused on providing long-term
opportunities for increased economic in-
dependence for inhabitants of Gando.
➀
Primary School
In Gando
The initial school project was conceived
as a standard model that could be copied
within the community and would raise
awareness of the merits of traditional
materials. Climatic considerations large-
ly determined the building’s form and
construction. Three classrooms are ar-
49
ranged in a linear fashion and separated
by covered outdoor areas that can be used
for teaching and play. The structure com-
prises traditional load-bearing walls made
from stabilized and compressed earth
blocks. Concrete beams run across the
width of the ceiling, and steel bars lying
across these support a ceiling also made
of compressed earth blocks. The corrugat-
ed metal roof sits on a steel truss, allow-
ing cool air to flow freely between the roof
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and the ceiling. The roof also has a large
overhang, which shades the façades and
helps to ensure climatic comfort. Room
temperature is additionally moderated by
the earthen walls, which absorb heat.
The roof form was dictated by practical
considerations – it was not possible to
transport large elements to the site from
afar, nor economically viable to use lift-
ing machinery such as cranes. Instead,
we devised a process whereby common
construction steel bars were used to create
lightweight trusses, with corrugated metal
sheeting laid on top to form the roof. All
that was necessary was to teach people
how to use a handsaw and a small welding
machine. Everyone involved in the project
management was native to the village, and
the skills learned have been applied in the
context of further initiatives in the village
and elsewhere. The way the community
organized itself set an example for two
neighboring villages, which subsequently
built their own schools as a cooperative ef-
fort. Local authorities also recognized the
project’s worth. Not only did they provide
and pay teaching staff, but also endeav-
ored to employ the young people trained
there in the town’s public projects, using
the same techniques. The largest chal-
lenge was explaining the design and draw-
ings to people who could neither read nor
write – a challenge faced in all our projects
in Burkina Faso.
➁
Primary School
Extension
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The school extension building in Gando is
the result of the success of the first project,
which provided space for 120 students.
Two years after the opening, more than
260 children wanted to attend. The design
is based on the same climatic principles as
the original school, but takes a different
form. The ceiling is a vault made with com-
pressed stabilized earth blocks, with slits
for light and outgoings for overheated air.
For climatic reasons, cavities have been
integrated in the vault. The enclosed air
works as a buffer, helping to reduce over-
 Students gathering between classes in the Primary School Extension in Gando Exterior of the Primary School in Gando

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A classroom inside the Primary School in Gando Exterior of the Primary School Extension in Gando

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50 51
 Local construction workers on site as the Secondary School of Gando is being built
heating inside the classrooms. Like in the
primary school, a widely overlaying metal
roof provides protection against rain and
sun. The roof absorbs direct sunlight,
making the air between the two layers cir-
culate and guiding hot air out of the build-
ing. It functions, therefore, as the motor of
a natural ventilation system. From a par-
ticipation perspective, the approach for
the construction of the school extension
represented an evolution. The surround-
ing village communities of Gando came to
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assist with the building, initiating a turn-
ing point in the perception of the commu-
nity. The extension will be completed by a
public library, forming a joint between the
two school buildings.
➂
Secondary School
Of Gando
Thanks to the decision by the Burkina Faso
government to support secondary schools
as well as primary schools, the perspective
and future outlook for youth in Gando has
changed for the better. Access to educa-
tion increases the chances of creating sus-
tainable sources of income for subsequent
generations. Planned since 2010, the new
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52
secondary school in Gando completes
the Kéré Architecture education concept
by providing a coherent pathway for stu-
dents to pursue their studies after prima-
ry school. The new building complex will
include 12 classrooms, as well as a school
hall, library, administration building and
several sport fields. The school is planned
to cater to approximately 1,000 students.
The structure is inspired by the tradition-
al rural homesteads of Burkina Faso – the
classrooms are positioned in a circle, cre-
ating a protected courtyard that prevents
the dusty and hot eastern wind from blow-
ing in. Similarly, the structure is open on
its west side, allowing a cool breeze to en-
ter the area.
Very hot temperatures in Burkina Faso
strongly influence the learning and teach-
ing quality in buildings without air-con-
ditioning. Therefore, we developed an
innovative air-cooling system using only
natural ventilation. Earth pipes are placed
beneath the buildings and transport air
– cooled by water – from outside direct-
ly into the rooms through holes in the
floor. Warmed-up air escapes classrooms
through small openings in the clay ceil-
ings. This natural ventilation is enhanced
by planted vegetation and the use of dou-
ble-skin roofs and façades to achieve a 5°C
thermal reduction. The improved indoor
climate and comfort are highly conducive
53
to education. Massive deforestation in the
past led to an advancing desert. As a result,
the project also promotes reforestation,
as trees create shadow, which is necessary
for breaks between classes. Collection
of scarce rainwater is integrated into the
planting concept, and is used to irrigate
new trees. The secondary school’s energy
consumption during construction and op-
eration has been reduced to a minimum
using only sun and wind. The special low-
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tech and low-cost climate concept works
well in extremely hot regions.
Finally, as with the other projects in
Gando, the design and building strategy
for the secondary school is also focused
on villager participation during the con-
struction process. Transfer of knowledge
between trained workers and the commu-
nity is an essential element of the broader
educational concept driving all three proj-
ects, with the use of local materials and
know-how aimed at encouraging village
residents to pursue sustainable develop-
ment in the future without external aid.
Thus the ‘educational’ function is twofold
– the buildings provide high-quality edu-
cational spaces for schooling, while also
mobilizing the local village population for
construction, linking traditional building
methods with resource-saving technolo-
gies, and training unskilled workers so
they become sought after craftsmen.
Exterior of the Primary School Extension in Gando
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FOR A SOCIAL DESIGN FIRM BASED
IN THE UNITED STATES, A MINI-RUPTURE
IN A SMALL RWANDAN
VILLAGE UNDERLINED
THE CHALLENGE OF
MEMBERSHIP HAUNTING GLOBAL
DESIGN PROJECTS, AND THE
INCOMPLETENESS OF
PARTICIPATORY STRATEGIES.
By Yutaka Sho
M assachusetts, February 2007 – Friends
bring back pictures from their vaca-
tion in Rwanda. The baby gorillas are cute,
but the landscape images are striking.
Endless hills stretch beyond the horizon,
and every square meter is cultivated for
crops of different textures. This is not the
vertical density of cities or the horizontal
density of farms in the American Midwest,
but a diagonal density of quilted ramps.
The rural Rwandan landscape is too steep
for tractors and is worked by hand instead.
Farmers could not afford them anyway.
This is a place where neighbors swap fa-
vors to finish the season’s farming on
time. The tight-knit society that created
this landscape is present in it.
Kigali, Rwanda, March 2008 – Urban Rwan-
dan streets are clean and orderly, and
people are polite and soft-spoken. Their
graciousness makes them nod to even the
most insensitive questions put to them by
foreigners about the genocide. Yet, occa-
sionally, it becomes evident they are eval-
uating others and themselves. Skepticism
simmers beneath the surface. We will not
tell you what you should do, the unspoken
message reads, because you should already
know. It feels like a homecoming after 20
years abroad, familiar and strange.
A rural village, Rwanda, July 2013 – 'The
association president cannot be trust-
ed', student interns reported with furled
brows. 'She is saying bad things about you'.
This was a few days before I had to return
to the United States and a month before
my design partner was to arrive to take my
place. For the past two months the team of
student interns from Kigali’s architecture
school, local association members and I
have been working in this small village 20
kilometers north of Kigali. We have been
participating in a workshop to build a pro-
totype home with EarthBags, the first of its
kind in the country. EarthBags are made of
polypropylene, a byproduct of petroleum
refinement, readily available in Africa for
carrying goods. For construction they are
stuffed with site soil, stacked and tamped
for stability. This construction method is
affordable, quick, easy to make and reduc-
es the carbon-footprint in a country where
all construction materials are imported.
The local association of women we work
with is well-known here. Its 600 members
run numerous socio-economic programs
and have been awarded by the Rwandan
president for their contributions ben-
efitting the entire village. For the past five
years we have never doubted its president,
until now.
One of the students was working on top
of a wall while the association president,
unaware of the attentive ear above her, was
complaining to a villager. “They don’t pay
up", she was saying', the student reported.
Do you remember when we wanted to
install the water pipe and the estimate
was $1,800? It was too expensive so we
decided to carry water from the pump
instead. And remember the next day
the price went down to $800? Well that
was the bribe for the water company.
And we wanted a journalist to come vis-
it the site to write about our project and
the association president said there
was a fee of $150? Well that was a bribe
for the journalist and herself. And we
wanted to use the association’s truck to
go get gravel? She charged us extra. And
remember…?
The stories of misdeeds went on and on.
The biggest blow was the list of house re-
55
cipients. Fifty villagers have been working
for little or no pay, thinking that in return
they will each receive a house. But some
of the houses were slated to be given to lo-
cal government officials, the association
president’s family members, and a na-
tional football star! While they were com-
plaining about the association president,
however, the villagers would only call her
by her nickname. The villagers feared the
political power she exerted through her
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name.
Early in the project, our design team
decided not to interfere with the house
recipient list the association created.
The propensity of western humanitar-
ian organizations to override local work
has created a long trail of failed projects.
NGOs, governments and private corpora-
tions use relief and development funds as
tools of diplomatic negotiations. Bribery
is prevalent in the West as well, except it
is called ‘lobbying’ and the bribes ‘cam-
paign contributions’. It is only when such
practices are witnessed in poor countries
that we see signs of corruption and under-
development. The association president’s
behavior was neither unexpected, nor un-
usual. 'This is how things are done', she
said, referring to her favoritism (the stu-
dents and the villagers disagreed). Faced
with the blatant discrepancy of economic
power between the westerners and the
locals, and the double standard the West
uses to evaluate ‘good governance’, it is no
surprise the association president should
seek an alternate means toward equality.
Our protests against her attempts to extort
(We are not like other NGOs!) were uncon-
vincing. We could hop on a plane at any
moment and leave their housing prob-
lems behind. Everyone knew we did not
belong there.
The breakthrough came not from us or
the association president, but from the
villagers. We invited a consultant from
Eternally Solar, the South African innova-
tor of a modern EarthBag technique, to
train the villager-workers for three weeks,
and afterwards we completed the house
in three months. All except one of the par-
AFRICA
ticipants were new to construction. By the
end of the project, 50 villagers had gained
construction skills applicable not only for
EarthBag houses, but also for constructing
basic single story structures. Confident
they could use the newly acquired skills
toward creating jobs, the villagers estab-
lished their own association called Icyer-
ekezo, or ‘New Vision’, and split from the
old association. Through pictures and site
reports via the Internet, I experienced this
small rupture in which the villagers took
back self-governance, enabled by skills for
self-building. They claimed a place in their
society, physical and political.

As a non-profit design firm based in the
West and active in Rwanda, we often feel
the need to legitimize working in a country
where we do not belong, with people we do
not fully understand. We intervene unin-
vited, hoping to contribute but risking em-
barrassment if not serious disruption to
our clients’ lives. The enormous econom-
ic gap between us tricks all involved into
thinking the project is a one-way gift and
not collaboration among equal partners.
Soon we may start demanding apprecia-
AFRICA
tion from them, rejecting criticism, and
start making decisions even though we do
not hold membership in their community.
The mini-rupture in a small Rwandan vil-
lage offered an antithesis to traps in which
humanitarian projects often fall. The es-
tablishment of a new builders’ associa-
tion was a clue that it may be possible to
simultaneously distance ourselves from,
and overcome the issue of, membership.
Distance, because a new association be-
longs to neither the western designer nor
the old local hegemony, but it exists in an
independent realm born of a difficult en-
counter between the two. Overcome, be-
cause both western designers and Rwan-
dan builders realized we were governed by
the same power of the association presi-
dent and the culture she belonged to, and,
to that extent, were in solidarity 1. During
the construction process, we decided we
did not want to be governed like that any
longer 2. Despite the gaps between our cul-
tural, racial or economic memberships,
WE COULD HOP ON
A PLANE AT ANY
MOMENT AND LEAVE
THEIR HOUSING
PROBLEMS BEHIND.
EVERYONE KNEW
WE DID NOT
BELONG THERE.
we sought knowledge, people and space
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with which we could enact a different way
of governing ourselves.
The project did not create equality be-
tween the westerners and Rwandans. The
new association is still inexperienced, the
old association president is still powerful,
funding depends on western donors, and
the westerners share a fraction of the risk
Rwandan counterparts contend with.
Instead, the project allowed us to pry open
and examine the membership haunting
global design projects. Lack of member-
ship tends to render western-funded proj-
Doors and windows being installed during the EarthBag project
Front view of the EarthBag project, with woven screen and sitting wall
ects in Africa illegitimate. Or worse, gives
them an automatic elevated status. Local
culture is not the only factor that governs
building projects. Funders of projects, of-
ten western charitable NGOs and govern-
mental aid agencies, govern independent
designers with their ways of development,
building, funding and governance. They
expect designers to be apolitical, creat-
ing a fiction that globalization equals
open membership and equality. To access
funding, independent designers have no
choice but to follow the membership code
of NGOs. The event described above testi-
fies, however, to a possible alternative. At
every step of the construction process, vil-
lagers were integral to the making of an
56
THE VIVIGALS
By Filippo Romano
Mathare is the second largest slum in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, with half a million inhabitants
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packed into only 1.5 square kilometers. Founded in 2006, the Vivigals are an all-female rugby team
from the settlement, coached by a former professional. Besides promoting healthy lifestyles and
teamwork, the project has a deeper social goal of addressing pervasive issues of female discrimina-
tion and exclusion. With the help of local community organizations, the Vivigals actively reach out to
some of the poorest girls in Mathare, or those who have been victims of domestic violence, rape, or
youth prostitution, to assist in the process of rebuilding their confidence and self-esteem. To date, the
Vivigals have been operating without any sponsors or external funding, except for a handful of small
donations to cover the cost of a private field where they train with a local male team.
Notwithstanding these hurdles, the team has achieved an impressive impact, with many of the Vivi-
gals now part of the Kenyan female national squad despite their humble backgrounds. For most,
rugby is an important means to find direction amidst the daily challenges and volatility of life as a
slum dweller. It is not only a question of personal satisfaction – being part of the national team gives
them the chance to experience a reality beyond the shacks of Mathare. According to Florence Awuor,
the Vivigals captain, 'our dream is to get someone who will support us fully like any other teams, and
have a strong rugby academy in Mathare. My wish is that someday we will have a girl coming from
Mathare playing internationally'.
For now, the team lines up on match days without a uniform, and members buy second hand shoes in
the flea market of Kikomba.
alternate building culture. As they gained
self-governance via self-building, it be-
SPECIAL INSERT – PHOTO ESSAY
came clear political representation and
cultural specificity were congruent. This
participatory architectural project allowed
western designers to glimpse, however in-
completely, the political risks our African
partners bore, and therefore enabled us to
imagine a common membership.
1 Michel Foucault, on the occasion of the an-
nouncement in Geneva of the creation of an
International Committee against Piracy, 1984.
Cited in Thomas Keenan, Fables of Responsi-
bility: Aberrations and Predicaments in Ethics
and Politics (1997), 157.
2 Michel Foucault, ‘What is Critique?’ in Sylvère
Lotringer (ed), The Politics of Truth (2007), 44.
57
 Members of the Vivigals train before a match
SPECIAL INSERT – PHOTO ESSAY

The informal settlement of Mathare that is home to team members

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Eunice Achieng, who plays prop for the Vivigals

A scrum at a Vivigals training session

SPECIAL INSERT – PHOTO ESSAY

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58 59

AS MUCH POTENTIAL EXISTS FOR
LARGE URBAN (RE)DEVELOPMENT
STRATEGIES TO DESTABILIZE AS
IMPROVE TERRITORIES.
AMIDST A POST-CONFLICT
RECONSTRUCTION PROCESS, KIGALI’S
BOLD – YET GENERIC – MASTER PLAN
IS AT ODDS WITH THE
PHYSICAL AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
SHAPING THE CITY.
By Killian Doherty
Ayee … ayee … ayee
Clay is hard … ayee
Clay has no more value
Clay used to give me meat that I could
often eat with other things,
Clay gave me sorghum and I could
drink sorghum beer,
Clay gave me beans and I could eat very
well with lots of other things … ayee
Leave me alone, I am tired of the black
value of clay
The plastic cups and dishes and pans
have come
Ayeeeeee …2
R wanda’s physical geography is an
interwoven network of hills, marsh-
lands and reserves, abundant in natural
resources. Eight percent of the land is nat-
ural forest. Eleven percent is marshland,
including approximately 110 lakes3. With
most livelihoods dependent on these eco-
systems, the socio-economic geography
of the country is very much contingent on
its rural context. Rwanda is also the most
densely populated nation in Africa, with
a population of 10.6 million distributed
at approximately 430 people per square
kilometer. Eight percent of Rwandans live
on less than $1 per day, and 95 percent of
the population is ‘seriously deprived’4. De-
spite being a predominantly rural country,
Rwanda is witnessing increased land scar-
city. And with much of the returning dias-
pora unable to secure land in the coun-
tryside, they are now resettling in Kigali,
where the population of 1.22 million is set
to triple by 2040.
Kigali is undergoing a radical re-transfor-
mation, with a new urban vision embody-
ing aspirations for the country linked to
increased economic growth and becom-
ing the financial gateway for the East Af-
rican community. Citing the skyline of
Singapore as its inspiration, the 2020 Ki-
gali Master Plan serves as the gospel of
urban redevelopment, commandeering
the trajectory of the country. Constrained
by Rwanda’s hilly terrain, Kigali’s urban
center sits on top of Nyarugenge hill, with
the city developing radially outwards over
peaks and valleys that have been diffi-
cult to build upon. Indeed, 50 percent of
the capital is regarded as ‘unbuildable’
due to harsh topography 5. Yet during the
city’s expansion, these difficult areas have
been settled informally, with inhabitants
packed densely into the edges of hills, and
residing close to, or within, low-lying wet-
lands accounting for 83 percent of the ur-
ban population6.
The unfurling master plan dominates
the urban built environment, creating a
valorized backdrop of generic high-rise
buildings constructed of curtain walling
and concrete. Prioritizing commercial
high-rise development on the tops of hills,
plans to cut swathes of highways through
Kigali’s wetland ecosystems as infrastruc-
tural connections to the neighboring East
African countries of Tanzania, Burundi
and Uganda, mean many informal inhab-
itants living close to these areas are be-
ing relocated to the margins of the city.
With access to essential food and build-
ing provisions (wetland byproducts such
as fish, rice, vegetables, clay and grasses
for thatch) beyond reach, relocated settle-
ments, also distanced from central ame-
nities, are made dependent on an already
struggling informal transport network in a
country where the system relies on import-
61
ed fuel 7. Due to its landlocked geography,
most materials in Rwanda are imported,
contributing to excessive construction
costs. The socio-economic, spatial and en-
vironmental implications of a decentral-
ized Kigali – in a nation that has already
experienced the most dramatic refugee
return(s) in Africa – are far-reaching.
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�
The pivotal meaning of the city as an
agent for political and social change
becomes particularly obvious in a post-
conflict situation. In this case, a city’s
development takes place under mostly
unsafe and unstable conditions, and it
is essentially defenseless against the
mechanism of political and economic
events. This kind of city is scarred by
conflicts; it is the expression of the cri-
ses in which the city finds itself 9.
Architectural Field Office’s work and re-
search interests lie at the heart of such
geopolitical conundrums – the ‘domino’
effect caused by city politics underpinning
urban policies, resulting in deep socially
and ethnically driven spatial ruptures. We
ask: ‘how and where do alternative modes
of architectural counter-practice, research
and teaching operate within?’
We have begun to ask a further series of
questions in relation to Kigali’s ecosys-
tems and emergent spatial rifts. For in-
stance, can an interdisciplinary rethinking
of wetlands as an integral component of
Kigali’s urban context appease the multi-
faceted nature of these socio-ethnic, socio-
economic and environmental tensions? Is
it possible to generate a delta-urbanism
that will support the livelihoods of local
communities (farming, fishing, craft),
yet provide much needed environmental
infrastructure support (waste water puri-
fication, bio-remediation, soil conserva-
tion and flood-control) to the city? Could
these smaller scale settlement strategies
posit larger strategic solutions to reconcile
Rwanda’s urban and rural contingencies?
AFRICA
Such urban ecology questions are under-
pinned by the work of Branzi, who sug-
gests alternatives to the conventional ur-
ban dichotomy of the centralized versus
decentralized city plan under the rubric
of ‘weak urbanism’. This constitutes an
urban model favoring a diffuse and evenly
displaced spatial mode of – urban and
rural – planning. A tempered, negotiated
and softer urbanization, which promotes
‘half-urban and half agricultural produc-
tive territories’ might be better suited to
the pastoral setting of Kigali, and across
largely rural Rwanda itself 10. The Lefeb-
 Group strategy drawing and model focused on the wetlands as a public utility and recreational space
vrian exchanges between Kigali and its
GROUP 2: Wetlands as Public Utility and recreational space → edges, and the resulting dynamic between
retained existing pathways and informal connections its ecology and human settlements 11, pro-
vides a space to explore such questions.
We can generate new approaches to prac-
tice sensitive to the interconnections
of Rwanda’s social and environmental
spheres, and did so in the form of a taught
design studio at the KIST School of Archi-
tecture over a two-year period 12.
AFRICA
� developing a flexible framework that could
Having conducted on-site wetland analy-
sis, student groups were asked to develop
a complex neighborhood program and
design hypothesis linking the ecologi-
cal, landscape, architectural and social
components within the inner city wetland
community Rwampara. Each group fo-
cused on a particular functional quality
of the wetlands, such as: the edges of two
settlements; a dormant public space; and
a natural infrastructural corridor as a cen-
ter for disparate enterprises. The underly-
ing focus being:
How to (re)connect human life and
Images: activities to the natural environment,
Masterplan strategy group model for Urban Ecology Studio / Killian Doherty through an urban design project in
service to the public… in a manner to
support broader ecosystem functions.
Images from students documenting wetlands uses More specifically, in the given site and
conditions, how can the urban-rural
link be reinterpreted to link the city to
its territory? Which functions (both in-
novative and traditional) can be collec-
tively developed and what architecture
400 frw/kg 400 frw/2 litre a bucket and landscape forms can be created? 13
500 frw/2 litre
Richard Mpfizi’s research focused on the
crosscutting paths between community
mosques on either side of the Rwampara
wetlands. Discovering the inextricable re-
lationship between public interactions and
wetland hydrology, which intersects path-
ways and water access points, his wetland
strategy provides a framework for existing
small-scale irrigation, public bathing and
commercial laundry, with constructed
wetlands insertions improving water qual-
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500 frw/2l bucket ity and diminishing soil erosion. Under-
pinning this strategy was an architectural
scheme of new ablution blocks and public
washhouses placed along pedestrian corri-
dors that link back to community mosques
with no running water. What emerged was
a spatial sequence of multi-functional
public spaces integrated within a wetland
and infrastructural landscape. With many
Rwandans regarding the Christian faith as
complicit during the genocide, mosques
are on the increase14. At an urban scale,
Mpfizi’s strategy operates as a multi-de-
Topography agricultural activity hydrology access public interactions nominational public space, responding to
socio-religious shifts.
62
Theophile’s Uwayezu’s research into sub-
sistence farming and the relationship be-
tween the physical division of Rwampara
wetlands and socio-economic dynamics
within the community gave rise to an un-
derstanding that existing allotment sizes,
if varied, could allow for an on-site com-
munity market. A strategy providing flex-
ible sizes of allotments would counter the
existing practice of selling fresh produce in
the city market, which incurs transporta-
tion costs and loss of produce. His strategy
reorganized scattershot land use patterns,
be ‘dismantled and transformed’15 to pro-
mote community farming, whilst allowing
other public recreational and educational
activities to flourish. The community mar-
CITING THE SKYLINE
OF SINGAPORE
AS ITS INSPIRATION,
THE 2020 KIGALI MASTER
PLAN SERVES AS
THE GOSPEL OF URBAN
REDEVELOPMENT,
COMMANDEERING THE
TRAJECTORY OF
THE COUNTRY.
ket is organized spatially and structur-
ally around the dimensions of allotments
and vending spaces of varying sizes. The
plan and roof form gradate between these
scales, subsequently mimicking the ir-
regularity of local rooflines, funneling and
harvesting rainwater to improve food pro-
duction, hygiene and water security.
Flavia Gwiza and Jean Paul Bigirimana’s
research focused on the inherent ability
of wetlands flora to purify contaminated
water. Natural grasses and fibers (papyrus,
sisal, bamboo) support a consistent, but
unconsolidated, crafts industry centered
around basket weaving (agaseke), furni-
ture and jewelry. Only 5 percent of citizens
nationwide enjoy access to running water.
The increasing cost and scarce access to
municipal sources underpins the infra-
structural potential of wetland valleys.
The joint strategy aims to sequentially
reconnect existing commercially active
streets along the edges of the wetlands,
through a constructed system supporting
vibrant local informal economies. Provid-
ing community infrastructural networks
of water reticulation and storm water
management, this system forms the spa-
tial basis for a collective housing scheme
and women’s weaving center with crèche.
63
Bigirimana’s housing project uses com-
pressed straw/grass panels made by a
Rwampara cooperative, matching small-
scale enterprise with the need for low-cost
housing. Gwiza’s hybrid program address-
es the lack of basic childcare spaces for the
many female weaving cooperatives spread
across the community.
The lack of capacity within the administra-
tive mechanics of the built environment in
SLUM LAB
Rwanda – due to its pre-disposition to au-
tocracy, and as a consequence of its post-
conflict state – feeds an unwillingness to
embrace the ‘unconventional solutions’16
required at the meeting of rural and urban
contingencies. As such, it is the 'interac-
tions or reciprocal effects of people and
nature’ 17 that are absent within Rwanda’s
redevelopment policies. The continued
exploration of ideas rooted in ‘weak ur-
banism’ embarked upon through the
design studio and research could reveal
mediated alternatives to the rigid and ‘re-
motely produced master plan, that is dis-
connected from everyday life18’. A weaker
Kigali may, in fact, be more resilient.
1 Andrea Branzi, ‘For a Post-Environmentalism:
Seven Suggestions for a New Athens Charter
and The Weak Metropolis’ in Mohsen Mostafavi
and Gareth Doherty (eds), Ecological Urbanism
(2012) 111.
2 Song by Rwandan Batwa.
3 Rwanda Environment Management Authority,
Economic Analysis of Natural Resource Man-
agement in Rwanda (2005).
4 Bertelsmann Stiftung, Rwanda Country Report
(2012) available at http://www.bti-project.org
5 Oz Architects, Kigali Conceptual Master Plan
(2007).
6 ibid.
7 Of 622 buses operating in Kigali, 90 percent
are small privately owned vehicles, mostly
over ten years old, and many much older’:
Emissions Reduction Profile: Rwanda Report
(2013) available at www.uneprisoe.org/; see also
Green Growth and Climate Resilience National
Strategy for Climate Change and Low Carbon
Development (2011).
9 Kai Vockler, Architecture of Peace (2010).
10 Branzi (2011).
11 ‘The relationship between town and country-
side is, for Lefebvre, a historical one, with the
mediating role being played by technology’:
Stuart Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre
(2004).
12 This course was conceived and co-taught from
AFRICA
2011-2013 by Dr Ilaria Boniburini and Killian
Doherty, with assistance from Guillaume Sar-
din, Constanza La Mantia and Garret Gantner.
13 Dr Boniburini as cited from KIST Studio Syl-
labus Architectural Design 5 - ARC 3411.
14 Alana Tiemessen, From Genocide to Jihad:
Islam and Ethnicity in Post-Genocide Rwanda
(2005).
15 Branzi (2011).
16 Mohsen Mostafavi, ‘Why Ecological Urbanism?
Why Now?’ in Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth
Doherty (eds), Ecological Urbanism (2012) 29.
17 Richard T Foreman, ‘Urban Ecology and the
Arrangement of Nature in Urban Regions’ in
Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty (eds),
Ecological Urbanism (2012) 315.
18 Matthew Barac, ‘Kist, Kigali, Rwanda’ (2013) The
Architectural Review, available at http://www.
architectural-review.com/reviews/pedagogy/
kist-kigali-rwanda/8654542.article

SINCE INDEPENDENCE, POPULAR MUSIC
IN SENEGAL HAS BEEN A PRIVILEGED
SPACE FOR ARTISTS EXPRESSING
THEIR POWER REGARDLESS OF
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONSTRAINTS –
MOST RECENTLY, THROUGH THE
AFRICA
HIP-HOP ALIGNED Y’EN
A MARRE MOVEMENT.
By Jenny F Mbaye
The cover of Senegalese hip-hop artist Matador's album Vox Populi
SLUM LAB
F rom Seydina Insa Wade and Idrissa
Diop in the 1970s, to Ouza Diallo, and
in the late 1980s, the new ‘soldiers of the
microphone’, the ‘masters of the streets’
of the Boul Faale 2 generation 3, music
has been a politicized space in Senegal.
Contemporary urban youth, the great
majority victim of an education crisis, tar-
geted a ‘system’ and its institutional vio-
lence against the younger generations for
over a decade, until 2000 and the change
heralded by newly elected president Ab-
doulaye Wade.
64
Hopes in the new government, however,
were short lived. Confronted by the ‘patri-
monial management of public funds cou-
pled with a desire and attempts to trans-
fer power to his son’4, a new urban youth
movement, once again led by hip-hop
artists, emerged in 2011: Y’en A Marre. Be-
sides protests and rallies6, the movement
utilized music as a means to spread its
message. This was yet another – aesthetic  –
expression of a marginalized but fiercely
determined urban youth, who believed the
most important thing was that their chil-
65
dren be spared what they had endured.
Djily Bagdad, a hip-hop artist and leader
of Y’en A Marre, summarizes this state of
mind with an accusatory chorus:
Bu waxtu dee jotee
Kepp ku dund doo gor
Ku dellu ginnaaw doo goor
Ku daw nangu doon jaam.
When times come to sacrifice our lives
SLUM LAB
Whoever survives is unworthy
Whoever steps backward is a coward
Whoever runs away submits to slavery.
On Art Contestation
I conceive of hip-hop as an ‘ensemble of
specificities’, of singularities. A ‘transcul-
ture’ insofar that hip-hop stands, each
time and place, as a singular translation of
a commonality – a singular that is always
multiple. Understanding that hip-hop
emergences commonly disrupt a situa-
tion of borders, margins, and borderline
conditions, I read this collective phenom-
enon as a constitutive location permitting
singular action. Such productive action is
expressly salient in hip-hop musical ex-
pression – a vocal music in which the voice
becomes the metaphor of the subject. The
performances of the MC thus stand as a
‘writing of the voice’ (écriture de la voix)7
giving way to a semantic phenomenon,
an emotional translation. An artistic path
of self-creation, deploying an historicized
(rather than fantasized) ‘narrative’8 refus-
ing the past in favor of the future – tend-
ing towards a new ‘event’ that ‘can only be
revolutionary’ 9. Hip-hop music becomes a
‘form-subject’, which permits the acting
political and social subject to think 10.
Led by hip-hop artists affirming them-
selves as critical actors in their country
and city through political protest and so-
cial contestation, Y’en A Marre unfolded
as a ‘continuation of the discourse ham-
mered in recent years in their music...
The fighter’s steps are punctuated by cho-
AFRICA
ruses that fill the entire soundscape’11. The
movement insisted on the singular medi-
ating position of its members and their
discourse as intermediary between public
officials and the population, but also as
an original media, through musical and
audio-visual aesthetics. This ‘writing of
the voice’ is thus always multiple, ‘repre-
senting’ something more than an individ-
ual and his or her politics. Indeed, it also
implies another way of doing politics and
entering the public political debate, by in-
scribing a political discourse per se inside
artistic practices. As Latour reminds us,
‘he who talks does not talk about himself

but about another, who is not one but le-
gion… he who talks does not have speech;
he talks on others’ behalf’12.
On Democratized
Imaginations
Laclau and Mouffe characterize the politi-
cal process as a problematic of:
AFRICA
Identities put at risk, rather than a
contest between actors whose identi-
ties (and hence ‘interests’) are already
given... Identity and interests are not
something pre-political but something
formed in discourse and hence re-
formed in political struggle13.
As such, hip-hop actors, emerging from
their borderline condition (as contempo-
rary young urban citizens), develop discur-
sive practices in order to contest the mod-
ern, marginalizing reality they face.
While ‘hip-hop is a means for individuals
to elaborate their own route’14, it also alerts
us to an alternative political praxis partici-
pating in the inclusion of ‘borderline gen-
erations’. Indeed, through the ‘writing of
the voice’, which suggests an opportunity
to develop a critical judgment on one’s
borderline conditions, hip-hop discursive
practices also stand as a commitment – a
responsibility assumed by hip-hop partici-
pants when they become acting social and
political subjects. Hip-hop artists thus talk
about a common sociality. When perform-
ing, they create this specific link between
their singular lives and ‘emotional site’15
from, and for which, they speak. They
represent. They talk for those who cannot
speak for themselves and give them the
possibility of knowing and understand-
ing. In this respect, the recent initiative
of rapped TV news (Journal Télévisé Rappé
– ‘JTR’) demonstrates how hip-hop actors
offer aesthetic performances challenging
the fixed mappings of the city’s spatial
structure and social order.
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Alternative Political Praxis
Since Y’en A Marre, Hip-Hop Galsen has
continued to be a political force in Sen-
egal, especially with the launch of JTR in
April 201316. The program has been aired
weekly after having gone viral earlier in
the year via YouTube. The two hip-hop art-
ists who initiated and host the five-minute
segment are well-known independent and
socially committed figures. Indeed, Xu-
man and Keyti enjoyed previous success
as part of their respective hip-hop groups
Pee Froiss and Rap’Adio, as well as through
their participation in the collective AURA
(United Artists for African Rap)17.
With a portion rapped in French and an-
other in Wolof, and ‘guest reporters’ (both
famous and less known Senegalese hip-
hop artists) invited to comment on local
current affairs, the show covers a selec-
tion of national and international news.
The two artists thus provide political com-
mentary on issues that may or may not
have made the headlines of conventional
news reports. As Keyti explains, behind
the project lies the desire not only to pro-
vide information, but also to approach the
debate from a different angle, absent any
defamation or vulgarity.
It is true that there had been this con-
cern about news… And people accept
it because we say things in an original
way, because we put humor behind it,
and it’s very off-the-wall… at the end,
there is music, there are images and
there is text. So it’s really three dimen-
sions of the same product in order to
get a message across.
Appropriating the political debate, Xu-
man and Keyti take full responsibility for
the opinions they express, with a certain
ethics animating their practice 18. Their po-
litical commentary emerges as a means to
provide a form of public service in the field
of information. Sharing news, discussing
current affairs, and engaging with the con-
ventional polity of their nation, the two
hip-hop artists remain ‘convinced the po-
litical debate, or at least political opinion,
is not reserved for journalists, politicians
or intellectuals… because each Senegalese
feels the consequences of decisions taken
somewhere else’. In this sense, they have –
as any other citizen – the right to offer their
opinion, and make a duty of rendering
these debates accessible to the broader
population.
I think we need to do the job of mak-
ing people realize that they actually
contribute much more than what they
think to the progress of the country,
and at all levels… We need to explain
things in such a simple and basic man-
ner in order for people to understand
what their rights in this debate are;
and know why they have to participate
in this debate. Nowadays, this is such a
job that we are doing.
Hip-Hop Biopolity
As the examples of Y’en Marre and JTR
demonstrate, hip-hop participants offer
an alternative practice initiated on the
66
borders of the institutional paths of dem-
ocratic discourses, filling a considerable
gap between public officials of the repub-
lic, and a great part of its population. In
doing so, they participate in the construc-
tion of another citizen consciousness, one
that offers a perspective on the world not
already voiced, and becoming an impulse
of change for social and political history.
Here, I want to refer to Foucault’s notion
of ‘biopolitics’, where resistance is rooted
in what is precisely at stake in power re-
lationships – that is, life itself. The life of
hip-hop artists, as representative of their
‘emotional site’, becomes the place of
emergence of new political actions. As
Foucault himself stated in La Volonté de
Savoir, ‘life somehow makes itself heard,
and thus voices out its resistance against
the system which aimed at controlling it’19.
This critical mix is illustrated below in an
extract from Matador’s track ‘Hip-Hop
Attitude’, which highlights how such a
‘hip-hop writing of the voice’ goes ‘be-
yond simply writing and reciting’, but is
about ‘setting down’ oneself on the beat;
it remains in one’s ‘veins’, as a ‘way of liv-
ing’, ‘self-made in the streets’, in which a
‘resourceful spirit’ is about ‘working hard’
and ‘serving others before oneself’. This
affectivity is deployed around two prin-
ciples of praxis, two transcultural codes 20:
‘representing’ and ‘proving’. Or, as Mata-
dor put it, ‘working hard’ and ‘serving oth-
ers before oneself’.
Xar mat gori, dor war amoul wori, niak do
am lou bari
Déréte tokh bakanou gor yi […]
Hip Hop lagniye téwal […]
Diglé thiangaye sétoo, lax diaye lékoo
Wathié stress yégueul moralou nit té né.
We’re not worried, though we’re not
wealthy, we work hard for tomorrow
Blood drips from the nose of an upright
warrior…
We represent Hip-Hop…
Advice giver, who doesn’t get to receive
any; serving others before oneself
Eradicating stress, uplifting the morale
of the population, in times we so need
it 21.
To be sure, these notions of ‘proving’ and
‘representing’ are also present in the JTR
concept and practice. Indeed, with their
program, Xuman and Keyti ‘represent’ in
terms of providing an alternative political
commentary accessible to the inhabitants
of their emotional site; but also ‘prove’
the distinctive quality of their production,
by paying great attention to the details of
its conception and realization. An ethical
practice to remain credible and close the
door to easy critique, and through which
to impose themselves not only as political
actors, but also as cultural entrepreneurs
on their metropolitan scene. As Keyti re-
minds us:
Quality is the least one can do… We
should no longer allow people to give
us such excuses… the excuse of a lack
of (financial) means or whatever. I think
the biggest means one can have is first
and foremost ideas… So this means
that when one wants, when one has
ideas, when one decides to use his/her
brain and not to stay in an easy way out,
one gets extraordinary results. And with
JTR, it is really about this, about trying
to push everyone to reach another level.
Hip-hop aesthetic expressions, whether
musical or audio-visual, emerge as exem-
plary actions meant to offer visions and
models of alternative forms of sociality
that can be consciously chosen. In fact,
the ontological character and constitutive
dynamics of what I call the ‘hip-hop bio-
polity’, through its active expression and
access to all, offers an audacious act of
political imagination – a process in which
the subjects create new institutional and
social models based on their own produc-
tive capacities22. Indeed, and as in any
context of biopolitical production, the
constitutive actions of hip-hop partici-
pants weaken the distinctions between
economic, social and cultural dimensions
(entrepreneurial practices in music or vid-
eo production exemplify this).
Conclusion
The biopolitics of Hip Hop Galsen reminds
us how urban culture can suggest produc-
tive sites for marginalized urbanites to
politically and socially enact civic partici-
Stills from the Journal Télévisé Rappé rapped news segment
pation and empowerment. Moreover, hip-
hop aesthetic expressions have served as an
effective site for identity formation and ne-
gotiation, while the transculture emerged
as a privileged vehicle for social change for
young urban citizens in Senegal. In this re-
gard, artists such as Keyti, Matador or Xu-
man, with their mediating practices, can
inform larger movements through contes-
tation art and democratized imaginations,
while pointing to ‘the possibility of change,
of reimagining life and labor, of creating
new forms of solidarity’23.
As the distinctive visual literacy expressed
in JTR shows, the productions of hip-hop
artists, and their consequent ‘imaged
writings’, are not only symbolically, but
also materially resonant of the political
economy of their times. They have the ca-
pacity to provide another imagined direc-
tion through their aesthetics, while also
concretely writing down (to the earth!)
these images. Hip Hop Galsen participants,
while drawing on their everyday experi-
ence, provide another vision – an alter-
native reading of the urban environment
with its improbable contradictions.
1 Hip-hop Galsen is an argotic expression for
Senegalese hip-hop.
2 Boul Faalé means ‘don’t worry’, ‘never mind’
in Wolof. It is the title of the first musical
cassette released by the pioneering group,
Positive Black Soul, in 1994, in which the group
formulated a vehement discourse denouncing
the corruption of the PS (Diouf’s political party)
then in power.
3 Ibrahima Wane, ‘De Bul Faale à Y’en A Marre:
Nouvelles Voix/voies De La Résistance’ in
Chronicle of a Revolt: Photographs of a Season
of Protest (Exhibition Catalogue, 2012).
4 ibid.
5 Y’en A Marre means ‘fed up’ or ‘enough is
enough’ in French.
6 Especially through repetitive large scale
demonstrations (one of them on 23 June forc-
ing then-President Wade to back away from
constitutional changes that would ensure him a
third term in office.
67
SLUM LAB
7 Christophe Rubin, Le Texte de Rap: Une Écri-
ture de la Voix, European Medi@Culture-Online
(2004).
8 For a detailed discussion on distinctive hip-hop
discursive practices, see Jenny F Mbaye, ‘Hip-
hop Politics: Recognizing a Southern Complex-
ity’ in Susan Parnell and Sophie Oldfield (eds),
A Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global
South (2014) 399.
9 Antonio Negri, Art Et Multitude: Neuf Lettres
Sur L’art Suivies de Métamorphoses (2009) 102.
10 Henri Meschonnic, Politique Du Rythme, Poli-
tique Du Sujet (1995) 21.
11 Wane (2012).
12 Italics in original text. See Bruno Latour, ‘What
If We Talked Politics a Little?’ (2003) 2 Contem-
porary Political Theory 143, 160.
13 Quoted in Michael Peter Smith, Transnational
Urbanism: Locating Globalization (2003) 135.
14 Hugues Bazin, ‘Hip-hop: Le Besoin d’Une
Nouvelle Médiation Politique’ (2000) 11 Mouve-
ments 39, 45.
15 Their ‘emotional site’ refers to their posses,
their crew, and more largely to their neighbor-
hood or their community, whether defined as
‘hip-hop transculture’, urban youth, Franco-
phone African youth, or general borderline
socialities. In other words, their ‘emotional site’
refers to the ‘multiple in the singular’.
16 https://www.youtube.com/user/
jtronline?feature=watch
17 I offer a discussion of this collective and its
original hip-hop musical comedy show in Jenny
F Mbaye, ‘Hip-hop Political Production in West
Africa: AURA and its Extraordinary Stories of
Poto-Poto Children’ in Khalil Saucier (ed), Na-
tive Tongues: An African Hip-hop Reader (2011).
18 For further discussion of hip-hop ethical
AFRICA
economy, see Mbaye (2014).
19 This is my translation of the original text: “[l]
a vie est en quelque sorte prise au mot et re-
tournée contre le système qui entreprenait de
la contrôler”. See Michel Foucault, Histoire de
la Sexualité I - La Volonté de Savoir (1976) 191.
20 For further discussion of these two transcul-
tural codes of an entrepreneurial hip-hop spirit,
see Mbaye (2014).
21 This is an extract from Matador’s track ‘Hip-
Hop Attitude’ from the album Vox Populi (2012).
English translation by the author based on the
initial transcription and translation from Wolof
produced by the Africulturban’s team.
22 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude
(2004) 354.
23 Rosalind Gill and Andy Pratt, ‘In the Social
Factory? Immaterial Labor, Precariousness
and Cultural Work’ (2008) 25 Theory, Culture &
Society 1, 20.

THE SLUMS OF THE RAPIDLY
GROWING COASTAL CITY OF
ACCRA REVEAL A MAZE-LIKE
GEOGRAPHY OF INCREMENTAL
ADJUSTMENTS, HIGHLIGHTING THE
POLITICAL DIMENSIONS AT THE HEART
OF A CONTESTED URBAN EXPERIENCE.
By Jonathan Silver
Incremental infrastructures can be un-
derstood as urban systems in the mak-
ing, undergoing constant adjustment and
reconfiguration through testing and ex-
perimentation, as urban dwellers seek to
shift materialities to shape future possi-
bilities. These conditions across both for-
mal and informal typologies generate im-
portant questions and reveal insights into
unfolding forms of urbanism in Accra. In
this short essay I examine this incremen-
talism across housing and energy systems
in a specific neighborhood, reflecting on
notions of incremental infrastructure and
how it is constituted before considering
the politics that such framings of urban
systems may prompt us to explore.
Incremental infrastructures are vis-
ible across Ga Mashie, a centrally located
neighborhood characterized by a mix
of older, colonial era buildings and new
shack type informalities, together with
poor, overcrowded and often insecure
conditions for residents of one of the Gha-
naian capital’s many slums. These condi-
tions of socio-environmental marginal-
ization prompt urban dwellers to reshape
the house or compound to provide new
material arrangements that can support
households through daily struggles, and
to intervene in the electricity grid to adjust
flows of energy. Such interventions can in-
corporate redirecting power through clan-
destine connections, building a new roof
– more resistant to extreme weather from
the tempestuous Gulf of Guinea – or creat-
ing new domestic spaces for distant rela-
tives arriving from outside the city. These
constant and ever-shifting infrastructural
configurations can thus be understood as
incremental, in that they reveal a spatial
imaginary of a dialectical nature between
ongoing conditions of poverty in the
neighborhood and the material respons-
es, interventions and strategies of survival
unfolding each day in multiple built envi-
ronment forms.
In Ga Mashie the urban systems display a
range of materialities – including timber,
metal sheeting, locally produced brick,
mud, sandstone, wires, concrete, plastic
sheeting and stone. Together, these mul-
tiple surfaces, façades and structures are
configured across urban space in such a
way that each individual dwelling and its
connections to wider networks displays
its own unique architectural form. Whilst
commonalities across the type of materi-
als being used are visible, the ways each
household arranges and adjusts these
combinations suggests there is no single
standard housing form or network con-
nection in the neighborhood. Instead, ma-
terials are mobilized through a process of
improvisation, in which households test
and experiment with particular assem-
blages of different construction materi-
als, adding new layers, reinforcing walls,
creating new flows of electricity and fitting
newly cut doors.
In one particular home, the incremental
nature of its form is prominent during
a two-week period of improvised recon-
figuration as a previously large colonial
building undergoes a subdivision into
new household spaces, reflecting the pres-
sures of a growing and overcrowded popu-
lation. Household members use a range
of purchased and scavenged materials to
produce these new domestic boundaries –
one wall is made of brick and provides a
seemingly permanent divider between
two families. Plastic sheeting in another
part of the building provides a more fluid
boundary between a family and some el-
der relatives who had moved back after
a failed enterprise in another area of the
city. Accompanying these adjusted spaces,
the flow of electricity has been tampered
with by a sympathetic local electrician,
who uses wires left over from a previous
installation to configure new connec-
tions into each part of the house. These
improvements to the housing and energy
69
system are incremental and tentative,
likely to be adjusted again, reconfigured
or taken apart. They reveal the ongoing,
incessant micro-scale transformations
occurring across Ga Mashie.
In a different part of the neighborhood,
previously common land has become a
site for the construction of new shacks
by a number of poorer households, using
a combination of timber and corrugated
SLUM LAB
iron to create not just a shelter, but a vis-
ible claim to the use of the land. In a matter
of days, one of the shacks has a new mud
wall as the owners seek to solidify both
the structure and right to this tiny patch
of space as a permanent residence. It is
hoped after a few months of saving the rest
of the structure will also undergo this shift
from corrugated iron to mud, and perhaps
in the future into more expensive brick and
cement. Next door a woman has set up a
kitchen out the back of her shack. Through
plastic sheeting and a hastily made bench
the domestic space has become a place to
generate income via the sale of smoked
fish. Alongside these incremental adjust-
ments to housing, new geographies of en-
ergy are being created as the shacks link
into the wider electricity grid through the
work of a number of electricians, config-
uring new lighting for the kitchen and a
mobile phone charging point for a new
business undertaking. Electricity meters
are tampered with to allow for a split sup-
ply, thus shifting the flows of energy from
one dwelling to the dozen or so new ones.
Finally, a clandestine connection to the
urban grid provides a couple of shacks at
the periphery with a free supply of electric-
ity, at least until the authorities find this
source and close it down, predicating a re-
sponse from the urban dwellers to find an
alternative solution.
The neighborhood itself is a site of con-
stant in and out migration, as residents
move to different areas with better hous-
ing and energy conditions and newer,
poorer residents arrive seeking shelter,
a potentially cheaper (or free) supply of
electricity and familiar faces. The housing
and energy systems of course reflect these
AFRICA
movements, their incremental nature rep-
resenting the circulation of peoples, ma-
terials, ideas and actions flowing into and
across this series of shifting territories.
This movement reveals the in process na-
ture of infrastructures in these city spaces.
Such processes can partly be character-
ized as reactive responses to ongoing ef-
fects of poverty and socio-environmental
conditions. For instance, the need to de-
velop off-grid forms of lighting is creating
new energy configurations and practices
as climate change impacts on Akosombo
Dam (Ghana’s main electricity generator)
produce increasing network disruption.
 These incremental infrastructures also
point to a progressive political dynamic – a
process of residents seeking to create new
possibilities and horizons that shift not
just the materialities of slums, but open
up new political horizons, practices of col-
laboration and urban futures.
AFRICA
wider community. Sharing ideas, calling
over an electrician, imitating a neighbor’s
new wall, or coming together to protect a
new collection of shacks from the atten-
tion of the authorities, reveals this learn-
ing and how it informs the improvisation
involved. Thirdly, an understanding of in-
A map of the geography of incremental adjustments to the urban system in Ga Mashie, Accra
Such conditions do not rule out change.
Instead, residents themselves seek to THE MAIN INFRASTRUCTURAL
transform socio‑environmental inequali-
ties through their own interventions. They UNIT OR BUILDING BLOCK IS
seek to test and prefigure new arrange-
ments promising a better tomorrow, yet THE HUMAN BODY, AND THUS,
often such maneuvers are resisted by the
IT’S THE BODY ITSELF THAT
CREATES THE CITY.
Filip de Boeck

Urban Anthropologist

This incrementalism thus prompts some
important considerations on such forms
of African urbanism and accompanying
infrastructures. Firstly, it suggests that no-
tions of infrastructure – whether housing
or energy – and territory more generally
need to be understood as relational. As in
SLUM LAB
IN A MATTER OF DAYS, state as new electricity connections are cut
off and shacks demolished. Thus, incre-
ONE OF THE SHACKS mental infrastructure is also contested,
HAS A NEW MUD WALL for it reveals the power struggles over who
has the right to intervene in urban space,
AS THE OWNERS or to shift conditions of poverty. In an ur-
SEEK TO SOLIDIFY banized world increasingly characterized

the making, procedural and tentative. Liv-
ing in Ga Mashie is to live in a neighbor-
hood in constant flux and change, in which
materialities are being reconfigured and
housing and energy systems – tradition-
ally framed as static and in situ – become
part of such movements. Secondly, this
incremental infrastructure is constituted
through processes of material improvisa-
tion, using and testing new combinations
of timber, nails, wires, cloth and the like
to seek to construct a new purpose-driven
material arrangement. This improvisa-
tion is predicated on processes of learn-
ing across individuals, groups and the
by slum conditions, incremental adjust-
BOTH THE STRUCTURE ments to infrastructure may be a crucial
AND RIGHT TO THIS process in realizing social justice in the
city through the power of urban dwellers
TINY PATCH OF to transform their own conditions.
SPACE AS A
PERMANENT RESIDENCE.
frastructure as incremental in Ga Mashie
suggests some important political reflec-
tions in the context of the inability of state
or private mechanisms to finance housing
improvement and cheap energy for the ur-
ban poor.

70

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE BLUE KENTUCKY
DAWNS YOU GET IN NAIROBI
ONCE IN A WHILE:
MISTY, WITH SHAFTS OF SUNLIGHT
SETTING THE DEWY LAWNS ABLAZE.
By J M Ledgard
I pulled out of our drive and saw a tangle in
the drainage ditch beyond. It was a dead
man, with snapped limbs and shitty trou-
sers. It might have been a murder. More
likely a car hit him in the night, the soft
pop of the collision unheard by the guards
in the houses around. He may have been
drunk – you do see drunks at night in Nai-
robi, stumbling into the headlights. Or the
driver may have been drunk. Or both. Any-
way, this was some weeks ago and what
was extraordinary, looking back, was not
that the man had died alone in a ditch, but
that I had driven past the corpse and on to
my child’s kindergarten without stopping.
There were also, I remember, workmen
nearby who ignored the corpse, and men
and women walking to work who looked
away. There are plenty of Good Samaritans
in Nairobi, but the instinct for self-preser-
vation is strong, because the brutal mixes
with the usual. Life in Nairobi is like mud-
dy water – unclear, perhaps dangerous,
but seen in a certain light also lustrous.
With four million people, a major airport,
skyscrapers, United Nations headquar-
ters, a booming stock exchange, fine res-
taurants, cinemas, fashion boutiques, a
choked bit of motorway, and an ice rink,
Nairobi is the most important city in east-
ern Africa. It is getting more prosperous,
more imaginative, but also more restive,
with a sparking between rich and poor.
You see that best in the south of Nairobi.
There, separated from the city proper by
the wild Ngong forest, is the suburb of Kar-
en. This is Kenya’s Surrey, its Grosse Point,
its ragged Versailles. Large houses sit on
large plots of land. The days are quiet, the
swimming pools clear. Many of the houses
are owned by white Kenyans, including
families who stayed on after indepen-
dence, eking out privileged but politically
powerless lives, and, like Irish aristocracy,
suddenly finding themselves in a republic,
haunted by a past that never was.
Karen was laid out on what used to be the
coffee estate of Baroness Karen Blixen.
The soil and the altitude, at 1,700 meters,
were against that formidable woman, but
precisely because of her Kenyan insolven-
cy she turned to storytelling, went home to
Denmark, and wrote several major works
including Out Of Africa, which was later
made into a Hollywood film starring Meryl
Streep and Robert Redford. 'Life out there
[in Karen] was rather like 18th century
England', Blixen recalled late in her life.
'We might often be hard up for cash, but it
was still rich in many ways, with the lovely
landscape, dozens of horses and dogs, and
a multitude of servants'.
Flying a small plane over south Nairobi
you first see the national park, with pin
dots for zebras and hyphens for giraffes,
then the red earth roads snaking up to
the older mansions in Karen, the new
housing developments with barbed wire
fences, the private Hillcrest School, the
racecourse, the white headstones in the
war graves cemetery, and the Jamhuri polo
grounds – but it is the Ngong forest which
dominates. It is the last indigenous forest
in Nairobi, how the land looked before it
was cleared. It skidded black and imag-
ined green right down the escarpment in
the first photographs of the city, all the
way from the rift valley through Karen to
what is now the city center; there were
tree snakes, leopards and deep coursing
streams where tower blocks now stand.
It is only when the plane banks that you
see Kibera, the biggest slum in Africa,
packed in between the Ngong forest and
downtown. Some 600,000 people live
in 280 hectares, ten or 20 to single mud
shacks, mostly without clean drinking
water or sanitation. Kibera’s name comes
from a Nubian word, kibra, meaning for-
est. It had been forest when the British
gifted it to Nubians as a reward for soldier-
ing. It continues to swell out, impossibly
so, reaching to the edge of the trees, and
the view from above is less of a settlement
than a single jangling mass – as if the cor-
rugated metal and the junk were not roofs,
but shields upraised in formation.
73
A Sanctuary
Under the presidency of Daniel arap Moi,
the Ngong forest was subdivided into plots
and gifted to government loyalists. A cam-
paign led by Imre Loefler, a Hungarian-
born local surgeon and conservationist,
persuaded Moi to call back the land titles.
Against the odds, the forest was declared
a wildlife sanctuary and money was found
from the European Union to bound it with
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a 22 kilometer long electric fence. There
were 588 hectares in all – twice the size of
Kibera.
Loefler, who died earlier this year, liked to
ride his one-eyed mare, Treasure Island,
deep into the forest, discovering its pools
and waterfalls. His idea was to make the
sanctuary a centerpiece for Nairobi with
'picnic places, campsites, a lecture the-
atre, museum, and a library'. A nature
trail for children has already been laid
out. There are plans for a luxury tented
camp, as an alternative to city hotels. The
problem is safety. The forest has a seedy
reputation. Few city dwellers venture into
it. Those who do take armed guards or, as
Loefler did, baying hounds. There are car-
jackings, rapes, and murders. Criminals
escape into it and police do not follow.
From the saddle, in the half-light, Loefler
saw stolen car engines hoisted up in the
trees, loot stashed in caves, even a decom-
posing body (which in the spirit of Nairobi
self-preservation he did not report).
All of this made me more curious. I decid-
ed to walk through, from Karen to Kibera,
and to my surprise what I discovered was
not a crime den but something like a mi-
croscopic safari that stands in contrast
to the macroscopic game drives Kenya is
famous for. Safaris out on the grasslands
are a mass of vistas, the sun a ball of fire,
the moon bulbous, but sometimes feel
bloated and contrived, like a cruise ship
run aground. The forest, by contrast, was
raw. It drew me in. It made me pay atten-
tion to details. For instance, to the enam-
elling on the backs of insects ascending
out of monkey droppings on the path, or
the slow definition of one bird song from
AFRICA
another.
It was rousing to find such a diversity of
animal life in a city. Among many other
creatures, there were rock pythons, Jack-
son’s tree snakes, black-necked spitting
cobras, white-lipped snakes, three-horned
chameleons, and Kilimanjaro five-toed
writhing skinks. Egyptian geese settled
in the brightness of the glades (which
have been mysteriously part of the forest
for time immemorial). African goshawks
hovered over the gorge of the Miotoni
River, where it flowed out of the forest into
Kibera. There was the honking of the sa-
 cred ibis – a surprisingly artless creature,
the red flash of turaco wings, and the slow-
beating eclipse of giant African crowned
eagles, which feed on Sykes and Ververt
monkeys. Flaming sunbirds in amethyst,
bronze, gold, and scarlet guttered around
the flowers. There were orchids. There
was a thickness of butterflies in the wet.
There were bushes of wild coffee and oth-
ers with poisonous arrow berries, so called
because the Masai smeared them on their
arrow tips.
AFRICA
It was a broken canopy forest, punctured
throughout with shafts of sunlight. Stand-
ing still, I could see bush backs, dik-
diks and other forest antelopes moving
through the light and baboon troops scat-
tering along the ridge. Only the low-flying
Cessnas into the nearby Wilson airport
broke the spell. At night, it was possible to
see wild pigs, porcupines, and aardvarks
in great numbers, the latter hoovering up
the termites cloaking the tree stumps in
vermillion.
Fairy Tales
Forests are not part of Kenya’s national my-
thology. It is true that the Mau Mau upris-
ing (which helped win independence from
Britain) took advantage of the forests, but
the images Kenyan schoolchildren see of
their country are the acacia-studded grass-
lands of the Masai Mara, Mount Kenya
with its glaciers, camel trains crossing the
northern deserts, Indian Ocean beaches,
and Lake Victoria. Most cultures in Ke-
nya tell stories of forest ogres with hairy
tails who enjoy torturing children and of
heroes who venture deep into the forest
and slay the ogres. But it is hard to say how
many of these stories predate the Grimm
brothers fairy tales that arrived with the
European settlers.
Even today, the real life stories from the
Ngong forest sound like dark fairy tales. A
ranger described how he had seen a male
lion in the forest only the week before. It
had come in through a gate carjackers had
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smashed open. Not so long ago, a woman
slipped through the fence with her baby.
She abandoned the infant at the base of
a muthiga tree, wrapped in a dirty wet
cloth. A wild dog picked up the bundle
and took it back to her litter of pups. The
baby was found by a tree poacher, huddled
in among the puppies. The mother was
arrested; the baby taken to the Kenyatta
Hospital. After a story ran on the Associ-
ated Press, hundreds of requests came in
to adopt the child, and nearly as many to
take in the dog, though nothing was men-
tioned of the mother.
Then there are the hyenas. Above all oth-
ers, these are the animals I associate with
Africa, because they hardly exist in a zoo,
they are nothing there, while in Africa they
move freely and monstrously. There are
several packs of spotted hyenas in the for-
est. If you listen closely at night in Karen
you can hear them. Why so many? Well, it
used to be (and maybe still is) that the very
poorest in Kibera, the ones who could not
afford any kind of coffin, let alone a plot
to put it in, would carry their dead into the
forest and bury them in light soil, thereby
feeding the hyenas. It was a curious re-
turn to the funeral rites of the Kikuyu, the
people who populate much of highlands
Kenya. They used to leave their dying rela-
tives in little grass huts. There were two
doors, one to push the faint breathing
elder or child in, another for the hyena to
drag the body out. This was not long ago.
History, whether the animist worship of
Mount Kenya or Blixen’s '18th century
74
England', is proximate in Kenya. Our Ki-
kuyu gardener shocked me when she told
me that her own grandparents had been so
dragged away by hyenas. A staunch Presby-
terian, she was repulsed.
The Last Forest
The wildlife sanctuary has legal title to
its land, able trustees, a team of rangers,
yet its trees continue to be cut down. The
path I took occasionally came out along
the electric fence. The charge running
through those wires is meant to be strong
enough to throw a man backwards. In fact,
with the power down from 9 volts to 2, it is
no deterrent. Intruders anyway dig holes
under or tie a rag to it, lift up the wires,
and step through. Most cut down trees to
sell as firewood. At some points, well-worn
paths appear to run straight through the
fence. In these places, littered on both
sides with fresh sawdust, bark, plastic
bags, the bushes around used as toilets, it
is possible to feel the very lifeblood of the
forest ebbing away.
Indigenous hardwoods take a century
to mature, but are felled in minutes by
armed men – often stealing in under cover
of a thunderstorm. The men take only the
tree trunks, for which they earn $5 a meter.
The muhoho, silvery prince of the forest,
is under particular threat.  Wood carvers
value muhoho’s smooth working proper-
ties. Almost any figure can be carved from
it as it rarely splits. The little polished gi-
raffes and elephants sold in the tourist cu-
rio shops in the hotels and at the Jomo Ke-
nyatta Airport are cut from muhoho stolen
from the Ngong forest. At the present rate
of cutting, it will be gone in a year or so.
Arresting tree poachers is a thankless
task. They are immensely strong, carry-
ing out lengths of trees in darkness, in
wet, through the mud, wearing only flip-
flops. Even if they are not carrying a gun,
they struggle fiercely, slashing out with
daggers. Under Kenya’s new laws, wood
poachers should get a $700 fine or a pris-
on sentence. Most get out of jail after a day
or two, having paid a bribe of $30. Some
have been arrested in the Ngong forest ten
times or more.
The rangers in the sanctuary are under-
standably demoralized. Funding difficul-
ties have dropped their numbers from 16
to six. It is impossible to patrol far from the
gates they are meant to man. They would
like to see their numbers boosted to 20,
with a vehicle, mountain bikes, and more
guns. Instead, their uniforms are thread-
bare, they have little time off, and they are
not well armed. The only weapon to hand
during my walk was an old British rifle. 'It
shoots straight', insisted the rangers. The
problem is the criminals carry automatic
weapons – one ranger was sprayed with
bullets and killed when he had the bad
luck to surprise a gang hiding out.
Still, there have been successes. The herb-
alists coming out of Kibera to gather bark,
roots, and plants for traditional remedies
used to strip trees and kill them. Now they
harvest them, taking only small pieces of
bark and covering the wounds with cow
dung. I happened upon Arnest Lime, a 77-
year old herbalist. He was walking back to
Kibera with two plastic bags stuffed with
roots, flowers, and leaves. He specialized
in liver ailments and swollen limbs, as well
as tuberculosis, grinding his ingredients
to be served in clear soups. 'There are too
many herbalists now', he said. 'We are care-
ful but we take too much. Soon I will not
find any medicinal plants in this forest'.
Survival
Walking towards Kibera from out of the
forest was a strange experience. The
sounds and smells of the slum were there
in the trees, for a long time before I could
see it. The intensity of human life is awe-
some, the squalor appalling. It is a warren
subject to any number of clichés. Here
HIV-prostitutes charge 25 cents, while use
of a latrine costs 5 cents. John Le Carré’s
book, The Constant Gardener, made much
of it. A subsequent film was shot along the
railway line in Kibera – the open bit of the
slum where foreign dignitaries gingerly
step. Coming from out of the forest you are
really walking up into the arse of Kibera,
where everything is shat out. The Miotoni
ran clear over a few meters of open ground
and then turned gray, sickly, and was swal-
lowed by the shacks. Vestiges of the forest
were there in the alleys. Among the rub-
bish and feces were stumps of great trees,
serving as stalls for street vendors, or ta-
bles inside a shack.
In Kibera, it is about survival. You see this
early in the morning on the Karen side of
LIFE IN NAIROBI IS
LIKE MUDDY WATER –
UNCLEAR, PERHAPS
DANGEROUS, BUT
SEEN IN A I had started my micro-safari that morn-
CERTAIN LIGHT
ALSO LUSTROUS.
the forest. The polo ponies exercise there,
exquisite, snorting, softening trails into
black sloughs, while out of sight on the
slopes you can hear the Kibera women
hacking at trees with sharpened machet-
es. They gather as much wood as they can
carry and walk back to Kibera, selling to
vendors cooking mandazi, a local dough-
nut, or brewing busaa, an alcoholic por-
ridge that men gather around, sucking it
up with straws until they keel over.
I came across Lillian Mwaniki, a 32-year
old single mother of three, carrying a load
of firewood. She had gathered it through
the dawn hours – cutting off branches –
and had carried it five kilometers, from
the Karen side. She expected to be paid 80
cents. She was child-sized, gaunt, dressed
in rags, but her load was too heavy, even
with all my effort, to lift off the ground.
The rangers, who were with me then, did
not have the heart to give her a dress-
ing down, or to confiscate the pathetic
hacksaw she held behind her back, like
75
a treasure. She put an old flip-flop to her
forehead and adjusted the rope around it.
She lifted the bundle. It seemed like some
kind of miracle that she managed to get it
off the ground, but once it was on her back
gravity reasserted itself, the weight bent
her double, the rope cut into the flip-flop. I
worried that her knees would give way. She
moved very slowly down the path, towards
Kibera, and I was halted by the hardness
and invisibility of her life. Who could be-
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grudge her? Yet, what would become of
the forest?
Finally, I climbed down a steep ravine to
the Miotoni River. There was only a trickle
of water at the bottom – in the rainy season
it raged deep. The electric fence on both
sides of the ravine was cut to ribbons. Even
by Nairobi standards it was a black spot (a
peculiar feature of the city that the crimi-
nals keep to the rivers and streams). 'We
can’t stay', one of the rangers said. 'This is
a place for murderers'.
Walking back into the forest, we passed
a Masai camp. The Masai had been given
the right to graze their animals along the
fence in exchange for patrolling an oil
pipeline running directly underneath.
The men carried spears and dressed tra-
ditionally. 'Water is a problem, so is food',
said John Mbaka, a 30-year old herdsmen
with sharpened teeth. 'And leopards, of
course'. Leopards? 'They take our sheep
and calves'.
ing at the Dormans coffee shop in Karen
– with a newspaper and a latte. I walked
some way and came across extremes of
wealth and poverty (I have not mentioned
the Range Rovers lined up outside the polo
club) and, well, so what? Such disparities
are common in the developing world, just
as they were in Dickensian England. No,
what amazed, the difference in Nairobi, I
think, is the resistance of nature. It is hard
to think of another city in the world where
wild beasts still have such traction.
Which brings me back to the leopards.
They get protective when they are preg-
AFRICA
nant. They do not like open spaces then,
so they come through the drainage cul-
verts dug under the Langata Road and
on into the Ngong forest. They give birth
in the Miotoni gorge, in the robber caves.
The forest shelters the cubs through their
first year. My question is: for how much
longer?
First Published in The Economist

BEYOND ENTROPY BEGAN IN 2009
AS A RESEARCH CLUSTER
AT THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION
IN LONDON, FOCUSING ON THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE
CONCEPTS OF ENERGY AND SPACE,
BEYOND THE RHETORIC
OF SUSTAINABILITY.
By Beyond Entropy
Beyond Entropy's Luanda, Encyclopedic City installation, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2013
Q uestioning pre-conceived notions of
spatial praxis in order to produce new
concepts about the space we inhabit – be
it our homes, cities or territories – Beyond
Entropy is now a collaborative practice
and network operating globally at the
threshold of art, architecture and geo-
politics. We believe the notion of territory
encompasses more than a geographical or
physical location, instead wider regions
with a set of similar and recurrent spatial
problems. In this sense, we operate in
situations of territorial crisis, within three
geopolitical zones: Europe, Africa and the
Mediterranean. Each territory is analyzed
through a set of conditions within the
dialectics of energy and form, transforma-
tion and resistance, energy and entropy,
matter and action. A proposal is then for-
mulated grounded in neither a singular
77
locality, nor a universal solution, but with
a paradigmatic role for the entire territory.
This perspective framed Beyond Entropy’s
pavilions for the Republic of Angola at the
Venice Architectural Biennale in 2012 and
the Art Biennale in 2013.
Beyond Entropy Africa – one of our territo-
ries – focuses on Luanda as the archetype
for the urban transformations happening
across the entire sub-Saharan region. That
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is, fast-growing cities, with huge conurba-
tions and a lack of adequate infrastruc-
ture to manage and control this sudden
expansion. Like most large African cities,
Luanda is full of paradoxes. It concen-
trates more than half of the population of
the entire country within its boundaries.
During the Angolan civil war, a large por-
tion of the population fled rural areas and
installed itself in the city. This continu-
AFRICA
ous, unplanned and informal growth is
one of the reasons why some of Luanda’s
neighborhoods have extremely high den-
sity, though absent the familiar cityscape
of endless high-rises seen elsewhere. De-
spite attempts to control and order the
chaos by implementing urban models im-
ported from other locations, such as the
American gated community or Chinese
ghost cities, these have not proven capable
 (Above and below) Images from Angolan photographer Edson Chagas' 'Found Not Taken' series shot in the streets of Luanda
of coping with the constant pressures of
the city, nor pleasing the cultural modus vi-
vendi of the population. The complexity of
such a city confronts us with the collapse
of traditional models of urban organiza-
tion and zoning.
In order to engage with the transformative
nature of the city, Beyond Entropy has for-
mulated the concept of ‘morphing space’
as a model to understand the extreme
density witnessed. The fact that many
AFRICA
people and families live in the same space
cannot be the sole reason for this state of
affairs. In Luanda, every space is simulta-
neously becoming another, as a variety of
functions are performed simultaneously.
For instance, a house is at once a house,
office, warehouse and garage. This reads
as ‘undecided’ space, as opposed to tra-
ditional multi-functional space. For the
Venice Biennales, Beyond Entropy devel-
oped two proposals, each complying with
the irreducible, transformative nature of
the African city, resistant to – or system-
atically subverting – any attempts at con-
ventional zoning strategies. Definitions
of private property and intended use be-
come almost irrelevant as streets morph
into markets, houses into shops and pave-
ments into shop windows. Each space is
constantly shifting during different times
of day. High density is not so much a nega-
tive condition, but instead the primordial
condition for the city to function – a cata-
lyst for the emergence of new forms of spa-
tial occupation.
In 2012, Beyond Entropy presented a re-
search project developed in Cazenga,
one of the densest and more problematic
musseques of Luanda, complemented by
an active design tool used to suggest a
possible urban future 1. Displayed on the
island of San Giorgio Maggiore, the in-
stallation was a full-scale prototype of a
fragment of ‘common ground’, as well as
a proposal for what the peri-urban areas
of the city could become. The pavilion was
articulated in two types of space – voids,
and the common ground between them.
The voids, located at the entry points of
Sala Carnelutti, represented the footprint
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of four shelters that had been studied
and documented with students from the
Universidade Metodista de Angola2. The
interstitial space – the ground between
the voids – was planted with Arundo Donax
in what we designed to be both a public
space and energetic common ground, a
model that is not one or the other, but per-
forms several functions at different scales,
just like the morphing space we observed.
While avoiding destructive interventions,
the plantation of a commonly occurring
cane into the interstitial spaces produced
a new urban typology – common ground as
both urban garden and infrastructure for
78
biomass and green sewage. A shared in-
frastructure that could benefit the popula-
tion in surrounding areas.
With Luanda, Encyclopedic City in 2013,
we continued our research on morphing
space. Collaborating with Angolan pho-
tographer Edson Chagas, the exhibition
responded to the theme posed by Massi-
Beyond Entropy's pavilion for the first Angolan participation at the Venice Biennale in 2012
miliano Gioni – ‘The Encyclopedic Palace’.
The theme features a paradox – no build-
ing can contain a universal multiplicity of
spaces, possibilities, and objects. When a
building tends towards the encyclopedic,
it becomes a city. Only the city includes
multiple conditions in a coherent form –
though urban and conflict ridden. Chagas’
work focuses on the complexity of Luanda,
derived from the presence of such unpre-
dictable spaces and the coexistence of ir-
reconcilable programs – city and country,
infrastructure and habitation, garbage
and public space – that make it an ency-
clopedic city. By collecting discarded ob-
jects from the street, and repositioning
them to create new scenarios, his ‘Found
Not Taken’ series reveals an ambiguity
that uncovers the derelict, while recon-
structing the spaces of the city and rela-
tionships between the objects and new
scenarios. It delineates an urban cartog-
raphy mixing documentary-like precision
and poeticism, a new way of observing the
encyclopedic wealth of spaces around us,
and perhaps even a new way of inhabiting
those spaces.
The pavilion integrated the curatorial
theme of the Biennale with the specific
location of the exhibition, composed of
23 posters with photographs from the se-
79
ries ‘Found Not Taken’ and conceived as
an encyclopedia of Luanda. The posters
were placed in stacks carefully positioned
across the galleries of Palazzo Cini, creat-
ing a new contemporary landscape in op-
position to the Renaissance artworks on
the walls. The stacks, with their volume
and height, populated the palace and of-
fered visitors the opportunity to wander
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in the space and make their own ency-
clopedia, even if always a fragmented, or
partial, view of Luanda. Palazzo Cini had
been closed to the public for years. The ex-
hibition not only opened up the Cini col-
lection to this audience, but also activated
temporarily a new cultural hub within the
city of Venice. The Encyclopedia of Luanda
left the rooms of Palazzo Cini and spread
into the streets, with the stacks consumed
bit by bit until the entire exhibition disap-
peared and progressively freed the mu-
seum, leaving it as it had always been.
AFRICA
1 Musseque comes from the kimbundo ‘museke’
– the red sand characteristic of Luanda. It
is also used to designate the informal and
organic neighborhoods that surround the city.
Musseques are spontaneous and self‑built
neighborhoods with a lack of infrastructure,
services and asphalt roads.
2 Cazenga is a peripheral neighborhood in
Luanda with an area of 38 square kilometers
and a population of approximately two million
inhabitants – a density higher than Manhattan
without high-rise buildings.
 LAUFEN MANIFESTO FOR A ➄
HUMANE DESIGN CULTURE UNDERSTANDING THE TERRITORY
While designers and policy-makers devote significant attention to mega-cities and high density environ-
ments, larger agglomerations are deeply dependent on smaller living units and their landscapes. Truly
LAUFEN MANIFESTO

Too many people worldwide subsist in undeserving living
conditions, and their ranks are growing by the day. As repre-
sentatives of the professions collectively shaping the built
environment, it is our responsibility to resist this intolerable
Across a range of pilot projects, we have begun to initiate a
more humane design culture, working with a robust network of
communities, craftsmen, planners, builders and organizations.
These alternative practices demand not only further develop-
humane design projects understand zones of impact and influence on many scales. They operate be-
tween the local, the regional, the continental, and the global, thereby revealing a rich network of dynamic
social, economic, and ecological relations that must be respected, adjusted for, and improved as needed.

SLUM LAB
situation. We are speaking out to define an alternative posi- ment, but also substantial scaling-up. Guided by a deeper

tion. We must produce spaces that counter exploitation,
control and alienation, whether in urban or rural landscapes.
With all our expertise, creativity and power, we need to con-
tribute more dynamically and consequentially to the global
quest for equality.
➅
understanding of individual needs and aspirations as our
fundamental concern, we must urgently multiply our efforts to
improve the ecological, social, and aesthetic quality of the built
environment, while developing more effective design strate-
gies to anticipate predicted future growth on a global scale. EDUCATING DESIGNERS
Designers are not trained sufficiently to achieve positive change for people living in undeserving
conditions. Design education has to evolve radically to ensure young designers have the capacity to

➀
bridge the gap between design and construction, understand the nuances of diverse sites and ter-
ritories, and communicate more profoundly with local communities and stakeholders. In short, instill
a greater social empathy. Manual skills must be developed on the same footing as digital and intellec-
COLLABORATING EYE TO EYE tual skills. Designing the right process must be equally important as the outcome.
We must commit ourselves to respectful communication and cooperation with residents and commu-

➆
nities as key partners in achieving positive, measurable change. The impact of a participatory process
extends beyond actual design outcomes – it should empower individuals and cultivate a constructive
atmosphere with lasting effects. The process should allow sufficient time to facilitate a dialogue striv-
ing for respect, curiosity, flexibility and care. SHAPING POLICY
Integrated infrastructure, new collaborations, and innovative approaches to project development and

➁
financing must be translated into a global policy strategy. A vast change is necessary in the way we con-
ceive, distribute and construct human habitats. We must connect top-down and bottom-up processes,
with a view to fostering more productive exchanges between residents, policy-makers, financial institu-
DESIGNING WORK tions, the design profession and executing bodies. This will require the mobilization of both human and
Projects must be conceived in a way that creates meaningful work. A thoughtful approach to designing financial resources. We need broader and better solutions, at a lower cost, for a larger number of people.
buildings, places, landscapes and products can nurture small-scale enterprises like construction, farm-

➇
ing and crafts. By opting for labor-based techniques and non-standardized materials, we can foster a
decentralized form of construction and production. Creating an atmosphere of entrepreneurship and in-
novation is essential in forming value chains connecting local craftsmanship and global industries. New
models of self-construction for low-income populations must be explored, combining education, training SCARCITY AND ADAPTATION AS DESIGN TOOLS
and long-term income generation. The creation of work is foundational for greater equality and peace. Assume scarcity, especially of financial and natural resources. Use it to provoke innovation and de-
sign excellence. Structure should be generic to allow for flexible adaptation. We must seek architec-

➂
tural and design solutions whose adaptability, sustainability and basis in the fundamental principles
of an equitable quality of life make them suitable for near-universal application.

UNFURLING BEAUTY
We believe that beauty is an essential human need, linked strongly to dignity. We must strive for an These principles provide necessary impetus for a radical design, construction and usage. Design imagination is our

LAUFEN MANIFESTO
SLUM LAB

authentic harmony that resonates with people, the genius loci and their territory. The longing for reorientation of all professional design disciplines. It is criti- primary instrument to define how we want our world to be.
cal to shift current self-perceptions from top down planning Laufen, October 20th, 2013
beauty can be stronger than fear and thus a crucial catalyst for humane development. to transparent cooperation throughout the cycle of planning, laufenmanifesto.org

➃ ● Anna Heringer, UNESCO Chair for
Earthen Architecture, Germany
IDENTIFYING THE LOCAL ● Andres Lepik, Director of Architektur-
museum der TU München, Germany
Modernization has leveled cultural differences globally and hampered context specific design. Indi- ● Alfredo Brillembourg, Chair of
Architecture and Urban Design, ETH
vidual projects must be based on careful observation of geophysical conditions, local building tradi- Zürich, Switzerland
● Hubert Klumpner, Dean of Architec-
tions and space hierarchies. Global knowledge on building techniques must be adapted to the local ture, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
○ Line Ramstad, Landscape Architect,
Gyaw Gyaw, Norway/Burma
○ Peter Schmal, Director at Deutsches
Architekturmuseum, Germany
○ Andres Bäppler, Architect, Schule für
Leben, Germany/Colombia
○ Emilio Caravatti, Architect, Italy
○ Dietmar Steiner, Director of Architek-
turzentrum Vienna, Austria
● Martin Rauch, UNESCO Chair for
Earthen Architecture, Austria
● Dominique Gauzin-Müller, Editor
EcologiK, France
● Helena Sandman, Architect, Ukumbi/
Hollmén Reuter Sandman architects,
Finland
● Enrico Vianello, Architect, studio
TAMassociatti, Italy
○ Alejandro Restreppo, Urban planner,
Colombia
○ Susanne Hofman, Architect, Baupilo-
ten, Germany
○ Anh-Linh Ngo, Editor ARCH+, Ger-
many
○ Louis Fernandez Galliano, Editor
Architectura Viva, Spain
○ Alejandro Echeverri, Director of

climate, available materials, skill base and energy sources. Site and culturally sensitive design con- ● Peter Rich, Architect, hon. FAIA,
South Africa
○ Christian Werthmann, Professor of
Landscape Architecture and Design,
● Rahul Mehrotra, Architect, Chair of
Urban Planning and Design, Harvard,
urbam, Medellin, Colombia

tributes to self-sufficiency and more sustainable local economies. Hannover, Germany India/USA

80 81
 Chapter Two

SOUTH
AFRICA
A factory of Malawian tailors in downtown Johannesburg
Children playing in the streets of Khayelitsha

AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT
PATHWAYS SUGGEST AN
INTERMINABLE FUTURE FOR
SLUM URBANISM. HOW
SHOULD WE THINK ABOUT THE
IMPERATIVES OF SCHOLARLY
WORK ON THE AFRICAN CITY?
By Edgar Pieterse
T heir [deliberative planners] em-
phasis, instead, falls on motivat-
ing visions, scenarios, and diagrams
of possibility placed under democratic
scrutiny. The strategic role of the plan-
ner is not to draw up a plan for imple-
mentation, but to offer a vision, to
map alternatives. I wonder, however, if
something has been lost of the know-
ing tradition in this otherwise laudable
attentiveness to urban complexity and
multiplicity; a certain programmatic
clarity over the overall aims and priori-
ties of urban living, made all the more
necessary in a context of radical un-
certainty […] Has the attentiveness of
deliberative planners to procedures of
decision-making compromised the ne-
cessity to know about substantive mat-
ters of urban change and wellbeing?1
…the point is to pursue the dogged
work of trying to understand the impli-
cations of what people do, particularly
as it is clear that residents, even in the
desperate ways they may talk about
their lives, usually think about them as
more than survival alone. Yes, survival
is the overwhelming preoccupation of
many. But the pursuit of survival in-
volves actions, relations, sentiments,
and opportunities that are more than
survival alone. It is these thousands
of small excesses that also act on the
city, remaking it ever so slightly into
something different than it was before.
These changes are not measured by any
easily discernable standard that would
allow one to say that the city is becom-
ing more just, equal, cutthroat, revolu-
tionary, messianic, or hellish. And thus
the important work is perhaps simply
to document these efforts on the part
of the poor to give rise to a new moral
universe, a sense of value, of potential,
and of the unexpected to which peo-
ple’s attention, no matter how poor, is
also paid2.
These two quotes are compelling as they
foreground a profound tension between
the need to pronounce on the how of
achieving urban change and well-being
versus a determined patience to simply
elucidate ordinary practices in the now.
This tension connects my two primary re-
search tracks over the past few years. On
one hand, I have thrown myself headlong
into an emerging field of future studies
with a focus on the governance impera-
tives of sustainable urban transitions. On
the other, I have been trying to assemble
various epistemic communities with an
interest in the arts and urbanism to train
their attention on the emergent socialities
of African cities in order to open up fresh
discourses and visual registers on contem-
porary urbanisms3.
The former track is firmly within the do-
main of developmentalism and holds to
the belief intentional action can improve
life and aspiration for urban majorities
despite profound structural and cultural
barriers. The latter category lives within
the postcolonial critique of modernity and
developmentalism, but without any desire
to declare a post-development era. It seeks
to insinuate intimacy, microscopic social
textures, psychic dispositions, aesthetic
adventures and agency amidst constraints
into the research frame. In order to hold
on to my own sanity, I have kept these
tracks rather separate, for each requires
its own processes of immersion, learning
and maturation.
From 2009 – 2013, I have worked on vari-
ous public policy processes conducting
long-term strategic planning with a focus
on reimagining trajectories for urban ar-
eas in South Africa. One strand of work
focused on the Western Cape region with
Cape Town at its epicenter. The other fed
into the policy development work of the
National Planning Commission (NPC),
tasked with producing a long-term de-
89
velopment plan for South Africa. Both
required the use of forecasting and sce-
nario building, with an eye on sequencing
inter-related policy reforms over a 20-year
horizon. During the past year, I have been
enrolled in working on a long-term (2030)
urban development policy framework.
The developmentalist rationales at play in
this applied research stand at a sharp an-
gle with the theoretical preoccupations of
postcolonial academic debates on emer-
SLUM LAB
gent urbanisms. They do offer, however, a
novel way of thinking about the scope and
dynamics of contemporary scholarship
and practice on the African city 4.
African Futures
According to the African Futures 2050
study, 'over the entire half-century [1960-
2010], Eastern Africa gained only about
$150 per capita and Western Africa about
$130 per capita, while GDP per capita in
Central Africa has remained almost un-
changed since 1960'5. This is an aston-
ishing accomplishment of economic, po-
litical and social failure. Looking ahead to
2052, an even larger and more dramatic
process of systemic exclusion will po-
tentially eclipse this inventory of failure
across most African countries. UN-HABI-
TAT points out that almost 62 percent of
urban residents in sub‑Saharan Africa live
in slum conditions, coinciding with World
Bank estimates that roughly 280 million
urban dwellers can be regarded as income
poor 6. The forecast data and speculation
seem to suggest Africa will double its pop-
ulation by 2052, moving from 1.1 billion
in 2011 to 2.3 billion; and an urban share
of 40 percent in 2011 to one approaching
60 percent by 2052. Will the majority of
the urban population continue to be slum
dwellers? And what could the possible im-
plications be of the cumulative impacts of
slum urbanism over the course of almost
a century?
Africa is the only world region that will
maintain robust population growth mo-
mentum by mid‑century. In particular,
SOUTH AFRICA
East and West Africa will more than dou-
ble their populations from 250 million
to almost 700 million respectively. Over
that period of time, Africa’s share of the
global population would have grown from
15 percent in 2010 to 23 percent in 2052.
However, despite this dramatic increase
in its share of the global population of
nine billion, it will remain largely periph-
eral in economic terms. In 2010, Africa ac-
counted for 3.5 percent of global exports
and slightly less of foreign direct invest-
ment (FDI). This grows only to 5.8 percent
of exports and 5.3 percent of FDI by 20507.

SOUTH AFRICA
The break on economic performance is
attributable to numerous factors, but the
most critical are severe infrastructure defi-
cits, governmental inefficiencies, dramat-
ic market failures and the inability to forge
effective regional trading blocs across the
continent. The perpetuation of slums can
be attributed to a lack of infrastructure
and maintenance investments to ensure
affordable access to reliable and safe ener-
gy, drinking water and sanitation. This is
a direct function of relatively small formal
economies, concomitant limitations on
the tax base available for large-scale pub-
lic investments, pervasive administrative
inefficiencies overlaid by malfeasance and
corruption – the lifeblood of many patron-
age systems propelling dominant political
parties and elite systems across Africa8.
SLUM LAB
Recent private sector think tank reports
suggest we can anticipate a significant
shift in this picture on the back of sus-
tained economic growth over the past de-
cade or so. Much of this growth is related
to the increasingly important role of cities
in Africa’s economic trajectory. Monitor
Group asserts:
…the economic future of [sub-Saharan
Africa] is more connected to the suc-
cess of its cities, and the competitive
clusters based there, than to its nation
states. Cities today generate most of the
wealth, with many thriving despite ob-
An aerial view of downtown Johannesburg from the Carlton Center
vious challenges. Rapid urbanization
turbo charges economic growth and
diversification, enhances productivity,
increases employment opportunities,
and improves standards of living 9.
The critical prerequisite for cities to play
this role, however, is adequate infrastruc-
tural capacity coupled to just and consis-
tent regulation.
During the past five years or so, much
more attention has been devoted to un-
derstanding the scale and cost of the infra-
structural deficit in Africa. This question
goes to the heart of Africa’s prospects by
mid-century, because if this challenge is
not adequately addressed, large-scale pov-
erty rooted in structural economic exclu-
sion and economic under-performance
will persist. The World Bank has pegged
the overall infrastructure deficit at $93 bil-
lion per annum. This is the level of annual
investment required to address current
backlogs and cope with future growth. Ac-
cording to the same report, the level of an-
nual investment peaks around $45 billion
per annum, suggesting a massive short-
fall, which of course means the scale of
future investment costs continue to climb
well above the $93 billion estimate 10.
Market pressures dictate that amidst in-
frastructural finance scarcity, particular
kinds of investments get prioritized. For
90
instance, connective economic infrastruc-
ture such as roads, ports, and airports to
ensure various primary commodities get
to destination markets faster. There are
also intimate connections between the in-
frastructure financiers from China, India
and the United States, and the pathways
these extractive commodities need to trav-
el. In addition, it is clear essential network
infrastructures to reticulate power, water,
waste, data and the like are not thought of
in terms of universal coverage, but follow
a strange patchy geography along the con-
tours of where the middle‑classes and for-
mal firms are embedded in the territory 11.
The net effect is an uneven geography re-
producing splintered urban territories of
connections and disconnections; a mate-
rial metaphor of deep and enduring urban
inequalities12. To be sure, fault lines follow
social lines of distinction, discrimination
and oppression, predictably encoded by
ethnic, racial and class bases of power.
At the core of this unequal and unviable
spatial patterning is the question of cost
recovery, or more crassly, money 13.
In summary, if we articulate the doubling
of the urban population by 2050, with very
modest increases in GDP per capita, se-
vere income inequality and systemic po-
litical dysfunction, we can anticipate that
slum urbanism will remain an intermi-
nable feature of African cities. This trend
data amplifies the profound differences
between urban development challenges
in most sub-Saharan cities and counter-
parts in South Africa. Indeed, South Africa
operates from a different base in terms of
the size of the economy, resources at the
disposal of the state, and the degree of ac-
cess to basic services and opportunity, but
it does not diminish the fact that amidst
relative abundance, more than half the
population struggles to make ends meet,
and experiences profoundly dislocated
familial settings and extremely high lev-
els of domestic social violence. In some
ways, the depth and scale of South African
development pressures can be read as an
indictment of our collective inability to ef-
fectively unravel and recast colonial-apart-
heid inheritances.
This is not the occasion to go into detail on
the findings of the NPC, though a few styl-
ized points are important to foreground.
Firstly, the commission has placed the
fundamental manifestation of structural
economic exclusion at the center of any
discussion about the now and the future.
Specifically, the economic diagnostic re-
port points out:
One-quarter of the labor force is unem-
ployed and actively looking for work.
But this statistic masks the extent that
a very high proportion of South African
adults do not participate in the labor
market. Only about 41 percent of the
adult population (ages 18 to 60) work,
either in the formal or informal sector,
employed or self-employed. This rate is
about two-thirds in countries such as
Brazil or Malaysia, and about 70 per-
cent in the US and UK 14.
Most disconcerting is that the cohort aged
15 – 24 experiences unemployment rates
above 50 percent! If we combine this with
the research finding that unemployed
youth who have never entered the labor
force by 24 are unlikely to ever hold a job
in their lives, we begin to get a sense of the
social and economic crises these statistics
represent. Large-scale, endemic unem-
ployment is undoubtedly one of the key
drivers of the social development crises –
low educational and health attainments
relative to per capita spending and extraor-
dinarily high levels of social violence –
in South Africa.
The NPC underscores that the crisis of un-
employment must be understood with an
appreciation that the economy’s perfor-
mance is at best mediocre, and vulnerable
to stagnation and decline due to a variety of
further structural problems. Most urgent
are: a low savings and investment rate; a
poor performing and expensive logistics
system undermining competitiveness and
productivity; the ageing and sometimes
unreliable basic infrastructures that en-
sure power, water and waste treatment 15;
high levels of economic concentration
and tendencies towards uncompetitive
behavior; and insufficient investment in
research and development coupled to
shallow innovation systems. The first two
factors are clearly linked to the territorial
basis of development and are of direct in-
terest for urbanists. The NPC effectively
invites the South African urban scholarly
community to proffer their findings and
insights, as these problems are directly re-
lated to: 'weak alignment between human
settlements, economic opportunities, so-
cial services and transport'16.
What has emerged from the cross-fertil-
ization of the four diagnostic reports of
the NPC is that our settlement system is
key to both the reproduction and potential
dismantling of the contemporary dysfunc-
tional development ‘model’. There are ac-
tually very few matured ideas, however,
about how – within the conjunctural con-
straints of the political economy of state-
craft and uninterrupted accumulation –
to find a different path. Of course, the
easy answer is to call for an overthrow of
the dominant political and economic sys-
tems, but this is simply wishful thinking
in a context where the South African econ-
omy is firmly attached to numerous global
circuits, but responsible for less than 1
percent of global output. South Africa is
too small to go it alone, and too large to
be left alone to its own devices, especially
when its role as a springboard economy
into Africa is brought into the frame. The
question remains, how to reimagine and
rethink the patently unviable and unjust
settlement dynamics of the South African
economy, society and ecology?
Implications For The
Immediate Future
With the recent NPC analysis and larger
African challenges in mind, a few trends
are worth highlighting:
➀ Global capitalism will become increas-
ingly unstable, prone to crisis as funda-
mental resource constraints catch-up
with outdated regulatory systems that
persist due to the vacuum in effective
globalized regulatory standards and
systems.
➁ The impacts of this systemic volatility,
crises, loss in assets and economic val-
ue will be most severely felt by already
excluded regions and groups – only to
be worsened by the uneven impacts of
intensifying climate change dynamics.
91
➂ Those wealthy classes and groups who
are more buffered will first opt to in-
sulate themselves, manifested in ever
more fantastical spatial expressions
of splintering urbanism, some coated
in ‘green design’ foliage, and others
simply opting out for more extreme
forms of garish gatedness and insular-
ity, which will increasingly manifest
in both vertical and horizontal expres-
sions17.
SLUM LAB
(4) The related effects will be even less re-
sources to invest in substantive infra-
structural solutions for slums and oth-
er parts of urban peripheries because
spatial isolationism will continue to be
underwritten by public network infra-
structure investments in order to pro-
tect the sanctity of local tax bases.
➄ Amidst these transitional convulsions,
governance arrangements will become
even more stylized, performative and
ineffectual in shifting the patterns
of resource allocation, reinforcing
radicalizing discourses and practices
within civil society, but crowding out
grounded interventions that can si-
multaneously improve the quality of
life of people and hold states and elites
accountable through surgical monitor-
ing, advocacy and co-production.
With this admittedly bleak diagnosis in
mind, how do we think about the im-
peratives of scholarly work on the South
African/African city? I want to work my
way through this question by instigating
a more contested discussion through a
series of propositions. What follows is
premised on my reading of deeply held as-
sumptions that anchor much of our con-
temporary scholarship.
Making Our Peace
With A Few Unruly Things
Proposition➀ As critical scholars and
practitioners, we have to make our peace
SOUTH AFRICA
with the logics of markets. There is some-
thing important about engaging with
the intense poetics of market dynamics,
which involve compelling allocable and
distributive systems – simultaneously
holding the power to bring forth incred-
ible fantastical innovation of both the
episodic and mundane kind – whilst on
the other hand instilling a measure of
capriciousness that is clearly unjust and
often cruel. Yet in our post-Marxist mo-
ment, important thinking must be done
to subvert this and repurpose pervasive
systems, cultures and desires for a dif-
ferent world. To simply insist that such
 reimagining is only available in a post-
market ideological moment is to forego
large swathes of innovation that can
make a profound difference to the quality
and prospects of urban life. What are the
questions and theoretical touchstones
we can weave into our diverse interests to
begin to reimagine market logics beyond
the narrow imperatives of unbridled prof-
SOUTH AFRICA
it and accumulation?
Proposition➁ We need to make our peace
with the uncivil or unruly core of much of
civil society. Most civil society organiza-
tions, whether in poor neighborhoods or
not, are complex, contested and prone to
conservatism, especially in the domains
of biopolitics and gender relations 18. Yes,
some embrace and espouse radical values
and objectives, but typically there is a rath-
er large gulf between ideological identity
and lived practices. Moreover, it is often
the somewhat less democratic, altruistic,
and inclusive members who rise to the
top to take on leadership positions and
imprint their idiosyncratic proclivities on
the identity of their organizations. This
is not to suggest there is malign intent
at work, but rather that we need to make
peace with the sociological dynamics and
power logics at play when people with few
resources, limited political reach, and
relative power over other interests within
their domains of control are endowed with
the political and moral responsibility to be
the harbingers of all that is good and true
in our futures.
I am not suggesting that organized inter-
ests of the urban poor are not a funda-
mental prerequisite for more egalitarian
and interesting futures. Simply, that we
need to stop projecting our own desires
for virtuous heroes in order to make
sense of how people survive amidst tor-
rential oppression and continue to fail to
rise up and seize their fair shares. Given
the complex wiring of our psychic interi-
ors, we must come to terms with identi-
ties in the making: they are invariably
conflicted, contradictory, contingent and
equally prone to altruism and selfishness,
compassion and violence, and always hov-
SLUM LAB
ering somewhere in-between in a state of
constitutive uncertainty. If we then layer
over this the routinized violence and
damage a life without access to the basics
implies, we can only surprise ourselves if
we somehow continue to search for virtu-
ous citizens that, in the absence of love,
care, encouragement and spiritual sus-
tenance, rise above their inevitable trau-
mas. We need a much more provisional,
psychologically attuned and culturally
inflected discourse on identity, everyday
life and social becoming within settings
of almost permanent states of structural
violence and violation19.
Proposition➂ At some point we need to
pause and take stock of the fact we are
living through an incredible period of
transition, shot through with all manner
of technological shifts that will bring into
view material-social-cultural articulations
that remain, at best, obscure in our urban
discourses. Let’s stand back with Smith
and allow the following observation about
the length of time in human history it has
taken us to add a billion people to sink
in: '11,800 years… 130 years… 30 years…
15 years… 12 years'20. The mind-blowing
nature of this observation that we are
now down to adding a billion people to
our stock every decade-and-a-half or so –
an estimated three billion over the next
40 years – is simply incomprehensible in
terms of its implications. If this trajectory
is not confronting enough, we also need
THE QUESTION REMAINS,
HOW TO REIMAGINE
AND RETHINK THE
PATENTLY UNVIABLE
AND UNJUST
SETTLEMENT DYNAMICS
OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN
ECONOMY, SOCIETY
AND ECOLOGY?
to consider that the demographic transi-
tion runs in lockstep with an uncertain but
profound techno-social transition, as Afri-
can and Asian youth become the digitally
astute axis mundi of the world. These two
transitions will intersect profoundly with
the dramatic resource constraints already
causing global markets to wobble 21.
Let us briefly consider the youth-digital
interface. Can we really begin to fathom
the implications of the fact normality for
the majority of (poor) urbanites in Africa is
now partially mediated by the digital device
presently slumbering in all our pockets?
In 1995, a total of 600,000 mobile
phones were in use in sub-Saharan Af-
rica, of which 90 percent were in South
Africa. By 2009, the number surpassed
the mark of 300 million units, a growth
of 51,300 percent. […] South Africa was
the first to reach mobile market satura-
tion and Nigeria grew to become the
biggest market on the continent, with
75 million phones in use by 2009 22.
How far have we travelled to remodel our
social and economic categories to take
this ontological shift into account? The
mobile phone is merely the surface re-
92
minder, however, of much more powerful
currents of technological remodeling that
will produce new categories of reality, life,
materiality, communication, experience,
interpretation, and most importantly,
imagination.
This is not a yearning for adopting sci-fi
sensibilities – although that is probably
not a bad idea – but rather a provocation
to come to terms with the technologically
mediated nature of almost every aspect
of routine reproduction of households,
firms, neighborhoods and cities them-
selves, especially in our deeply inter-pene-
trated and multiple distanciated worlds 23.
There is a confluence between the youth-
ful demographic of our continent, and the
shifting tectonic plates regulating flows of
data, resources, signals and symbols (and
therefore desires and aspirations). If ur-
ban studies is anything, it is surely the ap-
prehension and analysis of contemporary
desire lines, explicating them in all their
spatial and temporal fullness. Disruptive
technological change is the only keyhole
available to us to both imagine and in-
stantiate more just, resilient and inclusive
futures. These potential worlds are not
the product of technological innovation
in an instrumentalist sense, but rather
rendered viable, and therefore obtainable,
through artful struggle for technologically
informed claims that paradoxically argue
for distributed, low-tech and labor-inten-
sive options.
Proposition➃ We need to make our peace
with the fact the full swathe of modern
institutions – the state, multinational
firm and university, amongst others – are
for all intents and purposes obsolete. As
these institutions continue to perpetu-
ate their denials about our postcolonial,
post-foundational, post-carbon emergent
moment, they are essentially going down
fighting. They have much life and fight
left in their sinews, but it is essentially a
matter of time. This tendency is brought
into sharp relief by the Asian economies
that are, with incredible historical speed,
eclipsing the dominance of the G8 – a pen-
dulum swing that will perpetuate Africa’s
marginalization, whilst fundamentally re-
casting Africa’s insertion into all kinds of
material and value chains – inciting new
bases of power, new ideological projects,
and new frames of aspiration and depen-
dence. How much of our work in city stud-
ies is consciously looking for these signs of
the times? How far can we go to delineate
a new prophesy for our era premised on
truly post-postmodern articulations of in-
stitutional and regulatory times to come?
My argument here is not that regulatory
and transmission institutions will disap-
pear, but rather we will see the birth of new
institutional forms with novel regimes of
governmentality to provide a sense of or-
dering, interaction and futurity. And these
institutions will have to mould themselves
to the dual and inter-dependent impera-
tives of decentralized production and
consumption, embedded in a transna-
tional culture of selective globalism and
aspiration. Put simply, we cannot hope
to solve the problems of structural unem-
ployment, over-consumption, inequality
and violence by scaling up the norms and
machines of globalized consumer cul-
tures. We need to understand the material
and cultural imperatives of localism, self-
sufficiency and autonomy, but profoundly
sutured by multiple larger sensibilities of
affiliation that will flow between religious,
intellectual, lifestyle, technological, gen-
der, sexuality, and financial imperatives.
Can we really critically reflect on, and proj-
ect out of, the contemporary problems of
the city without some explicit engagement
with the futures rising up around us?
Proposition➄ If these ideas hold any wa-
ter, then the final missive is simply a logi-
cal extension. We need to make our peace
with the necessity and urgency of ‘partner-
ships’ in thinking about and transform-
ing the city. In my reading of much of the
contemporary literature on cities in the
global South (and north), there is a deep
and seemingly unshakable piety when it
comes to documenting and analyzing the
practices of the local state. Everything,
whether it be service delivery efforts, tar-
iff policies, safety nets, renewal efforts,
public space interventions, public art
competitions, and so on are read through
the lens of neoliberal governmentality. We
continuously discover local state actors
who say one thing and do another – pith-
ily captured by Bond in his 'talk left, walk
right' tag 24. Of course, most of the time
this is exactly what is going down. Yet this
seems to be a profoundly fated concep-
tual positioning. Surely, we can critique
and also explore other ways of thinking
and doing – roll up our sleeves and work
with various actors in the contested drama
and really unpick ways of seeing, imagin-
ing, doing, and most importantly, reflect-
ing. Here, the protean literature on social
learning is most apt.
In their concise and suggestive book, John-
son and Wilson remind us that all aspects
of the development process, whether sym-
bolic political contestation of resource
prioritization or the organizational execu-
tion of specific actions, invariably involve
a multiplicity of actors across state insti-
tutions and society, needing some form
of named coherence 25. This multiplicity
simply intensifies as societal understand-
ing deepens around the imperatives of
integrated and multi-scalar responses to a
variety of development problematics. The
result is always a complex entanglement
of organizations, interests, agendas, pow-
er and resources, and in the absence of co-
produced tools for conflict management,
mediation and orderly contestation (that
will of course always have an irresolvable
excess), effective action and learning is
simply impossible26. I am hard pressed to
think of any contemporary urban issue in
Africa exempt from these imperatives. Yet,
when one encounters contemporary texts
there is frequently a caricature of the ‘bad
guys’ – the witting or unwitting agents
of neoliberal governmentality, and the
victims of this intentionality. Both sides
are typically enfolded by larger market
dynamics speeding inexorably towards
ever more intense commercialization and
commodification of life itself, let alone the
supporting infrastructures for dwelling,
working and moving about.
Surely, this cannot be adequate? Certain-
ly, we can find more dynamic and rela-
tional analytical categories to capture the
hybrid and inter-dependent formations
gravitating around various points of ac-
tion and intervention, and which in turn
constitute a variety of relational networks
and impulses continuously working to de-
stabilize and recalibrate dominant under-
standings of how best to make sense of the
city, how best to act on its unruly dynam-
ics, and how best to reflect on and arrive at
judgments about what is actually going on
(or not, for that matter).
In concluding, I want to circle back to
the opening quotes by Amin and Simone.
They ask of me: what is the scope for lay-
ing down some firmer knowledge claims
for how our cities could be better under-
stood, remade and engaged? Can such an
ambition work with the injunction that in
the multitudinous acts of survival, there
lie precious pearls of insight into how
the city presently works amidst its dys-
functionality? Insights that could even
instigate propositions towards the larger
knowledge project to build aspirational
architectures for cities that are resource
efficient, dynamically inclusive, surpris-
ing, impervious to crass social engineer-
ing, and fundamentally adaptive? My
unsettled thoughts on this are a story for
another time.
1 Ash Amin, ‘Urban Planning in an Uncertain
World’ in Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson (eds),
The New Blackwell Companion to the City
(2011), 637-8.
2 AbdouMaliq Simone, City Life From Jakarta to
Dakar: Movements at the Crossroads (2010)
38-39.
93
3 An initial product of this exploration is: Edgar
Pieterse and AbdouMaliq Simone (eds), Rogue
Urbanism: Emergent African Cities (2013).
4 An earlier version of this paper was presented
as a keynote at the South African City Studies
Conference at the University of Cape Town in
September 2011. I have retained the tone of a
spoken paper and done some refinements.
5 Jakkie Cilliers, Barry Hughes and Jonathan
Moyers, African Futures 2050: The next Forty
Years, ISS Monograph 175 (2011) 30.
6 See UN-HABITAT, State of the World’s Cities
2010/2011: Bridging the Urban Divide (2010);
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Martin Ravallion, Shaohua Chen and Prem
Sangraula, New Evidence on the Urbanization
of Global Poverty (2007).
7 Cilliers et al (2011) 60.
8 Patrick Chabal, Africa: The Politics of Suffering
and Smiling (2009).
9 Monitor Group, Africa From the Bottom Up:
Cities, Economic Growth, and Prosperity in
Sub-Saharan Africa (2009) 6.
10 Vivien Foster and Cecilia Briceño-Garmendia
(eds), Africa’s Infrastructure: A Time for Trans-
formation (2010).
11 Stephen Graham, ‘When Infrastructures Fail’ in
Stephen Graham (ed), Disrupted Cities: When
Infrastructures Fail (2010).
12 These challenges are more carefully explicated
in: Edgar Pieterse and Katherine Hyman
(in press), “Disjunctures Between Urban
Infrastructure, Finance and Affordability’ in
Susan Parnell and Sophie Oldfield (eds), The
Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global
South.
13 See Sudeshna Banerjee, Quentin Wodon,
Amadou Diallo, Taras Pushak, Helal Uddin,
Clarence Tsimpo, and Vivien Foster, Access,
Affordability, and Alternatives: Modern Infra-
structure Services in Africa (Africa Infrastruc-
ture Country Diagnostic Background Paper 2,
2009) 4-5.
14 National Planning Commission of South Africa,
Economy Diagnostic (2010) 3.
15 The NPC’s Material Conditions Diagnostic
report points that: “between 1976 and 2002,
annual public sector infrastructure investment
fell from 8.1 percent of GDP to 2.6 percent of
GDP, leaving a legacy of old, outdated and un-
reliable infrastructure […] The accepted norm
for infrastructure investment, as a ratio of gross
fixed capital formation to GDP, is 25 percent,
with recent infrastructure investments shifting
the South African ratio from 16 percent in 2006
to 19.3 percent in 2010” (21-22).
16 Ibid 12.
17 Vanessa Watson, ‘African Urban Fantasies:
Dreams or Nightmares?’ (2013) 26 Environment
and Urbanization 1.
18 See the perceptive rethinking on these is-
sues in: Kees Biekart and Alan Fowler, ‘A Civic
Agency Perspective on Change’ (2012) 55
Development 181.
19 I explore these themes more fully, yet
inconclusively, in a few recent articles: Edgar
Pieterse, ‘Grasping the Unknowable: Coming to
Grips with African Urbanisms’ (2011) 38 Social
Dynamics 5; Edgar Pieterse, ‘Cityness and
African Urban Development’ (2010) 21 Urban
SOUTH AFRICA
Forum 205; Edgar Pieterse, ‘Hip Hop Cultures
and Political Agency in Brazil and South Africa’
(2010) 36 Social Dynamics 428.
20 Laurence Smith, The New North: The World in
2050 (2011) 10.
21 UNEP, Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to
Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradica-
tion (2011).
22 Jasper Grosskurth, Futures of Technology in
Africa (2010) 40.
23 Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift, Cities: Reimagining
the Urban (2002).
24 Patrick Bond boasts an expansive oeuvre that
is best explored through the following website:
http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za
25 Hazel Johnson and Gordon Wilson, Learning for
Development (2009).
26 Michael Carley and Ian Christie, ‘Organiza-
tional Ecology and Innovative Management’ in
Managing Sustainable Development (2000).

WHEN NELSON MANDELA
MOVED TO ALEXANDRA IN 1941,
HE WAS 23. IT WAS THE BEGINNING OF
THE LIFE HE WOULD LEAD AWAY
FROM THE TRANSKEI VILLAGE OF HIS
BIRTH, AND THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS
A CONTEMPORARY
HERITAGE PROCESS.
By Peter Rich
and Patricia Theron
N elson Mandela’s first home in Johan-
nesburg was a south-facing room in a
row house – small and square, with only
one window capturing sunlight through
a servitude. Although the room was not
connected to any services, rent took up a
substantial portion of Mandela’s salary,
with the start of his working life marked
by a shortage of food and long walks into
the city to save on transport costs. He was
surrounded by abject poverty, but recalls
this time fondly – the sense of commu-
nity, the uniting force of rebellion against
continued attempts at eviction. Indeed, he
described ‘Alex’ as occupying a 'treasure
place' in his heart.
This piece of Mandela’s earlier life, even
before he became a political activist, is
what attracted an interest in the site as
part of the heritage component of the Al-
exandra Renewal Program. A heritage area
was defined around Mandela’s room and
its affiliated courtyard, as well as several
other community courtyards that became
the precinct known as Mandela’s Yard.
The area surrounding Mandela’s room was
studied in detail, measured and drawn up
by architect Peter Rich. His in situ stud-
ies of existing structures enabled him to
establish a relationship with community
members assisting the process. Analysis
focused on the structuring elements of the
settlement, but even more so on meeting
residents to understand how people use
their space. By actually being present, Rich
was able to witness the ingenuity involved
in the furnishing of this world – the subtle-
ties of possession in the absence of own-
ership, and how this has been interpreted
through the use of defensible space.
The Alexandra Heritage Center is an ex-
tension of the heritage experience, posi-
tioned across the road from Mandela’s
room. While the center is 85 percent com-
plete, it will ultimately function as a com-
munity space. The design was informed by
the studies conducted within Mandela’s
Yard, and the center will play a role in the
portrayal of what life in Alexandra is re-
ally like, where previously untold stories
of the local inhabitants can be captured
and placed in the public view. During con-
ceptualization of the project, Mandela was
very clear that there were enough people
telling his story already. He wanted the
focus to be on the achievements of Alex-
andra residents – not just on the struggle,
but their successes and lessons that can be
drawn. Both the Interpretation Center and
the upgrading of Mandela’s Yard are com-
munity projects. Their evolution within
Alexandra involves an unfolding process,
which aims to reinforce a sense of owner-
ship and pride amongst inhabitants.
Life in Alexandra was exhilarating and
precarious. Its atmosphere was alive,
its spirit adventurous, its people re-
sourceful.
Nelson Mandela
Called the ‘dark city’ due to its lack of
electrical and water services, street life
is at the heart of Alexandra, as well as
the multi-functional courtyards around
which homes are grouped in various con-
figurations. The street and yard operate in
unique ways as the centers of ritual life, in-
volving interactions associated with entre-
preneurial endeavor and the community.
Due to the organic evolution of the town-
ship, the street is the public space and place
of interaction – the sprawling carpet of low-
lying dwellings is punctuated by entrances
95
to the yards, which feed off the streets. In-
formal trading occurs along the street edge
and is concentrated at corners. Small busi-
nesses and spaza shops also benefit from
the constant flow of people. As a corridor of
activity, the street feeds off residential life,
generating a small economy in response
and introducing a legibility allowing for the
navigation of the social and physical struc-
ture of the place. The streets frequently
become spaces of waiting for the many
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unemployed. They are also places of watch-
fulness – children play, guarded by numer-
ous small windows connecting the public
realm to the interior life behind the walls.
The lack of formalized public space brings
people to the street and breathes life into
the heart of Alexandra. The physical struc-
ture becomes a point of mediation: the city
as courtroom. Neighborhood disputes are
settled here, but there are also street gangs
making their presence known. Problems
arise from the street and are dealt with in
the street.
The street edge, which is lined with build-
ings rather than by the garden walls of
suburbia, becomes a point of contention
between public and private. The encroach-
ment on to the pavement of many resi-
dences results in the roadway becoming
the public walkway. The narrow nature
of these routes creates a scale, which just
seems ‘right’ within the context. In com-
parison, suburban planning standards re-
sult in streets too large to offer a pleasure
of use. Residential life in Alexandra spills
into the street, as additions to homes
nudge closer and over building lines. Cars
are kept at bay as there is enough space for
movement through, but not for parking.
People claim the street edge through bol-
lards of concrete or stone in order to pre-
vent cars from taking over. Across Africa,
cars violate the streetscape. Here, people
are reclaiming space.
Out of the reinterpretation of infrastruc-
ture, the street becomes an amphitheater,
lined by stairs and bits of signage used as
seats. The street is watched constantly, as
it represents the main economic site and
SOUTH AFRICA
gathering point. It is an important recog-
nition, this cognizance of inherent and
established modes of existence holding
the community together. Any intervention
must work within existing systems – not
calling for a total restructuring, pulling the
rug out from beneath, but rather subtle re-
sponses reinforcing the current situation.
For instance, relaxation of street by-laws
that would legalize established practices
already making a positive contribution to
the nature of the space.
Like the street, the yard is a shared space.
An average of ten to 12 families reside
 Mandela's Yard and the Alexandra Heritage Center development
SOUTH AFRICA
around courtyards providing a meeting
point for social activities, creating a spa-
tial rhythm and promoting self-organiza-
tion within the community. This evolution
occurred organically, as additions were
made to the inherited ‘structural bones’ of
the settlement, the early homes of service
men left over from when Alexandra began
its journey in 1912.
The yards become places of seclusion
and refuge. They provide safety due to the
defined threshold of entry. They are usu-
ally shaped by an initial commercial or
residential building, behind which may
lie one or two yards. This transitional en-
trance becomes like a throat – a threshold
of control that allows residents to deter-
mine and protect the various assigned
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functions within the yard. At the time of
documentation, each yard had collective
areas for access to water, showering and
laundry. These functions alter the more
general use of these spaces and create
drainage issues. Gray water is thrown into
public space and in certain instances peo-
ple have formed sumps to let it soak away.
Due to the lack of ownership, it is left up to
individual pride as to whether or not resi-
dents care for the public realm.
Despite the lack of tenure, people make
their claim using fencing or walls to de-
marcate ‘their’ areas where they might sit
96
Existing buildings constructed by authorities in the 1920s and 1930s
or plant vegetables. Each yard is different
as the extensions to buildings form sub-
courts, some cutting in and others extend-
ing outward, delineating and communi-
cating the shared space. The creation of
thresholds between the yard and home
is handled in ways unique to the origin of
the inhabitant. The rural and vernacular
interpretation makes use of batter walls in
order to create a raised platform or stoep,
whereas the urban scavenger resolves
design problems with the use of found
objects. What becomes evident in the
various resolutions of level change is that
the shaping of the threshold arises from a
sense of its value. As places of retreat, the
yards serve as threads tying together the
densely packed assortment of homes and
streets.
During the new era ushered in after 1994,
large numbers of the displaced citizens
moved into Alexandra to begin squatting
in and amongst existing residents. This
escalated tensions and completely altered
the nature of the original township, as ser-
vices were stretched to the limit and invad-
ed residents suddenly had many people
occupying their ‘garden’ space. The town-
ship that developed in the subsequent
period gave rise to xenophobic attacks in
2008, and it is this spatial condition that
was later mapped for the purposes of the
heritage research.
97
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The original structures from the time of
Mandela and earlier became the physical
terms of reference for subsequent growth.
The long and square buildings provided
by authorities formed a framework, at
odds with the way a squatter camp usu-
ally develops. Evolving typologies dem-
onstrate ingenuity in the way ventilation
and orientation are handled, given spa-
tial constraints. The need to extend has
resulted in a number of solutions. In the
case of the long house, residents have add-
ed incrementally to the north. Unusually
for townships, some double story homes
have risen above their neighbors, and
many have extended into the servitudes,
erecting backyard shacks to be rented out
to newcomers. The township has always
been politicized, even more so after the
SOUTH AFRICA
2008 attacks. The brutality arose from a
feeling of injustice – life in Alexandra has
not changed for many and people feel they
have been forgotten. The lack of tenure
has not stopped residents from investing
in their homes, but the whole community
lives in constant fear of eviction.
The heritage intervention is meant to up-
grade the public realm in line with lessons
learnt from observing the daily operations
of Alexandra. The yards are an important
connection between the heritage center
and Mandela’s room, becoming examples
of best practice in the way they grow. This
 Mandela's room within the Mandela's Yard conservation area
SOUTH AFRICA
should involve paving, a focus on health
standards, the introduction of efficient
gray water systems, access to services, as
well as effective means of dealing with hu-
man waste. Any infrastructure introduced
should make use of innovative, sustain-
able and appropriate technologies. The
upgrading process should involve edu-
cation about sustainable practices and
include the demarcation and planting of
vegetable gardens as part of an urban ag-
ricultural scheme. Densification would
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Street activity in Alexandra township
tenancy, authorities still need to broker
the situation so the position of the fam-
ily is bettered. Government and heritage
tourism stakeholders need to step in to re-
alize the potential of the upgrading of the
precinct, including a strategy to cater to
the visiting public. In addition to heritage
value, the project also promises economic
opportunities for local residents. The re-
newal program was a promise made to
the people, focused on unstitching apart-
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heid era conditions. Alexandra is situated
on some of the best real estate in Johan-
nesburg. While in the past this has made
it a target for victimization, it is now an
upgrading priority, and any intervention
must respect the character of the area.
improve the viability of Alexandra as a
residential area in close proximity to the
Sandton business district. This could be
achieved through vertical expansion, with
the use of lightweight frame construction
and attention to firewalls.
Mandela’s room is not presently acces-
sible to the public. Previously unknown as
the room in which he once lived, various
families have occupied it over the years.
While the current occupants do not have
A street vendor with the Alexandra Heritage Center in the background
SOUTH AFRICA
98 99

MILLIONS OF STATE-SUBSIDIZED
‘RDP’ HOUSES HAVE BEEN DELIVERED
SINCE 1994 – A DRAMATIC PHYSICAL
INTERVENTION AND POWERFUL
COLLECTIVE IMPACT ON THE LIVES
OF RESIDENTS NATIONWIDE.
BUT HOW ARE PEOPLE RESPONDING
TO THESE NEW HOMES, MOSTLY BUILT
IN GREEN FIELD EDGE-SUBURBS?
By Sarah Charlton
M ass housing is sometimes portrayed
as an inappropriate, modernist in-
tervention at odds with ordinary people’s
needs. But research I undertook in Johan-
nesburg 1 suggests a more complex story –
one that reveals an intricate intersection
between the aspirations of government
and those of ordinary people. On one hand,
beneficiaries expressed views in consider-
able alignment with the intentions and as-
pirations of the state in relation to housing.
Yet residents’ actual activities after receiv-
ing their properties demonstrated some
divergence from anticipated outcomes.
These practices reveal the limits when it
comes to identifying common ground be-
tween state and beneficiary. They result
from the difficult socio-economic context
shaping implementation of the housing
intervention, and highlight the efforts peo-
ple make to find ways around deficiencies.
The story of popular responses to the RDP
intervention is thus one demanding nu-
101
anced and careful reflection, amounting
to neither a rejection of the housing by re-
cipients, nor a straightforward embrace.
It is this multi-dimensional nature of the
initiative that I elaborate below. Through
the low-income housing program, mil-
lions of impoverished households have
come to own a house and serviced land,
generally in the form of detached single
story houses in new neighborhoods. More
than three million houses have been built.
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Astonishingly this has added 24 percent to
the formally registered residential stock of
the country 2, and is estimated to accom-
modate at least 13 million people – pri-
marily, very poor residents who had never
before owned property 3.
The housing program has attracted a
range of commentary, both criticism and
praise. Yet remarkably little is understood
about the outcomes for recipient house-
holds. Some of the observable responses
of ordinary people continue to puzzle gov-
ernment officials, such as the perception
that a portion of residents sell their hous-
es soon after receiving them, or rent them
out and return to living in inadequate
conditions. Coupled with scholarly criti-
cisms highlighting various problems with
the program, a view has found traction
that this form of housing is not wanted,
or is unnecessary. The research from Jo-
hannesburg drawn on for this article does
indeed reflect a degree of disjuncture be-
tween the housing intervention and the
An RDP house in Alexandra township, Johannesburg
SOUTH AFRICA
 daily routines of household members,
much of which confirms common criti-
cisms directed at the program. But a closer
look suggests this picture of discord is an
incomplete characterization. Convergen-
ces and alignments with state intentions
are just as important in illuminating the
situation.
SOUTH AFRICA
Large-scale mass housing programs of
this sort are unpopular amongst archi-
tects and urbanists, who point to a series
of shortcomings – most often, the frequent
lack of urban quality in the residential
developments that result. But fieldwork
shows despite such criticisms, popular
expectations and desires concerning RDP
housing can be similar in various aspects
to those of the state. This is noteworthy
– indeed, an important context within
which to consider significant divergences
from state expectations vis-à-vis housing
outcomes. As such, indications of positive
responses to RDP housing gleaned from
resident interviews are described briefly
here, followed by an exploration of views
and practices that can be seen as problem-
atic when it comes to the goals and logic of
the program as designed.
Firstly, many people living in RDP houses
show attachment to the house and sur-
rounding neighborhood. Residents ex-
press pride and satisfaction with owning
their own home, wanting to protect and
defend the house against someone taking
it away. The house is seen in particular to
represent security in relation to children,
and their future. This emphasis on physi-
cal stability and permanent location is at
odds with characterizations of ordinary
peoples’ interactions with African cities
emphasizing movement, fluidity and tem-
porariness 4. That is, portrayals of house-
holds as relatively loosely tied to a particu-
lar place in a city, or uncommitted to life
in a fixed place of abode in an urban area.
In contrast, many respondents displayed
a considerable emotional attachment to
their state-funded RDP houses, as well as
a desire to retain their specific house into
the future. This finding recalls Varley’s ob-
servations of ‘aspirations to permanence’,
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as opposed to scholarly writing valorizing
‘mobility and transience’ 5.
Secondly, it is not just a case of positive
sentiment, but also more concrete expres-
sions of this state of mind. Most obviously,
residents are investing in RDP neighbor-
hoods, including those that seem geo-
graphically peripheral from opportunities
in the city. This is evident in alterations and
improvements to the initial RDP house, in
the construction of outside rooms, and
in the creation of gardens. Some people
are also involved in maintaining public
infrastructure in their neighborhood, for
instance cleaning streets and pavements.
Thirdly, ideas exhibited about the appro-
priate physical look of these new neighbor-
hoods align with the prevailing state posi-
tion. Some residents noted that backyard
shacks are not permitted in their area, not
just in terms of a by-law infringement, but
by community agreement. Respondents’
opinions on this seemed to range from
strong endorsement – echoing similar as-
pirations and values to those of the state
that informal structures sully a planned,
orderly neighborhood – to a more ambiva-
lent position.
Fourthly, some convergence is evident
regarding shared aspirations for orderly,
regulated neighborhoods. A number of
residents lamented what they saw as ill-
disciplined and unsanctioned activities,
which impacted on their amenity or qual-
ity of life. These included public urina-
tion, loud noise emanating from drinking
establishments, and smoke and odors
from food preparation. One interviewee
linked such elements to the practices typi-
cal of ‘township life’, when apartheid era
settlements were subject to tight controls
in certain respects, but were otherwise
neglected by a state unconcerned by in-
dividual comfort and amenity. While this
desire for order and regulation is not nec-
essarily refuted in literature, there is often
an approving emphasis on characteristics
of informality celebrated as ingenious,
innovative and necessary to survival. At
times, little distinction is made between
differing impacts across a wide range of
‘informal’ activities. My findings echo
less common descriptions of desires for
tranquility and conformity to a perceived
norm 6. At the same time, the vibrancy and
liveliness experienced in township life is
an attribute praised by other respondents.
While these illustrations highlight views
aligned closely to the state’s vision, the sit-
uation is not so straightforward. Resident
practices also challenge official expecta-
tions. I will focus on just two examples of
a more complex set of interactions. The
first relates to beneficiaries’ use of their
house or yard. Contrary to regulations
– and despite active community moni-
toring in some areas against informal-
looking additions and alterations – in-
formal constructions proliferate in and
around RDP houses. Secondly, a number
of respondents earn an income directly
from their house, site or neighborhood,
resonating with the idea of housing as an
economic asset, particularly in the high
unemployment and high-poverty context
of Johannesburg 7. Though not a problem
in itself, in some instances houses are
used for income generation in ways not
sanctioned by authorities, nor approved
of by fellow residents. These activities in-
102
clude unauthorized drinking taverns, car
repair businesses, and sub-letting and BICYCLE PORTRAITS
shops in contravention of formal land use
management or building approval proce-
dures. Several interviewees mentioned the
nuisance caused by such activities, while
national and provincial politicians have By Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler
condemned these practices in RDP hous-
ing and in some cases taken steps to close
them down.
Initially planned as a photographic series documenting people who had modified their bicycles out
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Ultimately, new neighborhoods cannot of necessity, the Bicycle Portraits project has developed since 2010 into a far wider study of South
function simply as a base from which Africans who rely on their bicycles as an everyday means of transport – revealing who rides, why they
workers commute to formal jobs else- ride, and why so few choose the bicycle as a primary mode of urban mobility. During the apartheid era,
where, as such jobs do not exist and af-
fordability limits freedom of movement.
cycling as a commuting option was heavily associated with township life. According to photographers
RDP neighborhoods must instead serve and avid cyclists Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler, this historical stigma around cycling has endured
as a place of income generation for many to the present day, though linked to a wider cultural embrace of cars as an aspirational status symbol of
residents, despite planning regulations. upward mobility in South African cities.
Hence, while the aspirations of the state
and beneficiaries appear quite similar –
the urban poor as property owners with
formal, technically adequate shelter and Ultimately, Grobler and Engelbrecht ended up spending over three years on the project, cycling thou-
services sited in new neighborhoods of- sands of kilometers across the country – from congested urban centers, through steep hills and moun-
fering opportunity and amenity – weak-
nesses exist in how the vision plays out.
tains to small towns and rural areas – and taking over 500 portraits. Diverging from a neutral documen-
Developments have ended up in sub-op- tary perspective, Bicycle Portraits is aimed explicitly at promoting cycling as an independent means
timum parts of the city due to pressures of transport for the underprivileged. And the publication of the series over three separate volumes did
and distortions in the housing delivery not signal the end of the project. Grobler and Engelbrecht have since begun cycling back to meet the
system. Similarly, the wider economic
context places considerable strain on how
people featured in the books in order to give them a copy.
neighborhoods can function. Real restric-
tions limit peoples’ ability to realize con-
ventional housing dreams. Unforeseen
practices in RDP neighborhoods are an
inevitable result, with residents finding
ways to adapt the housing – or their lives
– to the limits of the benefit and the con-
strained circumstances into which it has
been inserted. Thus, the intervention is
experienced, appropriated, and made to
function in quite complex ways.
1 I draw from in-depth interviews completed in
2010 and 2011 with beneficiaries.
2 Finmark Trust, One Quarter of South Africa’s
Property Market is Government-Subsidized
Stock (Undated Media Release) at http://www.
finmark.org.za/in-the-media/one-quarter-of-
south-africas-property-market-is-government-
subsidised-stock/
3 See Shoks Mzolo, ‘More Than Shelter: Depart-
ment Of Housing Breaking New Ground’ (27
March 2009) Financial Mail.
4 See AbdouMaliq Simone, ‘The Dilemmas of
SPECIAL INSERT – PHOTO ESSAY
Informality for African Urban Governance’ in
Susan Parnell, Edgar Pieterse, Mark Swilling
and Dominique Wooldridge (eds), Democra-
tizing Local Government: The South African
Experiment (2002); Ananya Roy, ‘The Location
of Practice: A Response to John Forester’s
'Exploring Urban Practice in a Democratising
Society: Opportunities, Techniques and Chal-
lenges' (2007) 24 Development Southern Africa
623.
5 Ann Schlyter, Multi-Habitation. Urban Housing
and Everyday Life in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe
(2003); Rodrigo Salcedo, ‘The Last Slum:
Moving From Illegal Settlements to Subsidized
Home Ownership in Chile’ (2010) 46 Urban
Affairs Review 90.
6 Graham Tipple, Extending Themselves. User-
Initiated Transformations of Government-Built
Housing in Developing Countries (2000);
Schlyter (2003).
103
 Edward September, Northern Cape Jacob Mbola, Port Elizabeth
SPECIAL INSERT – PHOTO ESSAY

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Kleinbooi Kabinde, Gauteng Simon Dtema, Bloemfontein

SPECIAL INSERT – PHOTO ESSAY

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104 105

HAVING EVOLVED IN RESPONSE TO
THE IMMEDIATE NEEDS AND WISHES
OF RESIDENTS IN INFORMAL
SETTLEMENTS, SOUTH AFRICAN
DRINKING TAVERNS – SHEBEENS –
CAN FUNCTION AS A LABORATORY
FOR EXAMINING SPATIAL
QUESTIONS DETERMINED BY
PURPOSE AND PURPOSEFUL DESIGN.
By Thiresh Govender
A chronic lack of imagination charac-
terizes our formalized ways of mak-
ing cities. We are failing city dwellers, first
with formulaic design solutions that lean
on principles of orderliness and control,
and then with the bleak townscapes we
subsequently produce. Our slavish focus
on developed economies and uncritical
adoption of their ‘solutions’ undermines
the value, meaning and creativity of our
local context. Subsequently, our market-
driven cities are increasingly segregated,
filled with mono-functional, independent
and self-serving spaces such as shopping
centers, office buildings and housing
estates. Perhaps the principle of order
needs to be traded for the first principles
of usability, functionality and purpose?
Perhaps it is time to look critically at the
complexity of our emergent spaces to bet-
ter pursue relevance and meaning?
In response to the immediate needs and
wishes of residents in informal settle-
ments, South African drinking taverns –
shebeens1 – have evolved to cater to chang-
ing socio-economic circumstances. And
as such, they can function as a laboratory
for examining spatial questions deter-
mined by purpose and purposeful design.
Many informal settlements, such as Sweet
Home Farm2, exist at the fringes of urban
107
environments. A study on shebeens in the
area provides an opportunity for criti-
cal reflection and aggressive borrowing
with a view to devising alternative ways to
imagine our cities. The Spatiality of She-
beens, building upon preliminary work
undertaken by social scientists3, sought to
investigate the broader roles of shebeens
in their particular environments – with an
emphasis on their spatiality. Documented
by architects through drawings and pho-
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tographs over a three-month period, this
socio‑spatial ethnographic study present-
ed a unique insight into the functions of
shebeens.
A key finding concerned the diverse roles
of shebeens as social institutions over and
above simply serving as designated spaces
for the consumption of alcohol. They serve
these and other functions within a neigh-
borhood – a reciprocal relationship be-
tween the shebeen and its rich and dynam-
ic urban setting is articulated through its
various economic and cultural associa-
tions. The study focused on five sites. Both
the interior spatial arrangement and the
external relationship to place were ana-
lyzed in each case.
Shebeens originated in the townships of
apartheid South Africa, where black resi-
dents were forced to live at some remove
from urban and economic centers. Con-
centrated in residential ghettos, people
were often obliged to generate a liveli-
hood nearby. Shebeens offered an easy
and accessible point of entry into the en-
trepreneurial economy. Black residents
were also forbidden from socializing in
Spatial mapping of a typical shebeen
SOUTH AFRICA
 designated white areas and shebeens thus
served as important social and political
sites. Located in dense and highly dis-
tressed settlements, shebeens are often
associated with drunkenness, violence
and deviance. It is this unsavory charac-
terization that informs the existing legal
framework, particularly in the Western
Cape where Sweet Home Farm is located
SOUTH AFRICA
and the sale of alcohol at shebeens is il-
legal. Recent policy encourages the sale
and consumption of liquor at high street
establishments. Typically though, these
are found in the cities and suburbs – white
enclaves of the past. Already marginal-
ized entrepreneurs are further victim-
ized through a repressive and imported
logic of criminalization. The current legal
stance dismisses the complex, apartheid-
scarred geographies of contemporary
South African cities, simultaneously dis-
regarding the positive social role shebeens
play in these settings.
Sweet Home Farm is home to 17,000 in-
habitants, living in 3,115 shacks. With 109
shebeens, this translates to one shebeen for
every 28 shacks. Although shebeens have
been in existence for many years, the in-
tense increase in and concentration of the
purposes they serve is recent. The study
found the increase in the number of she-
beens is caused by economic competition.
In the past decade, migrants4 with com-
petitive buying cooperatives have come to
dominate the township retail market (for
example, spaza shops)5. With the trading
of liquor forbidden for the mostly Muslim
migrants, locals have identified a gap in
the market and resorted to the relatively
secure and lucrative liquor trade. The re-
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sult is a plethora of randomly distributed
shebeens across the settlement. A close
exploration of shebeens and shebeen cul-
ture in this setting provides insights that
can inform practitioners seeking to make
more purposeful spaces in our cities.
Intensity And
Differentiation
There is no discernible pattern as to how
the shebeens are distributed through the
settlement, except to note their configura-
tion is randomly and evenly spread. The
density of the urban fabric and the close
proximity of shebeens to each other gener-
ate immense competition. Economic sur-
vival depends on often-minute variations
in use and product offerings. For example,
shebeens can also support an ecosystem
of interdependent micro-enterprises, in-
cluding recycling and fast food. Each she-
been caters to a unique clientele and thus
renders its services to that segment of the
market. Accordingly, the research sought
to identify the nuances that fuel differen-
tiation. An audit of each shebeen revealed
that satellite TVs, pool tables, juke boxes,
types of alcohol, the style and quantity of
seating, the size of the establishment and
the proprietor’s personality all influence
the type and role of the shebeen. From
the sample group, the following shebeen
types and associated characteristics were
defined:
108
✓ Drinkatainment – young patrons, enter-
□
tainment, loud music, satellite TV, juke-
box, beer and heavy drinking
✓ Conversational – elderly and religious
□
patrons, no entertainment
✓ Neighborhood – mixed patrons, acces-
□
sible to different users throughout the
day, operator an active community fa-
cilitator, a public space, entertainment,
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pool table
✓ iSloti – male patrons, little alcohol con-
□
sumption, pool table as central activity,
no women allowed (to prevent fighting)
✓ Traditional – traditional beer with elders
□
centered around a fire in a separate
room, arrangement closely resembling
rural practices and morphology
This articulation of shebeen typologies
demonstrates their varied and multiple
uses and throws into question the simplis-
tic perception of these places as exclusive-
ly sites of liquor consumption, violence
and deviance.
Programmatic Hybrids
In the impoverished setting of the infor-
mal settlement, the shebeen is compelled
to be more than just a site of liquor con-
sumption. It is also a place of gathering,
entertainment and business. Significant-
ly, it is simultaneously a private home.
The two seemingly polarized functions
SOUTH AFRICA
109

SOUTH AFRICA
are able to coexist through thresholds that
mediate between the private and public
spaces. Sophisticated control mecha-
nisms of doorways, hatches and unwrit-
ten rules of user and proprietor behavior
guide the interplay between public and
private. These thresholds comprise a care-
ful combination of physical, ephemeral
and symbolic devices that influence the
use of this compact space.
The nature of the threshold depends on
the relationship between various actors
in the space. The more familiarity and
trust in a place, the more passive the edge
– and vice versa. The carefully orchestrat-
ed arrangement of entrance, bedroom,
kitchen, lounge, shebeen and courtyard es-
tablish spatial rules and hierarchies. The
kitchen serves both the shebeen and house
and is the central point of the shebeen, typ-
ically occupied by the matriarch. Through
a hatch, she can regulate the atmosphere
of the environment by controlling music
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and lighting, serve patrons and maintain
clear surveillance sight lines to entrances
and the shebeen space. The public can
access the core shebeen space and its re-
lated courtyards at different times of the
day. Some easily transition into a meeting
space, made possible by the shebeen’s lo-
cation on well-used pathways or by simply
having open entranceways and readily ac-
cessible seating. The space is permeable
and connected to adjacent yards, allowing
children to run through or play at appro-
priate times. The proprietor’s presence
and surveillance encourages a safe and
protected space.
110
Responsive
Agility
Shebeens have a built-in, self-organizing
intelligence allowing them to adapt to
sudden threats and opportunities. Their
architecture and construction from an as-
semblage of salvaged metal sheeting and
timber planks offers significant structural
adaptability. The technology and materi-
als lend dexterity to the spaces, allowing
for quick and easy alterations. Indeed, the
proprietor, positioned at the center of the
establishment, is able to immediately ad-
just the physical spaces in response to any
threats or opportunities. This real-time
ability – to spontaneously change (author)
your environment – builds powerful resil-
ience, which would be unthinkable in a
conventional building context. The spatial
responses identified in the five shebeens
included: removing a room to make way
for more entertainment space; creating a
security cage to prevent armed robberies
whilst still serving beers through a hatch;
installing make-shift urinals to prevent
fights caused by drunk (and vulnerable)
patrons urinating in public; creating ledg-
es for drinks to prevent them from being
spilt; installing serving hatches in the
bedroom to allow the proprietor to run
the business while sick; closing/opening
of entrances and passageways; and chang-
ing the ambience with lighting and music.
In addition to the three important in-
sights identified by the study, shebeen op-
erators’ perspectives were solicited. With
111
Detail from interior analysis of a shebeen
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the hope of informing more nuanced
and progressive policies, their views were
then presented to a broader audience of
stakeholders – including health depart-
ment officials, policy makers, police of-
ficers, academics, brewing companies
and shebeen operators. The examination
of shebeen culture, their use and spatial-
ity has revealed principles that should be
informing more progressive approaches
to city making in South Africa. With their
survivalist adaptations that are responsive
to economic competition and spatial and
neighborhood conditions, shebeens dem-
onstrate an alternative imaginary for our
cities – one that favors purposeful archi-
tecture and a complexity of use.
1 A shebeen is an unregulated drinking tavern
in the informal settlements of South Africa,
often an extension or part of a private house,
SOUTH AFRICA
involving the on- and off-site consumption of
alcohol.
2 Sweet Home Farm is the original name of a
farm in Phillippi, Cape Town. During the past
10–15 years, the site has been increasingly
occupied and now comprises an informal
settlement of 17,000 inhabitants.
3 The Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation is an
organization based in Cape Town that has ex-
tensively documented the informal economies
within the study area (www.livelihoods.co.za).
4 A significant number of Bangladeshi, Somali,
Ethiopian and Pakistani migrants have es-
tablished enterprises within South Africa’s
informal settlements, bringing increased
convenience as well as competition to these
areas.
5 A spaza shop is an informal trading shop lo-
cated in townships, selling daily conveniences
such as bread, milk, soft drinks and cigarettes.

FROM POP-UP FRAMES TO RECYCLED
PLASTIC PANELS, SANDBAG HOUSES
TO ‘SMART SHACKS’, ARCHITECTURE’S
ENGAGEMENT WITH ISSUES OF
POVERTY AND HUMAN SETTLEMENT IN
SOUTH AFRICA MUST MOVE BEYOND
THE NOTION OF QUICK-FIX SOLUTIONS.
I n the introduction to Spatial Agency:
Other Ways of Doing Architecture, the edi-
tors argue that architecture has histori-
cally supressed the more ‘volatile aspects
of buildings: the processes of their pro-
duction, [and I would add reproduction],
their occupation, their temporality, and
their relations to society and nature’ 1.
The book’s various chapters give voice,
however, to the transformation the disci-
pline is undergoing and the new territory
it seeks to cover. Undeniably, architecture,
urban design, landscape architecture and
planning have come to accommodate and
respond to much of what was previously
thought to be beyond their traditional am-
bit. Politics, law, formality and informal-
ity, citizenship, agency and other impor-
tant aspects of human and urban life have
come to be incorporated into and spatial-
ized through emergent and progressive
built-environment practices.
As a housing researcher at the African Cen-
tre for Cities, at least once a month I am
approached with a new self-build/incre-
mental prototype, model or pilot by eager
entrepreneurs, designers, and develop-
ment practitioners. From pop-up frames to
recycled plastic panels, sandbag houses to
‘smart shacks’, ideas for how to make hous-
ing units more affordable, faster to deliver,
incrementally constructible, and – increas-
ingly – ‘green’ appear to form the backbone
of architecture’s engagement with issues
of poverty and human settlement in South
Africa. These interventions are more often
than not aimed at shack, slum, informal
and otherwise ‘houseless’ communities in
developing cities – an exciting frontier for
both the designer and the discipline.
The purpose of this paper is to unpack the
assumptions behind these solutions, in
an effort to understand their limitations
and opportunities. Rather than to reject
specific designs, the intention is to add
rigor and reflection to an exciting debate.
by    Liza Cirolia
Two core assumptions underpin the ma-
jority of these models. The first concerns
the ‘problem’ of slums and informal settle-
ments in South African cities. The second,
by extension, relates to the solution. The
assumed problem with housing is that
housing materials are unaffordable and
housing delivery too slow to meet the de-
mand for shelter posed by the urbanizing
poor. The solution, therefore, is to create
a self-build and piecemeal model using
lower cost and more sustainable materials
that can be erected more quickly. These as-
sumptions are not necessarily wrong – in
fact, creative experimentation with alter-
native built environment forms at all city
scales, from the plot to block, neighbor-
hood, city and region are generally very
valuable. Yet, they remain incomplete.
In reality, the development of incremen-
tal/self-build models of housing has a
long lineage in South Africa and abroad.
Since the late 1950s, efforts to understand
the relationship between the core unit
and its incremental improvements have
been unpacked, repacked, designed, and
redesigned ad nauseam 2. Nearly every lo-
cal NGO – often aided by various cohorts
of foreign interns and professionals – have
created their own manual. Many ecologi-
cal and economic consultants and schol-
ars have designed and even built proto-
types and pilots. These combined efforts
are important and form the basis of a
larger pool of knowledge.
Despite such extensive efforts, however,
we continue to face a ‘housing crisis’ in
South African cities. The majority of these
innovative designs fail to be scaled, insti-
tutionalized, or even utilized beyond the
scope of particular and isolated projects.
When situating emergent incremental
housing solutions within this longer his-
tory, one cannot help but find the projects
ahistorical. While it may sound crass, if
the past is any indicator [insert new tech-
113
nology or model] is not likely to solve the
issue of housing in South Africa.
The main reason is that in our haste to use
hammers, we have failed to identify the
real problem. In our haste to find sexy tech-
nical and design solutions, we have failed
to engage with the social, political, scalar,
and – most importantly – institutional
architectures that drive the dysfunction,
inaccessibility, and inadequacy our good
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intentions seek to address. Put simply, the
crisis of housing is far more complex than
simply affordability or speed. In fact, tra-
ditional housing materials and building
methods are not particularly expensive
nor time consuming. In the South African
context, the production of informal settle-
ments is not simply a case of mismatched
supply and demand.
The older narrative, wherein informal set-
tlements are simply by-products of ‘rapid
urbanization’ and in-migration processes
has come to be replaced. Informal and
shack settlements are more accurately un-
derstood as coproduced by deeply unjust
urban resource management and decision-
making in and among cities, coupled
with the social and spatial agency of poor
people, households, and communities.
These compounding and reinforcing pro-
cesses drive the growth of urban informal
settlements and produce the slum urban-
ism 3, tenement cities 4, slumdog cities 5, quiet
encroachment 6, and insurgent citizenships 7
that have come to represent emerging ur-
banities in the developing world. Huchzer-
meyer writes ‘[Informal settlements] are
complex manifestations of more than just
poverty… the causes of informal settle-
ments are a complex combination of po-
litical, economic, and social forces that
include but also limit human resolve’8.
In South Africa, housing is a very politi-
cal issue. Hart argues that ‘disputes over
housing and threats of removal of shack
settlements are possibly the chief cata-
lyst of protest confrontation with local
authorities’. Housing has many dimen-
sions. Among other things, it is a limited
commodity, essential to life and living
SOUTH AFRICA
in cities, a concurrent function of three
phases of government, and linked to spa-
tial struggles over land and resources. In
many ways, the state’s free housing deliv-
ery program has become the de facto plan-
ning approach – with the poor relegated to
distant townships on undesirable and low
cost land. It has also come to be a signi-
fier and proxy of the responsibilities, and
subsequent failures, of the post-apartheid
state. As such, the housing situation is as
much a reflection of the tensions and con-
tradictions of local government and gover-
nance as it is about the actual houses we
seek to provide.
 Alexandra township in Johannesburg, with an apartheid era migrant labor hostel in the background

THERE SHALL BE HOUSES,

SECURITY AND COMFORT!
Freedom Charter, 1955
SOUTH AFRICA

SLUM LAB
AS SUCH, THE tested framework of the city. However, Smit, Assisted Mutual Help Housing Delivery in
it requires more sustained and engaged South Africa (1998); Susan Parnell and Deborah
HOUSING SITUATION interventions which, returning to the con-
Hart, ‘Self-Help Housing as a Flexible Instru-
ment of State Control in 20th-Century South
IS AS MUCH A ceptual foundation laid by Hart, position Africa’ (1999) Housing Studies 14(3).
themselves within the contradictions of 3 Mark Swilling, ‘Reconceptualising Urbanism,
REFLECTION OF THE local governance provoked by the dys-
Ecology and Networked Infrastructures’ (2011)
Social Dynamics 37(1).
TENSIONS AND function of land and housing systems in 4 Marie Huchzermeyer, Cities With Slums: From
South African cities. While the funding Informal Settlement Eradication to a Right to
CONTRADICTIONS OF terrain has in the past favored simple and
the City in Africa (2011).
5 Ananya Roy, ‘Why India Cannot Plan its Cities:
LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND technical solutions to urban issues, we Informality, Insurgence and the Idiom of Urban-
have amassed sufficient proof that such ization’ (2009) Planning Theory 8(1).
GOVERNANCE AS designs cannot be isolated from broader
6 Asef Bayat, ‘From “Dangerous Classes” to
“Quiet Rebels”: Politics of the Urban Subaltern
IT IS ABOUT THE urban development and decision-making in the Global South’ (2006) International Sociol-
(that is, political) processes. While this ogy.
ACTUAL HOUSES may seem more difficult, it is a far more
7 James Holston, ‘Spaces of Insurgent Citizen-
ship’ in Leonie Sandercock (ed), Making the
WE SEEK TO PROVIDE. useful contribution. Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning His-
tory (1998).
8 Huchzermeyer (2011) 23, 27.
9 See Future Cape Town (2013) at http://futureca-
In a provocative lecture entitled ‘Design 1 Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider, Jeremy Till, petown.com/2013/09/designing-our-democra-

SOUTH AFRICA
SLUM LAB

Cannot Save the City’, Pieterse urges de-
signers to engage more deeply with the
‘powerful urban logics’ reproducing and
perpetuating the fragmentation and in-
equities in South African cities 9. These
logics include: flows of resources and the
urban metabolism, property in terms of
land and ownership issues, mobility and
movement through the city, forms and
the legacy of spatial disenfranchisement,
and politics and vested decision-making.
There are many ways in which the spatial
disciplines can confront and reposition
these urban logics, fitting technical de-
signs into a larger and much more con-
Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architec- cy-seminar-review-part-1/
ture (2011) 27.
2 See Mark Napier, Core Housing, Enablement
and Urban Poverty: The Consolidation Paths
of Households Living in Two South African
Settlements (2002) PhD Thesis, University
of Newcastle; Karina Landman and Mark
Napier, ‘Waiting for a House or Building Your
Own? Reconsidering State Provision, Aided
and Unaided Self-Help in South Africa’ (2010)
Habitat International 3; Pauline Adebayo, ‘Post-
Apartheid Housing Policy and a Somewhat
Altered State Role: Does Incremental Housing
Still Have a Place in South Africa?’ (2011) The
Built And Human Environment Review 4(2);
Development Action Group, Housing Options
for the Western Cape (1994); Anthea Houston,
Housing Support Services for Housing Micro-
finance Lending in East and Southern Africa: A
Case Study of The Kuyasa Fund (2010); Warren

114 115
 socio-economic rights (the right to a digni-
SHACK DWELLERS HAVE LONG fied life), curtailing potential socio-spatial
transformation in informal communities.
PURSUED LEGAL AVENUES TO
Looking out over the makeshift rooftops of
CONSOLIDATE HOUSING. Harry Gwala, it is easy to question whether
hope for a viable process of change lies in
A RECENT CASE DEMANDING this self-made, organic development. Yet,
is the sterile replication of corrugated
SOUTH AFRICA

INTERIM BASIC SERVICES FOR AN rooftops in state ‘township developments’

any more hopeful? Instead, perhaps hope

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INFORMAL SETTLEMENT, HOWEVER, resides in the urban poor’s increasing
knowledge of their constitutional rights
WAS AS MUCH A DEMAND FOR DIGNITY, and development policies, and their use of
courts to demand implementation 1. After
EQUALITY AND VISIBILITY – all, it is here that I found the role dignity
plays unfolding in the living spaces of the
CITIZENSHIP – AS FOR TOILETS, community and in the private personas
of the Harry Gwala residents. It was the
TAPS AND LIGHTS. settlement’s leader, Johnson Nokotyana,
who – with the support of the community –
initiated the case, and followed its passage
By Kristen Kornienko through to appeal before the Constitu-
tional Court, demanding the dignity and
reality of basic services for a community
A map of Harry Gwala settlement by the author and residents, which became a key item of evidence in court that began as an overflow tent-town adja-
cent to an apartheid era township in the
mid-1980s, and is still without adequate
toilets, lights and water taps.

Harry Gwala community’s legal represen-

tative, human rights lawyer Moray Ha-
thorn, related how this transpired, begin-
ning with an initial collaboration in July
2004, when the residents:

Were under acute threat of eviction and

relocation, the lorries were there and
the Red Ants were removing people to
[the peripheral township of] Chief Le-
thuli. It was a desperate situation. I was
being called on a Saturday morning be-
cause the lorries were there rounding
people up.

For the next several years, there were re-

peated failed consultations with the mu-
nicipality. Then:

In 2007, people felt emboldened to ask

for another meeting [with the city] to
request interim services. To ask for toi-
lets, which we were told was not possi-

SOUTH AFRICA
SLUM LAB

ble. For refuse removal, which we were

told would happen. And for electricity,
which we were told we would have to
wait until July to hear about. Nothing

T his essay chronicles my involvement

in the preparation of evidence for the
recent case of Nokotyana v Ekurhuleni Met-
their self-initiated collaborations with
professionals like myself, which led to the
drawing of a map depicting their concrete
happened.

It was at this point that the community

ropolitan Municipality, while at the same
time using the experience as a conduit to
consider the actors grappling with hous-
ing and the rights of citizenship within
the urban realm. It is a vignette drawn
from the Harry Gwala shack residents’ on-
going, rights-based quest for a dignified
living environment that demonstrates
realities, while at the same time revealing
one of the abstract consequences of those
realities – the changing face of hope. It
also chronicles how South Africa’s Con-
stitutional Court jurisprudence, while
empowering that hope, concomitantly un-
dermines it with its seeming impotence in
defining the content of the Constitution’s
decided to bring a suit against the city of
Ekurhuleni. Since then, the residents and
Harthorn, with policy advice from Marie
Huchzermeyer, have built a case for in situ
upgrading stemming from Chapters 12
and 13 (now Volume 4, Part 3) of the Na-
tional Housing Code.

116 117
 I was introduced to Hathorn in 2007 and
began fieldwork in Harry Gwala concern-
ing sensitive methods of implementing
infrastructural upgrades. In conversa-
tions and meetings with residents and
Hathorn, the question of how to present
the community’s lack of water taps to the
court in a compelling manner arose. We
settled on the simple, yet visually power-
SOUTH AFRICA
ful, idea of physically mapping the com-
munity of 1,250 households within the
framework of South Africa’s Water Services
Act, which states there must be a source of
potable water within 200 meters of every
household. Using equipment borrowed
from the maintenance department at the
University of the Witwatersrand, a group
of residents and I produced a map of the
settlement.
As desired, this process of mapping articu-
lated the everyday concrete realities, while
unearthing a character of personal dig-
nity, which resonated within the precari-
ousness of the community. A casual look
at informal settlement in South Africa
is misleading, eliciting such sentiments
as ‘bleak’, ‘dangerous’ and ‘desperate’.
While those characterizations are dis-
tressingly accurate, further engagement
with the organic aesthetic of Harry Gwala
revealed a community embedded in its
locale on the eastern edge of greater Jo-
hannesburg, where livelihoods are deftly
crafted and elaborate social networks are
formed. It revealed a community whose
residents hang on to their sometimes tat-
tered belief in the South Africa that Madi-
ba (former President Nelson Mandela)
described, in which they have a right to a
place in the city. It revealed a community
waiting for the government to fulfill its
promises to provide housing, and at the
same time forming civil organizations
and plotting survival strategies. It also re-
vealed community fears that the munici-
pality will again send Red Ants – a secu-
rity agency described as ‘state-sponsored
mercenaries’ – to demolish their homes or
evict their neighbors 2.
Meanwhile, daily rhythms proceed. Resi-
dents wait for the city to install more wa-
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ter taps or they informally install their
own. Illicit electrical connections to power
bare bulbs, radios, TVs and computers are
wired shrewdly. Residents go to work or
look for work. Mobile phones are charged
on car batteries or solar panels for a fee.
Men push and pull handmade carts twice
their height filled with recyclable materi-
als. People play community league football
on a field of dust using a ball, or a can, or
a plastic bottle. Women wait for the price
of paraffin to come down while eating
less and sitting in the dark. They scrabble
in the coal dust making briquettes with
mud. Residents stand in line for water,
gossiping in groups about the latest news,
or squabbling about their place in the
queue. They scrub and iron their clothes
and polish school shoes. Passing a she-
been (tavern) there is the sound of music,
laughter and shouting. There is the smell
of cooking and open sewers. This was the
contextual texture within which we walked
and measured and mapped.
The map, though only in the form of lines
and colors representing actual distances,
became evidence heard in the Johannes-
burg High Court in 2008. The court de-
cided against sanitation, electricity and
high mast lighting. It did, however, order
five more water taps to be installed. On
appeal, the richness of personal dignity
alluded to in the mapping process under-
pinned Hathorn’s legal argument, rooted
in the interdependence between abstract
notions of a dignified life and the concrete
reality of basic services. ‘We wanted to ad-
dress the Constitution’s intent of dignity
IT REVEALED A from today to tomorrow’ for many of the
COMMUNITY WHOSE
RESIDENTS HANG ON
TO THEIR SOMETIMES
TATTERED BELIEF IN
THE SOUTH AFRICA
THAT MADIBA
DESCRIBED, IN WHICH
THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO
A PLACE IN THE CITY.
and equality, to make some statement that
sanitation should be addressed on this
ground’. Others echo this link 3. The court
found against the line of argument, how-
ever, thus legitimizing misuse of Chapter
13 of the Housing Code 4. Instead of em-
powering socio-economic rights, the court
ordered the province to decide on the fea-
sibility of upgrading Harry Gwala within
14 months (by the end of 2011). To date,
the community has not only been left in
the same physical state, but effectively on
the outside of South Africa’s new democ-
racy looking in.
My experience in Harry Gwala supports
Pithouse’s claim that South Africa’s prom-
ise of housing has two faces: the physi-
cal reality of a living environment and ‘a
mode of inclusion into the post-apartheid
nation... a realization of the promise of
democratic citizenship’ 5. The implica-
tions of this dichotomy manifested in
my post-case interviews with residents,
which exposed a tension elicited by des-
118
perate need, a growing lack of faith in the
government, and a residual loyalty to the EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO
African National Congress, the dominant
emancipatory political party of the apart- HAVE ACCESS TO ADEQUATE
heid struggle now in power 6. The canni-
ness with which many shack dwellers see HOUSING.
through progressive housing rhetoric was
displayed by a resident who commented
on the ‘the watch-a-ma-call-it wasting Constitution of the Republic
list’ when referring to the official lists and
backlogs overshadowing South Africa’s
of South Africa, 1996
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urban housing delivery. His comment also
intimates a pervasive erosion of hope.
At the same time, the perceptiveness fram-
ing the resident’s statement serves to stave
off hopelessness – as has been revealed,
amidst this shrewdness is an element of
self-determination. Mbembe alludes to
the nature of this tension between hope
and hopelessness in his statement that,
‘what gave… the future its power was the
hope that we might bring into being... a
systematic transformation in the logic of
our social life’ 7. He questions hope when
he suggests that in recent years life has
been reduced to ‘a struggle to make it
nation’s poorest. In an effort to dispel
Mbembe’s use of ‘gave’ in the past tense,
I am reminded of Fanon’s notion that
formerly oppressed ‘people [need] to find
their own vernaculars and practices for re-
alizing themselves as creator of life’, thus
reflecting on whether the process of in-
formal development, as illustrated in this
vignette of Harry Gwala, is in fact a neces-
sary, painful machination toward authen-
tic democratic change 8.
1 S’bu Zikode, ‘Despite the State’s Violence, Our
Fight to Escape the Mud, Shit and Fire of South
Africa’s Slums Will Continue’ (11 November
2013) The Guardian.
2 Dan McDougal, ‘Slum Clearance, South Africa-
Style’ (25 April 2010) The Sunday Times.
3 Marius Pieterse, ‘Eating Socio-Economic
Rights: The Usefulness of Rights Talk in Al-
leviating Social Hardship Revisited’ (2007) 29
Human Rights Quarterly 796; Paul O’Connell,
‘The Death of Socio-Economic Rights’ (2011) 74
SOUTH AFRICA
The Modern Law Review 532; Redson Kapindu,
‘The Desperate Left in Desperation: A Court in
Retreat – Nokotyana v Ekurhuleni Metropolitan
Municipality Revisited’ (2011) Constitutional
Court Review.
4 Marie Huchzermeyer, Cities With Slums (2011).
5 Richard Pithouse, ‘Political Agency in South
African Shack Settlements’ (2012) Presentation
at the Conference on Urban Revolutions in the
Age of Global Urbanism 7.
6 Kristin Kornienko, Engaging Informal Settle-
ments as Landscapes of Place: Reconceptual-
izing Urban Communities in the Struggle for In
Situ Upgrading (Doctoral Thesis, 2013).
7 Achille Mbembe, ‘Democracy as a Community
Life’ (2011) Public Seminar: Wits Institute for
Social and Economic Research at http://www.
jwtc.org.za/volume_4/achille_mbembe.htm
8 Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (2004)
135.
119
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and Patrick Waterhouse
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urban decline. A place of myth, illusion and aspiration, the reality of the building and its many fictions
reveal as much about the psyche of the city as the structure itself.
SOUTH AFRICA

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THE POST-APARTHEID PROMOTION
OF HOUSING FOR THE URBAN POOR
IS A PRINCIPAL FOUNDATION OF
CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICA.
YET RE-SALES OF STATE-SUBSIDIZED
PROPERTIES HAVE RESULTED IN A
‘HYBRID’ GENTRIFICATION
THREATENING THIS VISION OF
EQUALITY AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION.
By Charlotte Lemanski
G entrification is a concept and body
of work rarely employed when think-
ing of urban change in low-income (often
informal) housing settlements in Africa,
instead being used largely to describe
change in Western inner cities. In con-
trast, this article explores how the sale of
state-subsidized houses in a low-income
settlement in Cape Town, demonstrates a
distorted echo of gentrification. By label-
ling the process ‘hybrid gentrification’, I
aim to show how urban theories tradition-
ally associated with Western/Anglo-Amer-
ican urban experiences can and should be
challenged and redefined by urban reali-
ties in the South.
Over the past four decades, a signifi-
cant body of gentrification literature has
emerged. While typically traced to Ruth
Glass’ commentary in the 1950s and 60s
on the middle-class invasion of working
class quarters of London, the recent re-
vival of interest explores gentrification as a
symbol of urban change, with empirical at-
tention largely focused on Western cities2.
This contemporary approach concentrates
on class change and the displacement and
exclusion of lower-class groups by higher-
class groups as the central markers of
gentrification. The label more commonly
used in reference to similar dynamics in
the global South is ‘downward raiding’, a
process whereby the emerging indigenous
middle-classes, unable to afford rising
land costs in established parts of the city,
purchase (‘raid’) property in low-income,
often informal or state-subsidized areas.
Despite describing and analyzing com-
parable forms of urban (mostly residen-
tial) class-based change, the concepts of
gentrification and downward raiding are
rarely considered analogous, entrenched
in divergent empirical contexts and aca-
demic literatures. While gentrification de-
bates largely reference the Northern cen-
tral city, downward raiding is reserved for
the Southern ‘slum’. In contrast, ‘hybrid
gentrification’ as a concept and method-
ological approach allows for an analysis
of processes of class-based residential
change in a low-income (state subsidized)
settlement in South Africa.
The post-apartheid government’s promo-
tion of housing for the poor is a principal
foundation of contemporary South Africa.
The National Housing Subsidy Scheme
effectively provides newly built 25 – 30m2
houses with electricity and running wa-
ter (colloquially termed ‘RDP houses’) to
low-income households. Despite impres-
sive construction rates – with 3.25 mil-
lion government subsidies released from
1994 – 2010 – criticisms of the policy are
widespread, including: the quality and
size of units, the peripheral location of
settlements, the scheme’s inflexibility (for
instance, homeownership as the only op-
tion), and the ‘slum’ quality of life. In re-
sponse, the 2004 ‘Breaking New Ground’
housing strategy promised a range of
tenure options, larger houses and better
located settlements, although implemen-
tation has so far been limited. In addi-
tion, concerns regarding state-subsidized
houses being sold for low values – with
sellers returning to informal settlements –
led to a prohibition on RDP house sales
for the first eight years of ownership (later
reduced to five). Officials admit, however,
that implementing the ban is virtually im-
possible, with informal RDP house sales
thriving.
In 2008, South Africa’s housing minister
announced that following a national audit
137
of state-subsidized housing, all beneficia-
ries who illegally sold or leased their house
would face criminal charges, and all non-
original beneficiaries would be evicted.
This criminalization of vendors makes
explicit the government’s view of housing
beneficiaries as the sole agents in the pro-
cess, with no recognition of other factors
like poverty, pressure from buyers and a
shortage of affordable housing stock.
Blaming beneficiary vendors not only
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contradicts government visions of state-
subsidized housing as a financial asset
for wealth creation by failing to acknowl-
edge vendors as property owners with the
authority to sell/let, but also ignores the
perilous financial position of beneficia-
ries, often forced to sell in order to cope
with unexpected crises or long-standing
debts 3. Despite significant media atten-
tion on re-sales, reliable data is scarce and
fragmented. At the same time, anecdotal
perceptions of re-sales as unregistered/il-
legal, widespread and under-valued have
been challenged. Both legal and illegal
transactions exist, and are less common
than anticipated (6 – 30 percent of overall
stock). Property prices vary significantly
within and between settlements, with
evidence of below ‘market value’ sales
(sometimes below construction costs) as
well as evidence of rising prices across all
settlements (in some cases quadrupling
‘market value’).
My own research focused on a specific
state-subsidized housing settlement situ-
ated on the fringes of Cape Town’s wealthy
suburbs. Westlake village was developed
in 1999, prior to restrictions on state-sub-
sidized houses sales (thus transactions
can be legally registered). It is part of a
larger development comprising a busi-
ness park, office park, gated community,
private school and retail center, and is
thus proximate to employment opportu-
nities. Housing beneficiaries previously
resided on the land in informal structures
and decaying brick-built buildings, and
were awarded certificates of subsidy eli-
gibility in 1997, moving en masse to state-
subsidized houses in December 1999 4.
SOUTH AFRICA
Of the 599 state-subsidized houses in
Westlake village, 147 had sold between
2000  – 
2009 (with 24 transacting more
than once), indicating that approximate-
ly one-quarter of original beneficiaries
have sold their state-subsidized property.
This is hardly surprising – eligibility for
state-subsidized housing requires very
low household income, and the provi-
sion of a house does not alleviate daily
poverty, but merely creates ‘asset rich,
cash poor’ households with an obvious
and rapid mechanism to address this defi-
cit. While the re-sale of state-subsidized
houses has been a national trend, what
 Original state-subsidized, semi-detached house in Westlake Village, Cape Town
SOUTH AFRICA
has been significant in Westlake village is
the high class/income profile of property
purchasers, the majority of whom are lo-
cal employers seeking accommodation
for staff. Three employer-types dominate
Westlake’s property market: local wine
estate owners, Westlake business park
companies, and wealthy families from
nearby suburbs. All seek accommodation
A house that has been renovated by its new occupier-owner in Westlake Village, Cape Town for employees, and most operate a salary-
sacrifice-type scheme enabling employees
to ultimately own their new house.
At first glance, this trend appears to reso-
nate with theories of both gentrification
and ‘downward raiding’. Yet the clear
income and class distinction between
purchasers (commercial companies and
elite households), occupiers (regularly
employed un/semi-skilled workers), and
vendors (mostly under- and un-employed)
does not match traditional analyses.
This ‘hybrid’ form of gentrification has
resulted in two significant (and unusual)
consequences. Firstly, as Westlake’s prop-
erty market is dominated by wealthy elites,
house prices have risen to the extent that
low-income vendors (for whom the hous-
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ing was originally state-subsidized) are
excluded not just from owning property
in Westlake village, but potentially from
homeownership for life (anecdotal evi-
dence indicates vendors return to infor-
mal settlements) 5. The ‘once-in-a-lifetime’
nature of the subsidy means vendors face
permanent exclusion from this element
of the welfare state – far more severe than
merely being priced out of an area in the
classic gentrification conceptualization.
Secondly, the settlement has not experi-
enced class-wide upgrading (as expected
in gentrifying neighborhoods) because
138
IN OTHER WORDS,
THE POOR ARE NOT
SIMPLY SACRIFICING
THEIR CURRENT
ACCOMMODATION, BUT
POTENTIALLY THEIR
ONLY CHANCE FOR
DECENT HOUSING AND
WEALTH CREATION
THROUGH PROPERTY.
high-income purchasers are not occupi-
ers. There is a clear income and class dis-
tinction between vendors and occupiers –
particularly visible in the latter’s houses,
which benefit from extensions and im-
provements funded by employers. This
distinction resonates with Harriss’ differ-
entiation between the ‘informal working
class’ as the highly vulnerable subaltern
lacking employment protection and de-
pendent on casual forms of labor in urban
India, and the ‘labor aristocracy’ (in strict-
ly relative terms) in permanent wage work,
able to draw on trade union resources and
legal protection 6. The consequences of
this marginal class distinction are that
while houses purchased by employers
have undergone improvements, the area
as a whole is not gentrifying and instead
remains low-income, hosting mostly run-
down houses and few cultural amenities.
The implications of hybridized forms of
gentrification and downward-raiding in
state-subsidized settlements are signifi-
cant in South Africa in at least two ways.
Firstly, the displacement of low-income
139
beneficiaries (sellers) into informal settle-
ments has consequences for the perma-
nence of informal housing (households
can only receive one subsidy) – anathema
to the state vision of formal homeown-
ership and the eradication of informal-
ity. Secondly, the concentration of access
to property ownership in high-income
groups (mostly employers) – with the fi-
nancial strength to dictate and control
the state-subsidized housing market – de-
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stroys the post-apartheid vision of equality
and poverty alleviation via housing. Fur-
thermore, the transfer of state-subsidized
(or recently titled) housing from low- to
high-income groups raises important
moral/ideological concerns more broadly
in the global South, particularly given the
lack of vendor movement up the property
ladder 7. In other words, the poor are not
simply sacrificing their current accommo-
dation, but potentially their only chance
for decent housing and wealth creation
through property, whilst the middle-class-
es and private sector are benefiting from
state investment for the very poor.
1 This commentary is based on a forthcoming
SOUTH AFRICA
2014 article by the author in the journal Urban
Studies entitled ‘Hybrid Gentrification in South
Africa: Theorizing Across Southern and North-
ern Cities’.
2 See eg, Loretta Lees, Tom Slater and Elvin
Wyly, Gentrification (2008).
3 Charlotte Lemanski, ‘Moving Up the Ladder
or Stuck at the Bottom? Homeownership as
a Solution to Poverty in South Africa’ (2011) 35
International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 57.
4 Charlotte Lemanski, ‘Houses Without Com-
munity: Problems of Community (In)Capacity in
a Low-Cost Housing Community in Cape Town’
(2008) 20 Environment and Urbanization 393.
5 See Lemanski (2011).
6 John Harriss, ‘Middle-Class Activism and the
Politics of the Informal Working Class’ (2006)
38 Critical Asian Studies 445, 447-448.
7 See Lemanski (2011).

THE UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG’S
MTECH ARCHITECTURAL TECHNOLOGY
PROGRAM REPRESENTS AN
ATTEMPT AT A NETWORKED
PEDAGOGY, PREPARING ASPIRING
ARCHITECTS TO GENERATE
APPROPRIATE RESPONSES TO THE
INCREASINGLY UNPREDICTABLE
CONDITIONS OF THE
CONTEMPORARY CITY-SCAPE.
By    Alexander Opper
I n this article2 I discuss the conceptual
structure of the coursework year (Year 1)
of the architectural master’s program at
the University of Johannesburg and how
it hopes to make responsible societal con-
tributions. One catalytic project – Informal
Studio: Ruimsig – illustrates how infor-
mality is a radically relevant field which,
through carefully negotiated permissions,
‘invites’ the architectural studio to play a
part. The project confronted the difficult
terrain of what is lazily referred to as ‘par-
ticipation’. The term’s urgent reconsidera-
tion allows the university to fulfill a crucial
role as facilitator, knowledge-generator
and partner. More precisely, the emerging
pedagogy shows how the immersive ‘Infor-
mal Studio’ approach reveals process driv-
en clues allowing relevant re-definitions
and empathetic re-activations of partici-
pation to emerge. Real participation must
ultimately translate into usefulness for a
given community and value for the mul-
tiple participating actors.
Some Brief Background
The master’s program sees Johannes-
burg’s expanse as an asymmetrical multi-
plicity of subconditions, often juxtaposed,
rarely interwoven. This still much-divided
city becomes the starting point for de-
veloping methods of architecture-as-
research, leading to non-formulaic, non-
Western-centric, and hyper-adaptable
translations of living. The program en-
courages students to ‘read’ and ‘listen’
to the city. The incoherent miscellany of
this socially and economically fragmented
‘non-place’ is perfectly suited to the mas-
sive test of ‘undoing’3 the overwhelmingly
evident racially engineered inscription of
division and segregation4. In this light, the
program is structured around responses
to marginalized urban ‘blind spots’ gen-
erally overlooked by architects, planners
and policy-makers. The four core projects
in Year 1 are informed by context-specific
and discipline-crossing inputs, both in the
studio and in the field. The methodology
aims to ‘fold’ the architectural studio into
the field in order to achieve a reciprocal
relationship of learning and exchange be-
tween the primary teaching-and-learning
domains (design-thinking) and the field
(action-design). The collapse of these two
sub-contexts facilitates the emergence of a
third, fostering the potential for the emer-
gence of thought-dialogue-action scenari-
os, all process driven. Project outcomes are
geared towards achieving contextually rel-
evant design responses, rather than finite
design ‘solutions’.
Underpinning the program is a desire to
meaningfully connect the university land-
scape to the city. Each new project advo-
cates direct engagement with experts invit-
ed to participate in studios based on their
experience and interest. Students benefit
from exposure to exemplary design profes-
sionals; practitioners profit from dialogue
with students; connections are forged be-
tween the department and the architectur-
al industry; and long-term relationships
are established between communities,
universities, students and practitioners.
Apart from this extramural linkage, inter-
nal university integration is also achieved.
The core design brief is carefully inte-
grated with a host of supporting subject
briefs, and linkages between senior and
141
junior years of study are encouraged. The
program’s ‘learning-by-doing’ mode situ-
ates the intention of ‘making’ within an
existing culture of conceptual-to-material
translation in the multidisciplinary Facul-
ty of Art, Design and Architecture. The pro-
cesses and products that emerge during
Year 1 are exhibited publicly so as to share
the research with a given project’s public.
The first year projects span a range of
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themes, scales and levels of complexity.
The distinct focus of each brief interro-
gates aspects of Johannesburg’s challeng-
ing socio-political, economic and cultural
contexts. Situating the projects within
urban blind spots is part of the program’s
larger intention to up-end the still-per-
vasive modernist-based heroic paradigm
attached to the architectural ‘Habitus’5,
which perpetuates the complicity of the
profession in the production of buildings
as contextually ignorant and civically dead
objects. Bourdieu’s understanding offers
us a useful descriptor for the entrenched,
determined formal way in which many ar-
chitects see their role in the world. What
is required of not only architects, but the
built-environment profession at large, is
a reasonable letting-go of the designerly
ego and the adoption of a conscious prac-
tice of a socially-wired and more flexible
habitus. The Ruimsig engagement shows
how such disciplinary openness translates
into a useful mode for the leveraging of
agency and advocacy from within margin-
alized contexts. The conditions and sites
students grapple with provide the contexts
necessary to develop degrees of both con-
fidence and humility as they prepare for
their dissertations during Year 2 of the
program.
‘Folding’ The Studio
Into The Field: Testing
The Flexible Habitus
In Ruimsig
Students of architecture can inform them-
SOUTH AFRICA
selves remotely of the various roles of in-
formality within urban settings. This ap-
proach allows only for a limited textual
understanding of the complexities of an
adaptive, reactive and tenuously uneasy
terrain. Such abstract knowledge means
little if students do not physically immerse
themselves into mostly unfamiliar and
challenging everyday contexts. The first it-
eration of the ‘Informal Studio’ project was
run in Ruimsig, a peripheral Johannesburg
settlement established in the mid-1980s.
Begun in 2011, it focused on the relatively
new local approach of settlement upgrad-
ing and functioned as a collaboration with

SOUTH AFRICA
Thorsten Deckler of 26’10 south Architects
and Lone Poulsen.
Limitations attached to the traditional
training of architects means the discipline
is still largely under-equipped to respond
to the realities and needs of the broader
populace. If architects were taught to be
more engaged in responding to the intel-
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ligences and design-related opportunities
presented by informal settlements, they
could fulfill very useful roles. By supporting
a truly immersive, collaborative and inclu-
sive methodology, academia can produce
young professionals capable of acting as
facilitators, learning from and channeling
the potential of the informal ways in which
housing and, by extension, cities are made
by people. Architects are able to contribute
significantly towards ensuring both state-
delivered housing and the self-evolved
scapes of informal settlements develop in
ways that enable emergent constellations
of neighborhood-based and future-orient-
ed human settlements. Universities in the
global South, with the advantages of con-
textual proximity to the centrality of the
informal, should take the lead in the field
of practice-led research.
Subscription by architects and other built-
environment professionals to a ‘co-pro-
ductive mode’ 6 would accelerate the legiti-
mization of the resourceful and adaptive
spatial possibilities found in self-built en-
vironments, and encourage their growth
trajectory towards successful human set-
tlements. As Mitlin points out, ‘co-produc-
tion’ exemplifies a valuable political strat-
egy employed by grassroots organizations
– in the context of marginalized commu-
nities – and results in a proactive counter
mode to the hierarchical top-down ‘deliv-
eries’ of housing and services by the state.
By collaborating with dedicated built-en-
vironment professionals, architects could
be instrumental in sensitively reconfig-
uring and reconnecting the self-evolved,
142
Ruimsig township, outside of Johannesburg
self-organized environments blanketing
the land(scapes) around South Africa’s
urban centers. The ‘Informal Studio’ en-
gagement model attempts to challenge
typically top-down relationships between
the state and the people, and the architect/
designer and informal settlement client.
Ruimsig demonstrates the success of an
emergent approach of dialogue driven ex-
change and ‘co-production’, which takes
careful cognizance of ‘lifeworlds’ 7 – in
other words, the everyday life conditions
and challenges of individuals who self-
organize and populate sidelined informal
settlements.
Informal Studio: Ruimsig
The premise of the first ‘Informal Studio’
was that people – and not architects, plan-
ners or engineers – make cities vibrant
and alive, while built-environment pro-
fessionals must provide sensible urban
frameworks into which people can build
their futures. The project positioned itself
within the ambit of the National Upgrad-
ing Support Program tasked with assist-
ing government – its previous mindset of
eradication having been replaced by one
of upgrading – in realizing one of its ambi-
tious targets: ‘to improve basic infrastruc-
ture, services and land tenure for 400,000
households in well-located informal settle-
ments by 2014’.
Following lengthy and considered pre-
project engagement with the communi-
ty’s leadership, it was agreed the project
would produce two distinct products: an
‘actual land-use map’ and a ‘re-blocking’
plan. The chief structural purpose of the
re-blocking plan was to indicate which
dwellings and other structures would need
to be relocated to other parts of the settle-
ment to improve functioning and future
growth. Both maps have become very use-
ful to the community as leveraging tools
in discussions with city officials (in terms
of broader ambitions towards eventual
security of tenure). It should be noted that
the community had already begun to map
the land under its occupation before the
commencement of the ‘Informal Studio’
process. Hence the partnership between
multiple players was based on the settle-
ment’s expression of a self-organized de-
sire to make itself visible and stake its right
to gain access to, and become a recognized
part of, the larger city and region.
In Ruimsig, the ability of architects to
‘zoom’ between various scales of urban
fabric was put to the test and developed.
On the first day 16 students, divided into
four groups and accompanied by members
of the community – experts with intrinsic
knowledge of the growth, histories, codes,
narratives and complexities of a given area –
participated in an intense day of walking
and discovering various aspects of the
settlement. An aerial map of Ruimsig was
then overlaid with tracing paper and the
settlement was delineated into four zones.
The students and their collaborators were
tasked with documenting the movement
trajectories of selected community mem-
bers in order to chart daily, monthly and
annual routes with a view to creating more
enabling connections between the settle-
ment and Johannesburg. Identified short-
comings and opportunities were used to
strategize an Urban Design Framework,
which enabled students and commu-
nity partners to work towards re-blocking
strategies within their particular zones.
The final plan assimilated the site-specific
conditions of the four sub-zones into an
overall re-blocking plan.
Interlude: Understanding
Misunderstandings
During this stage something remarkable
happened. From the beginning the lec-
turers realized this project was not about
‘design’ in the sense of an idealized spatial
vision translated into an artificial reality.
Instead, the project presented a rare op-
portunity – via listening, looking and col-
laborating towards a goal of minimum
change with maximum effect – to pro-
ductively engage within an existing self-
evolved condition. However, the students
did not understand the project’s intention
in the same way and protested that their
teachers were ‘over-directing’ the process,
not allowing enough opportunity to ‘de-
sign’. This confirmed what I have hinted at
above – a persistent discipline-entrenched
perception of design, seemingly offering
architects a license to direct the shape of
the world. Following lengthy discussions
it was agreed the aspect of a physical de-
sign intervention, with a communal focus,
would be included in the project.
Small Steps, Big Change
In terms of the mandate I had set for my-
self within the master’s framework, the
process driven results of the project were
presented in the context that had gener-
ated them. At the conclusion, all stake-
holders were invited to attend the com-
munity presentation, in the community.
Subsequently, the re-blocking plan, to-
gether with film material generated during
the project, served as the basis for a second
exhibition at an inner-city project space in
Johannesburg. An immersive project such
as this relies on a multiplicity of actors.
City of Johannesburg officials were regu-
larly invited to attend presentations and
the community leadership followed up,
all with the goal of improving the lives of
settlement dwellers and eventually achiev-
ing land ownership. This has led to the city
declaring the settlement an ‘experimental
zone’ – an unprecedented step in recogniz-
ing the unique aspects and special require-
ments of informal settlements.
At the end of the project, the maps were
handed over to the community and have
since been further developed under the
guidance of Ikhayalami’s Andy Bolnick,
and with the professional assistance of
26’10 south Architects. This post-project
engagement represents a crucial phase
in terms of supporting an informal settle-
ment community towards the realization
of longer-term goals. Towards the end of
2011, the re-blocking process in the settle-
ment had physically begun. If funding can
143
be generated, 2014 offers the opportunity
for a second studio to take place. Thanks
in part to the commitment of the ‘Infor-
mal Studio’ during the post-project phase,
a possibility has emerged for Ruimsig to
absorb three neighboring informal settle-
ments.
The experiences of the completed collab-
orative ‘Informal Studio’ projects have con-
vinced me the profession of architecture
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can become relevant in quietly profound
ways. In a volatile age of limited resources
and an escalating divide between rich and
poor, the profession needs to flexibly re-
spond to and reconfigure existing spaces,
land(scapes) and socio-politically and eco-
nomically shifting dynamics. New build-
ings have become less important than
the challenge of sensibly and responsibly
working with what is already there. Here I
borrow from Mehrotra’s acutely relevant
practice-based view of urban design, in its
relationship to other built-environment
disciplines. If architectural ‘design’ is
treated less aggressively as a determinant
for instant solutions and concrete form,
but more as a malleable ‘practice’, archi-
tectural responses and urban strategies
confronting the layered complexities of in-
formality are bound to be more successful.
Johannesburg is one of the most perfect
examples of an urban test-bed, useful pre-
cisely because it is an imperfect city. Its
divided socio-economic fabric offers op-
portunities for students, architects, urban
designers, planners, policy-makers and
politicians to share insights with other
cities confronted with similar challenges.
Academia fulfills a crucial role in this con-
text: to provide society with young, fearless
architects eager to address difficult urban
challenges with humility, but also vision.
1 I recently employed the phrase ‘the leaking
museum’ to interrogate the value of the contin-
ued use of the typologically narrow term, mu-
seum. The context for this was a commission
for the design of a new domicile for Iwalewa
Haus (an important seat for African Studies
in Bayreuth, Germany). In the context of the
SOUTH AFRICA
emergent identity of the architectural master’s
program, the metaphor of leakage sits well with
the other analogy used in this article of ‘folding’
the studio into the field.
2 This article is a shortened and re-focused
version of a piece written for the FADA’s Faculty
Newsletter.
3 The adjective ‘undoing’ is critical to a growing
body of interdisciplinary work I have produced
– under the working title of ‘Undoing Architec-
ture’ – starting with my master’s thesis in 2001.
4 Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction To An
5
Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995).
Pierre Boudieu, Distinctions: A Social Critique
of the Judgment of Taste (1984).
6 Pieterse borrows the term ‘lifeworlds’ from
Long. Pieterse uses it to describe the complex
and manifold existences of the urban poor. See
Norman Long, Development Sociology: Actor
Perspectives (2001); Edgar Pieterse, …

INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS ARE
OFTEN DESCRIBED IN POLICY
TERMS AS VIOLENT PLACES,
OR AT LEAST
SUFFERING FROM HIGH LEVELS
OF VIOLENCE AND CRIME.
BUT THE DREAM
OF AN UPGRADED SETTLEMENT
AS A MORE SECURE
SETTLEMENT IS NOT
A SIMPLE EQUATION.
By Paula Meth
I n the common discourse around violence
and informal settlements, the source
or cause is usually portrayed as criminal,
though occasionally the role police might
play in fuelling violence – or at least polic-
ing such places in a forceful manner – is
acknowledged, leading to above average
death rates of young men in particular.
Less often, political violence is consid-
ered a significant issue shaping the lives
of residents, and there is evidence of the
consequences of such interconnections
in countries where political allegiance and
residential location are linked, with nega-
tive outcomes. Domestic violence is often
overlooked in such discussions, as it suf-
fers from the usual legal and cultural in-
visibility associated with events occurring
‘within the privacy of the home’. There is a
need to think more deeply about domes-
tic violence in informal housing, because
the lack of internal room divisions, frailty
of external wall structures and settlement
density means we cannot assume violence
is occurring out of sight (and certainly not
out of ear shot).
Calls to upgrade informal settlements
regularly point to reducing violence and
crime as one justification. In South Afri-
ca, the state describes the dream of an up-
graded settlement as one that can offer se-
curity and dignity for all. This hope – that
crime and violence will be modified by a
change to the housing form – is matched
by similar hopes about the creation of
stronger communities and hygienic set-
tlements. Upgrading is viewed as offering
more than a house. South Africa has de-
livered, and continues to deliver, a mas-
sive program of housing upgrading, with
nearly 3 million houses provided by the
state since 1994 to low-income residents.
One key qualification for beneficiaries is
that they have dependents, thus many are
women. Beneficiaries do not pay for the
house, but are expected to pay for new ser-
vices. The program is focused largely on
the delivery of the house, rather than the
provision of other facilities, but includes
the construction of roads and extension
of electricity, water and waste removal
services.
The VPUU (Violence Prevention Through
Urban Upgrading) program underway
in Cape Town is specifically focused on
violence reduction through changes to
the urban environment. Receiving wide-
spread national and international atten-
tion on the basis of its claim to a remark-
able impact on murder rates, it is – quite
rightly – a potential cause for celebra-
tion. Two issues need to be raised here.
Firstly, the VPUU program is not simply
about urban design and upgrading, but
embraces a complex institutional and
social intervention arguably central to its
success. Secondly, it does not offer a use-
ful comparison with the state-led delivery
of upgraded settlements – the product
being delivered is very different, in con-
ception, implementation and outcome.
The VPUU focuses largely on the public
realm, whereas the state-led program fo-
cuses on housing delivery. In settlements
where entirely new neighborhoods are
built, then ‘new’ or adapted public realms
are created too. Nonetheless, the remain-
der of this piece is focused on some of the
145
violence issues arising in relation to state-
provided housing, rather than impacts as
a result of changes to the public realm.
The work I have carried out concerning
urban upgrading and violence has fo-
cused on the settlement of Cato Crest in
Durban. The wider area of Cato Manor
(into which Cato Crest falls) has benefit-
ted from substantial state funded invest-
ment in housing, although some infor-
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mal housing, particularly in Cato Crest,
still remains. It is therefore a settlement
in flux. My comments here are prelimi-
nary, as more research is needed to fully
explore the trends in violence since hous-
ing upgrading began. As a starting point,
Cato Crest is known as a site of intensive
violence and certainly during the 1990s
and 2000s it suffered enormously from
very high levels of muggings, murders,
rape, child rape and robbery. Pilot work
with residents, leadership and the police
conducted there in June 2013 (as well as in
2011) did, however, point to some interest-
ing issues. We asked residents about their
changing experiences of violence since
they had moved to an upgraded house and
the outcomes were quite contradictory.
Several residents told us crime had de-
creased. They struggled – as we all do – to
be specific, but sensed the settlement was
somewhat safer. When we asked why this
might be, it seemed a fundamental reason
was a reduction in density and popula-
tion, and that it was harder for criminals
to access new housing due to the formal
waiting list. The decrease in density is an
important feature of upgrading. Previous
informal settlements were relatively un-
planned, with non-standardized plots fre-
quently very close to each other. Roads and
passageways were often minimal widths.
Available land was used for housing. The
settlement could, therefore, house a far
higher number of individuals. With up-
grading this changed dramatically. A large
proportion of original residents were nev-
er offered an upgraded house, as the new
layout and density would not allow for it.
The natural lowering of the population ar-
guably ‘moved on’ some criminally-orient-
SOUTH AFRICA
ed individuals. Upgrading also facilitated
improved access to most parts of the set-
tlement for the police. Several residents
spoke positively about the fact emergency
services could now access their houses in
times of crisis.
Turning from general criminal violence
to domestic violence, one key finding
was that for female residents in particu-
lar, receiving upgraded formal housing
greatly enhanced their sense of security,
independence and livelihood. They talked
about having a new sense of pride, which
they had absolutely lacked when living

SOUTH AFRICA
in an informal dwelling. Residents also
revealed their new formal houses con-
tributed to increased privacy, which they
claimed played a role in reducing tensions
that may originally have led to domestic
violence:
Yes, the new houses decrease the do-
mestic violence. For example, the rela-
tives are able to visit us because we have
houses. In the informal settlement if
the relatives want to visit, [it] was cre-
ating problems as everything was in
one room. If my partner wants to bathe
the relative have to go outside until my
partner is finished dressing. Another
example, if the pastor of my church visit
[he] has a place to sit, in the informal
settlement the pastor sit together with
me on my bed and people interpret
wrong and create violence.
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On the other hand, these new upgraded
houses are leading to new forms of vio-
lence and tension, again from the per-
spective of women. There is much anxiety
over the housing program, with its pace of
delivery frequently the focus of residents’
anger. Waiting times in many settlements
have often been over ten years and women
in Cato Crest who had benefitted from the
housing scheme reported rising levels of
violence from male family members who
wanted to claim ownership of new hous-
ing assets.
The interior of an informal shack in Khayelitsha township, Cape Town
RETHINKING AND REDESIGNING
THE CITY AND ITS SPACES IS A
FUNDAMENTAL TASK IN ADJUSTING
THEM TO OUR PURPOSES AND
GIVING EXPRESSION TO WHO WE
ARE AS A SOCIETY.
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Heinrich Wolff
Architect
This is an unsurprising but important is- if anything happen was easy to spread to
sue. Understanding impacts on domestic everybody… If you are sitting in your [RDP
violence is tricky, and when we analyze house] no one will know your problems’.
upgrading schemes from a social perspec- New upgraded houses can hide experienc-
tive, we need to think carefully about what es of domestic violence in ways that were
less possible when living informally.
CATO CREST IS Finally, I began this piece by pointing to
the need to also be aware of the connec-
KNOWN AS A SITE tions between housing upgrading (or at
OF INTENSIVE VIOLENCE least the promise of it) and political vio-
lence. In September 2013, intense violence
AND CERTAINLY broke out in Cato Crest over the housing
DURING THE 1990s allocations process, as well as allegations
the municipal housing department had
AND 2000s IT contravened a High Court agreement and
SUFFERED ENORMOUSLY demolished shacks in the settlement. Sev-
eral housing activists as well as a young
FROM VERY HIGH LEVELS female resident were killed. Although a
OF MUGGINGS, very particular example, it does provide
evidence of the intensity of political feel-
MURDERS, RAPE, CHILD
SOUTH AFRICA
ing around housing delivery, upgrading,
RAPE AND ROBBERY. and residents’ rights to secure a place in
the city to live. Informality, upgrading
and violence are certainly linked, what is
trends we (as researchers) can really see or less obvious is how and what can be done
learn. As we know with wider research on about it.
domestic violence in relation to other hid-
den living environments (suburbs as the
classic example), formal housing means
domestic violence can potentially be per-
petrated more discreetly through better
built form, increased privacy, and less
sound travelling. Residents confirmed this
possibility: ‘it is changed because at mjon-
dolo [shacks] people were crowded and
146 147

CAN URBAN AGRICULTURE SYSTEMS
TRANSFORM THE LIVES OF
PEOPLE IN INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS?
THE AWARD-WINNING ABALIMI IS
HELPING TOWNSHIP RESIDENTS
INITIATE AND MAINTAIN ORGANIC FOOD
GROWING AND NATURE
CONSERVATION PROJECTS WITH
LONG-TERM SOCIAL AND
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS.
By    Ben Mansfield
A balimi – ‘the planters’ in Xhosa – is
at the forefront of a growing interna-
tional movement enabling informal settle-
ment residents to engage in meaningful
food production, making a significant con-
tribution to the fight against food insecu-
rity. The organization’s focus is on improv-
ing sustainable food production through
the development of ‘micro-farms’, which
take the form of individual and commu-
nity gardens within the Cape Town town-
ships of Nyanga, Philippi and Khayelitsha,
as well as surrounding settlements. The
townships are located in the Cape Flats, an
expansive sand dune area situated to the
southeast of the central business district.
Currently, over 4,000 micro-farmers and
their families are registered, in addition to
over 200 community projects.
Like many informal settlements, Cape
Town’s townships are composed of areas of
densely packed shacks and more substan-
tial homes adjacent to open land where
construction is prohibited due to land own-
ership issues or physical impediments. The
demand for space means increasing num-
bers of people are building shacks within
the flood plain, with the inevitable conse-
quence of regular flooding of their homes.
Abalimi has negotiated access to numerous
neglected spaces for township residents to
practice urban agriculture, including areas
of land where construction is prohibited
(often sandy scrubland), land around pub-
lic buildings, along roads and under power
lines. Taken together, these areas of cultiva-
tion generate a fertile landscape that raises
the quality of the overall environment in
aesthetic and ecological terms, while – cru-
cially – helping to also realize the produc-
tive potential of participants.
Well organized urban agriculture sys-
tems are providing bottom-up solutions
to some of the key challenges facing in-
formal settlements. Namely, decreasing
food security, increasing unemployment
and associated social problems. Food
security means that safe and nutritious
food is available consistently and reason-
ably priced. A recent study undertaken to
assess the level of food security in Cape
Town’s townships found that 80 percent
of households are either moderately
or severely food insecure – a figure ris-
ing as high as 89 percent in Khayelitsha,
South Africa’s largest and fastest growing
township. The dual phenomena of rap-
idly growing populations, combined with
increasing disruptions to food produc-
tion due to climate change, demands in-
creased energy and resources. This is also
the conclusion of a December 2013 report
by the UN Commission on Trade and De-
velopment (UNCTAD), which highlighted
the need to address food security in infor-
mal settlements worldwide by developing
methods of small-scale urban agriculture
in line with Abalimi’s approach.
The global urban agriculture movement
has a long history – three decades in the
case of Abalimi – of devising systems to
enable informal settlement residents,
through their own endeavors, to achieve
food security and even generate mean-
ingful income. Participants in the Aba-
limi system embark on a step-by-step
journey, where skills and knowledge ac-
cumulate as an individual moves through
the ‘Farmer Development Chain’ – from
survival, to a semi-commercial stage and
then potentially a fully commercial stage.
The semicommercial stage is achieved
149
when a micro-farmer has guaranteed
food security and produced a surplus to
sell within their own township, as well
as externally to residents throughout the
rest of the city. While the semi-commer-
cial stage is relatively straightforward to
reach, becoming fully commercial is a
significantly harder step and does not ap-
peal to all participants. Having reached
the semi-commercial stage, people will
have acquired the transferable skills and
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increased confidence to enter the formal
employment market.
Moving through the Farmer Develop-
ment Chain requires serious commit-
ment. Financing is available through
funding sourced by Abalimi. Crucial to
the system’s success is the effectiveness
of communications strategies target-
ing township residents, which focus on
the benefits of participating and what is
required to succeed. The main vehicles
used are two non-profit education and
support sites called ‘People’s Garden
Centers’, located in Nyanga and Khayelit-
sha. In addition mobile educators teach
groups within their communities. The
centers supply free advice, information
and subsidized agricultural inputs such
as soil improvers, seeds, ground covers,
basic tools, wind breaks, safe pest control
solutions, trees and – in the future – ac-
cess to micro-finance. The majority of the
people progressing through the program
are women, who represent whole families
and are typically the most open to self-
help initiatives. Encouragingly, however,
the participation of men and youth has
expanded in recent times, as the benefits
become apparent.
One of Abalimi’s key innovations is the de-
velopment of the ‘Harvest of Hope’, a pros-
pering social marketing business that col-
lects, packs and delivers surplus organic
vegetables to families living in the formal
areas of Cape Town. It is effectively an eco-
nomic bridge between the informal and
formal sectors, serviced by micro-farmers
at the semi-commercial stage of the Farm-
er Development Chain. Participating in the
Harvest of Hope provides regular income
SOUTH AFRICA
by providing a contract to grow seasonal
organic produce at guaranteed prices. The
knowledge that buyers’ money is creating
jobs and contributing to the improvement
of the physical environment adds value to
the product. Around 100 previously unem-
ployed micro-farmers are currently con-
tracted. In the medium term, the number
is set to increase to 300, while longer-term
potential exists for thousands of micro-
farmers to supply Cape Town’s demand
for vegetables and grains. This innovative
economic connection between informal
and formal markets can be replicated in
other settlements with similar conditions.
 Masikhanye, Khayelitsha township, before implementation of urban agriculture projects
SOUTH AFRICA
Multiple benefits also flow through to
the overall settlement community as a re-
sult of the adoption of urban agriculture
projects, including increased interaction
between residents, improved coopera-
tion, the horizontal transfer of skills and
knowledge and greater social cohesion
within and between townships. At the
same time, potential remains to impact
the townships on a much larger scale. In
order for this to occur, enhanced coopera-
tion between existing stakeholders and
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new partnerships are needed to increase
available resources to fund micro-finance
from mid-livelihood level, when micro-
farmers are able to budget based on pre-
dictable income streams. As can be seen
worldwide, interest and participation in
social investment is growing rapidly. Aba-
limi represents a proven model for invest-
ment and expansion.
Cape Town has significant potential to
develop the scale and sophistication of
Masikhanye, Khayelitsha township, after implementation of urban agriculture projects
150
its urban agriculture sector, which will
ultimately benefit the entire city. There MY COMIC HOUSES AND
are numerous examples of other cities
around the world that have embraced ur- PEOPLE, MY DONGAS AND MY
ban agriculture successfully. Singapore,
for instance, is fully self-reliant in meat EVER WHIRLING DUST,
and produces 25 percent of its vegetable
needs. Similarly, Bamako, Mali, is self- MY DEATH
sufficient in vegetables and produces
half or more of the chickens it consumes. THAT'S SO RELATED TO ME AS
Dar-es-Salaam, one of the world’s fastest
SLUM LAB
growing large cities, now has 67 percent A WINK TO THE EYE.
of families engaged in farming compared
with 18 percent in 1967. Even on the edge JO’BURG CITY.
of Europe, 65 percent of Moscow families
are involved in food production compared
with 20 percent in 1970. Wally Serote
Poet
The necessity of embracing small-scale
agriculture in urban areas to mitigate
growing food insecurity is clear. The chal-
lenge lies in devising successful methods
to communicate the work of Abalimi and
likeminded organizations and experts to
residents of informal settlements world-
wide, positioning the development of
urban agriculture as a fundamental ele-
ment of the evolving urban fabric. Future
expansion of urban agriculture in sites
with similar conditions to Nyanga, Philip-
pi, Khayelitsha and their surrounding
settlements can be achieved by applying
a context-sensitive version of the Abalimi
model, bolstered by the crucial support of
residents, non-profit actors, government
and business networks.
SOUTH AFRICA
151
N ew urban movements1 use cities as
anchors for their issue-based trans-
national struggles2. Their motivation for
transnational activities, however, varies.
Most transnational social movements use
global platforms for raising awareness
of their issues. Although we can observe
an increase in transnational civil society
activities, this phenomenon is not new3.
Rather, a relatively new phenomenon is to
use transnational activities foremost as a
form of internal mobilization, peer learn-
ing and partnership building. Because of
their seemingly apolitical nature, these
kinds of transnational social movements
are often referred to as ‘pragmatic’.
We are investigating this phenomenon in
the realm of housing movements, repre-
sented by federations aligned to ‘Shack/
Slum Dwellers International’ (SDI) and
the ‘Asian Coalition for Housing Rights’
(ACHR) (using case studies from South Af-
rica and the Philippines) 4. SDI and ACHR
seek to transform power relationships
between the grassroots and the state,
and to influence policy through a diverse
set of practices – namely, mapping and
self-enumeration of settlements, orga-
nizing through savings groups, setting
precedents through self-directed projects,
learning through horizontal exchanges
and building partnerships with the state.
These practices are considered to result in
a transformed housing process, with the
aim both an internal effect – in terms of
strengthening assertiveness of federations
and learning processes within the (trans-
national) network – as well as an external
effect in terms of strengthening the nego-
tiating power of grassroots organizations
vis-à-vis the state and other stakeholders
through enhanced capacities, legitimacy
and resourcefulness. SDI’s recognition
and strong position in numerous interna-
tional agencies indicates a leverage effect
in local decision-making processes.
Civil Society Actors
Engaged In Housing
Policy Contexts
In contrast to perceptions of a ‘poor’ hous-
ing situation throughout the developing
world, conditions vary largely in terms of
policy context, housing backlog, delivery
capacity by the state and the legal status
of informal settlements residents. The
countries used as case studies here share
a relatively progressive housing policy set-
ting at the national level, which takes up
issues such as disaster relief, differenti-
ated tenure forms, new forms of financ-
ing and infrastructure upgrading. Often
these housing policies have been pushed
THE EMERGENCE OF INTERNATIONALLY
NETWORKED GRASSROOTS HOUSING
ORGANIZATIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA
AND ELSEWHERE, BACKED BY GLOBAL
ALLIES, HAS LED TO A NEW CULTURE
OF NEGOTIATION
AT THE LOCAL LEVEL.
By Astrid Ley, Josefine Fokdal
and Peter Herrle
and influenced by international agencies
and the international donor community,
which try to mainstream approaches more
sensitive to the livelihood situation of ur-
ban poor households. Similarly shared is a
difficulty to ‘translate’ policies into action
on the ground, where vested interests and
a lack of political will and/or capacities
collide. Shelter provision often remains a
state-driven, product-oriented and largely
under-resourced endeavor, which hardly
responds to needs. Alternatively, it drives
the most vulnerable urban population
groups from their strategic location in
the city. They are deprived of their social
and economic networks for the sake of a
‘slum-free’ city vision embraced by local
decision-makers.
Against this background, it is the urban
poor themselves who have developed
skills and knowledge to create livelihood
opportunities and produce housing ar-
rangements adapted to their specific
needs. This has led to a shift of housing
policies in many countries, from produc-
tion towards ‘enabling’ and facilitating
such processes, which eventually led to the
emergence of new forms of civil society ac-
tors in urban development 5. Social move-
ments engaged with housing are diverse,
and reflect regional differences within
civil societies as well as diverse political
environments. In general, there is a trend
towards local-global activism in both case
studies – movements such as ‘Abahlali
baseMjondolo’ (AbM) and the ‘Federation
of the Urban Poor’ in South Africa, as well
as the ‘Homeless People’s Federation Phil-
ippines Incorporated’, the ‘Urban Poor
Alliance’, the ‘Urban Land Reform Move-
ment’ and the ‘Urban Poor Association’ in
the Philippines. Often these movements
are differentiated as (‘ideological’) rights-
based movements on the one hand, and
‘pragmatic’ movements on the other.
153
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For rights-based movements, the state is
seen as a resourceful entity, which needs
to be made responsive to its citizen vis-à-
vis powerful neoliberal interests. Robins,
in his account of grassroots globalization
in South Africa, paints a more complex
picture. Firstly, the state is not a coherent
entity but rather a ‘hybrid cocktail’ with
competing neoliberal and developmen-
tal ideas6. Secondly, movements mobiliz-
ing for their rights can only be success-
ful against a responsive and resourceful
state. This does not match the reality of
many developing countries. In such situa-
tions, movements might rely more on net-
works and deploy multiple strategies. For
instance, AbM primarily lobbies in South
Africa for the right to housing and opposes
eviction and relocation of its members. At
the same time, it might cooperate with
local government around community
improvements. A clear line between the
two approaches cannot be drawn. When
it comes to methods applied, all social
movements use a mixed toolbox in order
to build relationships. It is the primary
ideological ground that differs.
In contrast, both SDI and ACHR represent
‘pragmatic’ movements. The SDI network
is based on the shared experience of liv-
SOUTH AFRICA
ing conditions of its members in 34 coun-
tries around the world. The national alli-
ances consist of a federation (composed
of savings groups) and a supporting NGO.
ACHR plays an outstanding role mainly as
a regional network of NGOs and citizen-
based organizations active within the
housing field in Asia. The relationship
between the federations and their sup-
porting NGO(s) is issue-based. Neverthe-
less, these transnational networks need
to be anchored in a locality (place-based)
in order to pursue shared issues and build
solidarity among their members (savings
groups).
 Scaling Up
Relationship Building
SDI applies a set of strategies for relation-
ship building on multiple levels (city, re-
gion, nation and transnational) within the
movement, as well as towards external ac-
tors. The organization not only combines
SOUTH AFRICA
spatial proximity with global connectivity,
but an important aspect for relationship
building is the underlying understanding
that no clear boundaries exist between civ-
il society and the state. This strategy leads
to a quality leap in the relationship build-
ing process. A diverse set of practices form
the cornerstone for both internal mobili-
zation as well as desired transformation
of relationships with the state and other
external actors, including self-enumera-
tion of settlements, organizing through
savings groups and learning through hori-
zontal exchanges7.
SLUM LAB
Self-enumeration and mapping of settle-
ments are used as tools to mobilize com-
munities and develop capacity. The enu-
meration practice is meant to scale up to a
joint initiative between grassroots organi-
zations and local governments, bringing
together different datasets. Another im-
portant component of organizing the ur-
ban poor is based on the establishment of
savings groups (often referred to as ‘collect-
ing people by collecting money’). Savings
groups consist of a number of households,
which save on a regular basis both in terms
of needs and towards a common national
member urban poor fund. These funds
receive further capital through an ‘Urban
Poor Fund International’ (UPFI), which
is governed by SDI and used as a facility
channeling financial resources from in-
ternational agencies and donors through
to local saving schemes. The federations
thereby gain direct control of finances and
projects. Moreover, this mobilization tool
is meant to scale up and be used as a lever-
age tool combined with external sources.
Horizontal exchange between federa-
tions of savings groups within one coun-
try and also across borders (translocal)
is one of the most powerful tools applied
by transnational networks of urban poor.
Internally, exchanges amongst federa-
tions serve as an eye-opener and support
the federations in the belief that change is
possible. Exchanges also include govern-
ment officials in order to build relation-
ships between grassroots movements and
A resident cycling through Soweto
local governments, as well as at other lev-
els (city-to-city, province-to-province and
nation-to-nation).
These methods teach communities how
to become involved and intervene in
political affairs, a collaborative way of
engaging with the state8. This decentral-
izing of decision-making and building of
organizational capital has been termed
‘deep democracy’. In several cases, the ap-
proach has led to bilateral relationships
such as formal partnerships based on
154
Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs)
between transnational networks and the
state. For instance, between SDI South
Africa and the National Department of
Human Settlements. Multilateral rela-
tionships also exist between movements
and external actors, which take shape in
roundtable discussions or through invit-
ed board memberships. SDI has become
part of various international bodies such
as the Slum Task Force of the Millennium
Development Goals, the advisory board of
UN-HABITAT’s Slum Upgrading Facility,
Cities Alliance‘s Governing Body and UN-
HABITAT’s Advisory Group Against Forced
Evictions 9. Though still in their infancy,
multilateral relationships have also been
initiated by the movements themselves,
such as in the case of inviting housing
ministers and international experts to be-
come board members of the UPFI.
State actors appear more willing to in-
teract when they see strong support for
the networks from international donors.
SDI has successfully engaged a range of
donors, such as Homeless International,
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Founda-
tion, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation,
Misereor, Cordaid and the Swedish Inter-
national Development Cooperation Agen-
cy 10. All these practices seek to transform
relationships between grassroots and ex-
ternal actors, aiming at a systematic trans-
formation of the housing process (project
and policy) at a city and national level.
From Target Group To
Negotiation Party
‘Pragmatic’ movements regard them-
selves as apolitical in nature. In reality,
they are inherently political as they relate
to the governmental sphere and housing –
a strong political issue. Their practices re-
sult in a transformed housing process with
two aims: (1) an internal effect in terms of
strengthening federations and learning
for political organization within the net-
work; and (2) an external effect in terms
of demonstrating the capacity, legitimacy
and resourcefulness of the grassroots level
as a negotiation basis for the state and oth-
er stakeholders. Both bilateral and multi-
lateral relationships between ‘pragmatic’
movements and the state open up new
spaces of governance, in which roles are
often shifted, or where negotiations take
place on an international stage in order to
achieve impacts at the local scale. A new
system of transforming power positions
and the assertiveness of the urban poor is
emerging. But what does this system look
like?
In general, there is evidence of impact on
three levels:
➀ Local level: transnational networks of
grassroots movements, together with
their allies (NGOs) and development
organizations can exert pressure on
local governments. Namely, through
the strong legitimacy conveyed by
their capacity to mobilize large num-
bers of people and their membership
in a broader transnational movement.
Through local dialogue, they can shift
policies from demolition to upgrading
and from illegal to more secure ten-
ure. Projects are used strategically to
showcase alternatives. For instance, to
change national standards in relation to
plot size and layout. Furthermore, they
introduce citywide approaches entail-
ing new instruments, such as joint fi-
nance facilities. In South Africa, the
Community Upgrading Finance Facility
is seen as a first step to initialize a City
Development Fund.
Similarly, board membership and
roundtables create new governance
spaces at the local level throughout
the housing process. Influence is also
exerted as a result of local government
commitments contained in MoUs, as
well as by inviting local officials and
politicians along to exchanges and
meetings abroad to learn about federa-
tion practices and see how other offi-
cials and politicians work together with
‘pragmatic’ movements.
➁ National level: backed by their interna-
tional partners, national federations can
gain access to policy-making circles on
housing issues. Sometimes this mate-
rializes in the form of officially signed
agreements. More often, decision-
makers are invited on exchange visits
to other federations abroad, where they
are also connected to peers (such as
ministers) to feel encouraged to co-
operate more readily with federation
activities. To what extent this influence
manifests in programs and funds is de-
termined largely by the national political
environment. Generally, a greater ac-
ceptance of new approaches within the
housing process can be detected.
➂ International level: through transnation-
al exchanges, shared mechanisms and
applied tools of mobilization, a sense
of solidarity among the urban poor is
being created that can hardly be over-
looked by international organizations
such as the World Bank, UN-HABITAT
and key regional players. In addition,
the self-representation of transnational
grassroots organizations through their
charismatic leaders and officials injects
new ideas into international academic
and policy circles.
Finally, influence on policy-making can
be identified in two ways. Firstly, limited
direct impact at a national policy level,
but greater acceptance of alternative ap-
proaches. And secondly, a transformed
power position towards local govern-
ments at the city level, achieved through
new strategies of resource pooling and by
demonstrating the capacity and collective
influence of the constituency through the
transnational scope of networking. This
transforming position and assertiveness
is best captured by the shift ‘from target
group to negotiating party’ 11.
Looking To
The Future
The extent to which the potential political
impact of – seemingly apolitical – ‘prag-
matic’ social movements is realized is
highly dependent on the political, social
and cultural environment of a particular
country. In addition, the development
of the transnational networks presented
in this article initially focused on the
construction of issue-based alliances, in
contrast to later place-based, community
driven approaches. At a certain stage of
maturity (of the federations), national alli-
ances tend to add a place-based aspect to
their transnational activities through city-
wide projects and programs, and extend
beyond the classical issues of housing (for
example, sanitation, infrastructure and
shelter) into other fields such as income
generation and health. Transnational
‘pragmatic’ movements within the hous-
ing field constantly modify their strategies
in order to achieve an empowering effect
internally and a quality leap externally, by
generating new spaces of governance and
influencing decision-makers at different
levels (projects and policies).
Currently, the networks and activities
described are in constant flux and under-
going rapid changes. We expect regional
diversification to continue, though at the
same time transnational alliances and
contacts with key players will become even
more important in the future for access-
ing funds. While this trend may lead to in-
creased tensions within and between net-
works and other actors, it is also clear that
without the direct inclusion of the urban
poor into housing processes and the pro-
gramming of urban development, city ad-
ministrations and national governments
will fall short of resolving the most press-
ing development needs. This will change
155
the role of impoverished urban communi-
ties from one centered on participation
to cooperation with other stakeholders in
shaping future cities. Transnational social
movements already are – and will contin-
ue to be – one of the major catalysts of this
new and challenging function.
SLUM LAB
1 We use the following definition for social move-
ments: ‘social movements are… politically and/
or socially directed collectives, often involving
multiple organizations and networks, focused
on changing one or more elements of the
social, political and economic system within
which they are located’: Richard Ballard, Adam
Habib, Imraan Valodia and Elke Zuern, ‘Intro-
duction: From Anti-Apartheid to Post-Apartheid
Social Movements’ in Richard Ballard et al
(eds), Voices of Protest (2006) 3.
2 Saskia Sassen, ’Local Actors in Global Politics’
(2004) 52 Current Sociology 649.
3 Dieter Rucht, ’Zivilgesellschaftliche Akteure
und transnationale Politik’ in Arnd Bauerkäm-
per (ed), Die Praxis der Zivilgesellschaft.
Akteure, Handeln und Strukturen im internatio-
nalen Vergleich (2003).
4 An extended version of this article was pre-
sented at the RC21 conference ‘Resourceful
Cities’ in Berlin on 31 August 2013. Available at
http://www.rc21.org/conferences/berlin2013/
RC21-Berlin-Papers-2/26-fokdal_herrle_ley.pdf
5 Peter Herrle, Josefine Fokdal and Astrid Ley,
’New Urban Players in Africa and Asia: The Role
of Grassroots Organizations’ in Harald Mieg
and Klaus Töpfer (eds), Institutional and Social
Innovation for Sustainable Urban Development
(2013).
6 Steven Robins, From Revolution to Rights in
South Africa: Social Movements, NGOs and
Popular Politics After Apartheid (2008) 4.
7 In addition to the official relationship-building
process, rather informal relationships play also
an important role, especially personal relation-
ships among strong local leaders spearhead-
ing translocal activities or key persons from
the supporting NGOs representing the national
alliances at international events. The authors
SOUTH AFRICA
are aware of the relevance of these personal
networks, but focus in the following on the col-
lective and more visible part of the networking
process.
8 Colin McFarlane, Learning the City: Knowledge
and Translocal Assemblage (2011) 62.
9 Marie Huchzermeyer, Cities With ’Slums’: From
Informal Settlement Eradication to a Right to
the City in Africa (2011).
10 Beate Ginzel, Transnational Networks of
Grassroots Organizations: Mode of Action and
Cooperation and Network Effects for the Urban
Development in Marginalized Settlements
(2012) 182.
11 Title of presentation by Somsook Boonyaban-
cha, Secretary-General of the Asian Coalition
for Housing Rights (ACHR), at Asia-Pacific
Weeks Berlin 2013: Cities in Transformation –
Pioneers for Sustainable Development, (10 June
2013).

SINCE THE DEMISE OF APARTHEID,
RELOCATION HAS BEEN
CHARACTERIZED AS A TOOL OF
RESIDENTIAL IMPROVEMENT, RATHER
THAN RACIAL SEPARATION. YET THIS
IGNORES THE WAY ‘BENEFICIARIES’
UNDERSTAND THE SYSTEM AS A FORM
OF DISPOSSESSION AND
FORCED PERIPHERALIZATION.
By    Zachary Levenson
T ypically, contemporary dispossession
is theorized as tied to neoliberalism,
or at the very least a crisis of profitability 1.
Neoliberal dispossession is framed in op-
position to delivery models of the welfare
state. What this construction overlooks,
however, is the extent to which disposses-
sion is actually tied to delivery. In the case
of South Africa, for example, progressive
housing rights are enshrined in the post-
apartheid Constitution, and a series of
Constitutional Court rulings since 2000
have upheld the requirement that munici-
palities provide ‘alternative accommoda-
tion’ in cases of eviction. And yet the way
‘alternative accommodation’ has func-
tioned in practice absolutely facilitates the
coerced peripheralization of the urban sur-
plus population, perpetuating apartheid-
era geographies of socio-spatial relegation.
This concept – alternative accommoda-
tion – encapsulates perfectly the limits of
the seemingly progressive model, which
as implemented is largely despised by the
relocated. The concept has been interpret-
ed in such a way as to justify relocation to
so-called ‘temporary relocation areas’
(TRAs) in accordance with the National
Department of Human Settlements’
Emergency Housing Program. TRAs are
primarily located in far-flung locations on
the urban fringe, often more than 30 kilo-
meters from the central business district,
and sometimes substantially farther. In
Cape Town, the municipal government
operates at least four TRAs, with another
four or five run by the province in the case
of removals tied to flagship development
projects.
Of these, none have been phased out in
line with their stated intention. Rather,
these settlements embody what Weiz-
man describes in a very different context
as ‘permanent temporariness’2. Happy
Valley TRA has now existed for well over a
dozen years, and Blikkiesdorp and Langa
TRAs are approaching their seventh an-
niversaries. While these state-constructed
refugee camps are publicly represented
as ‘transitional’ and for ‘emergency’ situ-
ations, there is an unspoken consensus
among city officials that there is nothing
temporary about them.
In 2012, I spoke with Johan Gerber, head
of Engineering Services for the City of
Cape Town’s Department of Human Set-
tlements. He told me the city is trying to
get away from the term ‘TRA’, moving in-
stead toward ‘incremental development
areas’. While these developments will still
be constructed in accordance with the
Emergency Housing Program guidelines –
qualifying as alternative accommodation
– they will clearly be formalized. Gerber
used the phrase ‘formal township’ to de-
scribe the end goal. Plans are currently
underway, he reported, to create a TRA
for Happy Valley TRA – a TRA for a TRA! –
turning the original camp into a low-cost
housing project.
The city’s most notorious TRA, however, is
called Blikkiedorp – Afrikaans for ‘tin can
town’. The name derives from its rows of
blikkies, or planned shacks constructed
of thin sheets of corrugated zinc and tin.
The first round of residents was moved to
the camp in 2007 after a January 2005 fire
razed thousands of homes in the Joe Slovo
informal settlement and left an estimated
12,000 homeless. Joe Slovo is located in
Langa, a primarily black township just over
10 kilometers from the central business
district. Some displaced residents were
housed in Langa TRA, adjacent to their
157
original homes, but this camp remained
miniscule in comparison to Blikkiesdorp.
The bulk of new housing developments in
Joe Slovo were intended for so-called ‘gap
housing’ projects, geared towards those
who earn too much to qualify for free
housing delivery, but too little to secure a
mortgage. In practice, this meant the city
was attempting to move largely employed
residents into Langa, ejecting thousands
of its un(der)employed residents to the pe-
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riphery (an additional 20 kilometers from
town). Gerber’s corroboration of the city’s
plan to formalize TRAs such as Happy Val-
ley and Blikkiesdorp only confirms this
trend: the peripheralization of South Af-
rica’s urban surplus population.
Under apartheid, the indiscriminate dis-
possession of black and Colored residents
in the city center was followed by forced
relocation to newly created townships on
the periphery. The stated rationale was
never disguised, always couched in terms
of racial separation. But since the demise
of apartheid, relocation has assumed the
novel guise of munificence, part and par-
cel of a benevolent delivery regime that
purports to serve as steward of the popula-
tion’s best interests.
Residents from around Cape Town were
subsequently relocated to Blikkiesdorp.
Some came from relatively near, includ-
ing Belhar and Tafelsig; others from far-
ther away, including areas of Salt River
and Woodstock, adjacent to the city cen-
ter. An unintended consequence of these
haphazard and piecemeal removals was
to place fractions of rival prison gangs in
extremely close quarters. The broader area
around Blikkiesdorp (Delft South) already
had one of the highest absolute numbers
of murders of any precinct in the country,
and the reconfiguration of pre-existing
gang patterns led to the camp quickly
gaining a reputation among Cape Flats
residents as a site of terror.
This feeling was only exacerbated by the
changing function of Blikkiesdorp since
its establishment in 2007. Whereas it was
initially created as temporary housing for
SOUTH AFRICA
the displaced residents of a massive shack
fire, since roughly the 2010 World Cup it
has become the de facto dumping ground
for nearly anyone facing removal in the
municipality. From squatters in Mitchell’s
Plain and Philippi to allegedly gang-affili-
ated building occupiers in Woodstock and
Salt River, ‘Blikkiesdorp’ has become less
of a specific solution and more of a gener-
alized threat.
The narrative of this TRA as a place of fear,
however, plays little part in the prevailing
perception among officials that the provi-
sion of temporary housing constitutes an
 act of sheer benevolence. In multiple in-
terviews with officials in Cape Town’s De-
partment of Human Settlements, pre-re-
location sites were described as spaces of
destitution and crime, with Blikkiesdorp
represented romantically as a commu-
nity of homes built and distributed free
of charge. Officials frequently expressed
bewilderment that residents would not
SOUTH AFRICA
simply accept these handouts, failing to
comprehend the deeply entrenched aver-
sion to the camp. Fear aside, relocation
to Blikkiesdorp typically meant leaving
one’s longstanding community, including
employment opportunities, and adding
substantial time (and therefore transport
cost) to the commute to work in the cen-
tral business district.
Occasionally officials would acknowledge
that fear was a substantial factor, even
if they professed not to understand this
reaction. Stephen Hayward, head of the
city’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit, told me
about one group of squatters that he tried
to move to Blikkiesdorp in 2013:
In Kapteinsklip, we didn’t have to be-
cause the court said we didn’t have to
provide alternative accommodation.
But we dealt with the Legal Resources
Centre, and they said, ‘have pity on the
people’. So we negotiated, and we even-
tually found space for them at Blikkies-
dorp. None of them accepted it. Two
families accepted, [and] we actually
went to pick them up, [and] took them
to Blikkiesdorp to show them what it
looks like. And this is their contention.
When they got there, the people said,
‘we’re waiting for you to come. We’re
going to rape and kill you’. That’s what
they say. So they are all too scared to go
there. That’s what they tell us.
By chance, I had previously conducted an
interview with a married couple who were
squatting in an open field at Kapteinsklip
at the time. They were among the group
the Anti-Land Invasion Unit transported
to Blikkiesdorp. The husband, an ex-gang-
ster himself and lifelong resident of some
of the poorer areas of Mitchell’s Plain –
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South Africa’s largest Colored township –
told me:
They explained to us how okay Blik-
kiesdorp is, and when we got there, the
gangsters that was standing there was
saying, “if you gonna come live here,
we gonna kill you. We gonna rape your
women”. And then the cops didn’t want
to get out of the van. But they want us
to live there! And then we spoke to the
guy, the main guy there that works for
the city, that sees to the maintenance
and all that. We asked him where’s
the school. And he kept on saying, the
school is here, there’s the school. And
we keep asking, where’s the school, and
he keeps on showing us, the school is
right here. I can’t see the school. And
he said, no, it’s down that road and
down that road, and I told him, that’s
THE NARRATIVE OF
THIS ‘TRA’ AS A PLACE
OF FEAR, HOWEVER,
PLAYS LITTLE PART IN
THE PREVAILING
PERCEPTION AMONG
OFFICIALS THAT
THE PROVISION OF
TEMPORARY HOUSING
CONSTITUTES AN ACT
OF SHEER
BENEVOLENCE.
not what you said in Mitchell’s Plain.
You said the school is right there, and
it’s not right there! That’s why we can’t
move here. And some lady comes there
and says, they just cut through her hok-
kie with a scissor and stole her DVD.
And then we told that guy, while we
here now for ten minutes, all of this is
happening. How do you want –
His wife interjected: ‘and there was a
fight!’ He continued:
People were stabbing each other, and
we said, how can we come live here?
Is this what is happening here? … And
these people in Blikkiesdorp knew that
this was people from Mitchell’s Plain.
And they were asking, are you from
Mitchell’s Plain? You’re gonna see kak
when you come here, and all these kind
of threats. And we said we can’t, we
don’t want – and since that day we de-
cided no Blikkiesdorp.
There is a substantial disjuncture then
between local housing officials’ own per-
ception of their role in orchestrating the
state’s service delivery functions – oversee-
ing a benevolent welfarist regime – and
residents’ understanding of relocation
as a form of dispossession and forced
peripheralization. Rather than engage
meaningfully with these concerns, the
typical response of housing officials has
been to revert to moral critique, dismiss-
158
ing potential ‘recipients’ as undeserving
in the first place. Multiple officials with THE PROCESSES OF
whom I spoke insisted these residents
were ‘queue jumpers’ anyway, suggesting ENGAGEMENT MAP
they did not follow proper protocol for reg-
istering with the housing waiting list ad-
ministered by each province, and above all
that many had homes elsewhere and were
trying to scam the state. [in]formalStudio: Marlboro South
I was taken aback by how frequently the
SLUM LAB
apartheid era trope of residents as ‘mi-
grants’ resurfaced. Under apartheid, each At a time when thinking about housing in South Africa is shifting towards upgrading, versus the eradi-
black ethno-linguistic group was assigned cation of informal settlements, the need for suitably experienced professionals, community planners
to a state-created ‘homeland’, and 3.5 mil-
and officials who can engage in a process of participative planning is increasingly urgent. Although
lion South Africans were forcibly removed
to these bantustans 3. From Cape Town, the approaches of ‘Participative Action Research’ and ‘Action Planning’ have been on the agenda of
the Xhosa population was largely uproot- universities and professional bodies for some time, the immense complexity and contradictions re-
ed and dumped in ‘homelands’ in the vealed through real world engagements across social and economic divides significantly challenges
Eastern Cape, more than 1,000 kilometers
away. When officials refer to Xhosa Ca-
their objectives. The dominant realities of cities, especially in the global South, require academic and
petonians as ‘visitors’ or ‘migrants’ then, professional institutions to engage with this set of challenges, not least in the transformation of the
they are suggesting these citizens’ ‘true’ institutions themselves.
home is in the former Transkei or Ciskei.
The implication being they have no place
in Cape Town, even if they resided there
prior to their own families’ forced remov- The following map is a record of INFORMAL STUDIO: MARLBORO SOUTH, a course on in situ upgrad-
als. If their families have homes in the ing developed at the University of Johannesburg in 2012. Fifty-one architecture students worked with
Eastern Cape, they should not be entitled ‘community planners’ living in informally settled warehouses and open plots of Marlboro South, a
to state-provisioned or subsidized hous-
ing in Cape Town.
former industrial buffer strip between the township of Alexandra and its wealthier surroundings. The
map is a timeline illustrating what happened before, during and after the course. It represents impor-
It is incredible how quickly administrative tant events and contextual information as a record of the studio process in relation to key political and
benevolence gives way to caustic moral legal events. As a time-line, the map distends along the duration of the course showing various groups
critique, whether of alleged queue jump-
ers failing to wait their turn, or of greedy
of role players and the sizable number of individuals and groups who played a part. Three main narra-
opportunists living in shacks solely for tives are represented: the community, the site, and the studio. Collectively, these three narratives make
the potential windfall of accumulating visible certain multiple realities of Marlboro South. Whilst it may caution against over-estimation of
multiple state-provisioned formal houses. the role design may play in the face of structural faults embedded in the physical and socio-political
We might understand this oscillation as
an instance of what Bourdieu once called
landscape, it also expresses the belief that new discourses and practical work methodologies can be
the left and right hands of the state, ex- developed by engaging with this complexity.
cept here the two work in tandem 4. Rather
than housing delivery counteracting dis-
possession – whether through provision
of formal houses, upgrading of informal
settlements, or in this case, relocation to
TRAs – residents all too frequently experi-
ence the state’s delivery arm precisely as
dispossession. This requires a complete
rethinking of the opposition welfare state/
neoliberal regime, with the assumption
that dispossession maps onto the latter,
SOUTH AFRICA
and state-driven delivery can serve as the
antidote. Instead of the apartheid era in-
discriminate removals described above,
we now see piecemeal dis- and re-assem-
bling of surplus populations, relegated to
TRAs and other forms of socio-spatial con-
tainment on the periphery.
1 Most notably in David Harvey, The New Imperi-
alism (2003).
2
Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architec-
ture of Occupation (2007) 103-105.
3 Lauren Platsky and Cheryl Walker, The Surplus The course was developed by 26’10 south Architects in have founded the [in]formalStudio – a non-profit company
People: Forced Removals in South Africa partnership with the Goethe-Institut. The map was com- focusing on training, knowledge management and practice in
(1985).
4 See Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: missioned by 26’10 south Architects for an exhibition on the the field of informal urbanism.
Against the Tyranny of the Market (1999). course and produced by BOOM Architects. Both practices
159
 SOUTH AFRICA
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160
161

SOUTH AFRICA
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I
nPar
tner
shi
pwi
thSwi
sspear
landI
khayal
ami
 164
On Sheffield Road
EMPOWER SHACK
The genesis of the Empower Shack project can be traced to
March 2012, when we were invited to South Africa to partici-
pate in the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town. Capital-
izing on the parallel opportunity to document and learn from
manifestations of urban informality in a sub-Saharan African
context, we spent several days meeting residents and com-
munity leaders in nearby Philippi township with Andy Bolnick,
founder of local NGO Ikhayalami. Our focus at that point was
on the work already underway implementing the organiza-
tion’s ‘blocking out’ scheme – a community driven settlement
upgrading strategy involving the rationalized reconfiguration
SLUM LAB
The two story shack on Sheffield Road that inspired our investigation
of informal spatial layouts, combined with in situ shack up-
grades. Intending to explore the impact and potential of this
approach, we inadvertently encountered a self-built shack
structure on Sheffield Road that completely shifted the direc-
tion of our site visit. Ultimately, it kick started the investiga-
tion and design process presented in the following pages.
What captured our attention that afternoon – and the image
that lingered in our minds in the months that followed – was
a lone two-story shack puncturing the repetitive low-rise
streetscape of the township. Speaking to the residents, we
Introduction
learned the second floor was the result of a simple desire
for more space. At the same time, the owners explained how
they were – reluctantly – planning to remove the extension
because they felt unsafe due to sub-par construction tech-
niques. A seed had been planted. On our return to Zürich, we
continued the dialogue we had initiated with Bolnick, cen-
tered on the idea of marrying our design experience in infor-
mal spaces with Ikhayalami’s settlement upgrading activities
to improve the quality of new, self-built shack prototypes. The
dialogue evolved into a more specific challenge inspired both
by our first-hand experience on Sheffield Road, and our belief
in the need to increase the urban density of South African
townships – to develop a participatory design system for a
two story, self-built dwelling that also furthers the aims of the
blocking out system. To go vertical.
The initiative was informed by two key beliefs. Firstly, that a
contextualized self-built design system would encourage
active participation in the upgrading process and nurture
agency and capacity building. On a community scale, such
a system, if arranged in clusters around shared space and
infrastructure, would encourage the formation of reciprocat-
ed social contracts. Secondly, that reducing the household
footprint by reorganizing private space over two floors would
The Housing Context
Heinrich Wolff and Alfredo Brillembourg in Dunoon township in March 2012
An example of RDP housing in Cape Town
provide greater ground floor area to implement shared court-
yards, interstitial space for firebreaks and the laying of basic
infrastructure, and offer a suitable scale for public space and
circulation. The ground floor would inherit a degree of flex-
ibility for working space or an area to launch small enterprise.
At an urban scale, the potential increase in livable volume
would contribute to densification, a more efficient sharing
of infrastructure, and a strengthening of social and commu-
nity support networks due to a higher frequency of personal
interactions.
There Shall Be Houses,
Security And Comfort!
The forced removals and racial segregation of the apartheid
era ensured questions of urban design carried heavy bag-
gage in South Africa after the euphoria of 1994. House build-
ing as nation building – the eradication of poverty through
bricks and mortar development. While the government’s
record on housing in the last two decades has been laudable,
the scale of need remains far greater than the rate of delivery.
Around 1.5 million households (approximately 7.5 million
people) live in 2,700 informal settlements scattered across
the country, which faces an overall shortage of 2.5 million
houses. The aims of the new government were embodied in
the national Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP)
165
offering new, subsidized low-cost dwellings en masse. But
those facing the interminable wait for a RDP house are locked
out of the formal property market due to escalating prices,
limited access to financing, and inflexible land regulations
complicating private development in the low-income sector.
In short, while the 1955 Freedom Charter promised ‘Houses,
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Security and Comfort!’ and the post-apartheid Constitution
enshrined a ‘right of access to adequate housing’, the urban
situation in South Africa remains one defined by inequality,
tenure insecurity and an enduring socio-spatial structure
perpetuating patterns of poverty.
Apartheid era urban zoning
For the majority of poor South Africans, the only way they
can access tenure is if incorporated into the subsidized RDP
program. Even then, a significant portion will be relocated far
from the city, disconnected from public services and employ-
ment opportunities due to land affordability. The upgrading
of informal settlements has only been an official element of
state housing policy since 2004, signaling a shift towards
greater flexibility, participation and integration when it came
to the huge segment of the urban population existing on the
margins of the formal city.
Yet despite this shift, the state continues to view – and fund –
housing policy through the lens of a consolidated subsidy
prioritizing new, formal ‘turnkey’ developments planned and
EMPOWER SHACK
constructed without the involvement of local communities.
To borrow a distinction made by Bolnick, it’s an approach
consistent with the dream of ‘slum free’ rather than ‘slum
friendly’ cities. In our work in Venezuela and elsewhere, we
have consistently advocated the idea that rather than tumors
on the civic body, we should conceive of slums as potentially
vital, vibrant laboratories. Or even more simply – absent the
participation of those immediately affected, it is impossible
to understand fully the real conditions in which they live, and
their needs and aspirations.
 166 Research Phase 1 Research Phase 1 167

A SOLAR MODEL
In the months following our trip, we began some initial At present two main energy supply strategies exist – con- ment that the building system be easily demountable – con-
forays into fleshing out the ‘Empower Shack’ concept. A key necting homes to the grid and tapping into conventional tributing to the development of lasting urban qualities, but
energy sources, or supplying individual homes with low-
EMPOWER SHACK

innovation investigated was the idea of developing a proto- capacity off-grid systems. The Empower Shack imagines avoiding the assumption of permanence in a context where
type incorporating roof-mounted solar panels. Ikhayalami, a new paradigm in which informal settlements are con- many informal settlements remain illegal.
together with its community based partners, had already nected to the electricity grid, but also become an energy
source. This would set a new precedent by convincing the
begun exploring the potential of a self-contained, off-grid PV

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poor and the state that renewable energy linked to a FIT
system. These typically feature a single PV panel and battery program can be a viable and sustainable option.
with enough capacity to power a handful of small electri-
A typical shack in Khayelitsha has enough roof area (on
cal devices. The main downside is capacity – they cannot average 17.5 m2) to support more than 2 kW of PV panels
support larger uses like heating or refrigeration, nor share capable of generating 4,000 kWh of electricity in a typical
excess electricity with other consumers (avoiding wastage). year. This is almost ten times the free quota provided to
families, and significantly more than the average infor-
Our research imagined a new model in which the prototype mal dwelling uses. Surplus energy can be channeled into
could feature solar technology to both fill a service gap, as the grid and used to power other parts of the city, provid-
well as generate additional revenue for residents by feeding ing an ongoing revenue stream for residents.
surplus energy back into the city grid. After further analysis Solar energy could support the energy demands of infor-
and modeling, however – including discussions with South mal settlements – making them net energy producers –
African public utility body Eskom – it became clear that for and in turn fund shack upgrades. The shack upgrade and A melted light switch after a fire in an RDP house
PV systems would be funded by an external agency, which
any unit-based solar component to be viable, the prototype would collect revenue from the sale of energy back to the
would have to be scaled to a significant level from the very grid to recoup their initial investment. In exchange for
beginning to establish an immediate massed network capac- having the PV system on their roof, residents would re- Another crucial element contributing to early design think-
ceive twice the standard free monthly quota of electricity.
ity. Given the more urgent and achievable goals at hand, we ing was fire. Fire is a perennial threat in townships, where all
decided to shift further investigation of a solar capacity to a Management of the PV systems would be shared between self-built shacks are constructed either entirely from wood,
later phase in the prototype development. the shack residents, the community and investors. Fol- or metal-clad wooden frames. Ikhayalami’s blocking out
lowing previous prepaid models, individuals in each com-
munity would be able to earn an income selling electricity strategy is in part devised to address this issue, improving
credits to their neighbors, giving them an incentive to access to informal settlements for emergency services. The
help others maintain and safeguard the PV systems. architectural counterpart involved a search for the ideal ma-
– THOMAS AUER teriality of walls and floors that could prevent fires spreading,
as well as function as insulation. Ultimately, we selected two
CAPE TOWN building systems for further investigation: Structural Insu-
lated Panels (SIPs) and an L-section steel frame. Both offered
high strength to weight ratios, were robust, fire resistant,
easy to handle and quick to assemble. Being readily available
on the South African building market allowed the chance to
initiate industry partnerships for further optimization in the
PRESENT STATE
form of mass-production and prefabrication, thus lowering
the technical and financial threshold to the components. Also
framing our research at this point was the broader require-
PRE Initial concept sketch by Alfredo Brillembourg
PAID
C AR
D

SALE OPTIONS: ELECTRICITY

18CT/KWH = 2000$/Y COMPANY
LOC 24CT/KWH = 4000$/Y
VEN AL 30CT/KWH = 6000$/Y
D0R

340
0 K WH
/YEA
R
AC/DC

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+ -

ID
EPA
TH PR
ITC
H ON
SW H/M
KW
50

DE
RA P RO
ID PG FIT
EPA CK U UND
PR A
SH RE
F

SOLAR UPGRADE

A potential solar model using roof-mounted PV cells Investigating steel frame joints SIP paneling components
 168 Swisspearl Workshop
A year later, we were presented with the opportunity by
Swisspearl and D-ARCH ETH Zürich to leverage the biannual
EMPOWER SHACK
summer school partnership to transform what had be-
come an ongoing dialogue into a tentative design proposal.
Without the means to run the ten-day event in Cape Town, a
team from Ikhayalami (Bolnick and Siyavuya Nobaza) and a
prominent community leader from the study site (Phumezo
Tsibanto) joined 24 international students and guests in
Glarus, Switzerland. Located in the Glarner Valley, the Swis-
spearl industrial complex offered an ideal work environment
to implement a design-build curriculum. The objective was
to move from speculative thought to a confrontation with
materials, technique and labor.
We drafted a design brief with Ikhayalami, which was accom-
panied by a comprehensive reader on the socio-political con-
text, local tendencies, practices and capacities of community
engagement. Each participant received a reader before the
event. We scheduled an adjunct program upon their arrival
that consisted of screenings, discussions and guest lectures.
These offered a broader overview of concurrent positions
and activity in the field of architecture and the politics of
space. The workshop was arranged in four stages, each stage
delineated by 15-minute time modules. Over the course of
ten days, students would learn about the design context and
challenge and develop drawings, models and eventually two
built prototypes. From an organizational perspective, the
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Alfredo Brillembourg leads a discussion on the need to connect formal and informal development
Swisspearl Workshop 169
overarching strategy of the workshop was to take 24 minds
and points of view and encourage critical analysis and collab-
orative creativity that could be channeled into a productive
design-build process.
The first stage commenced after a morning of presentations
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from Professor Alfredo Brillembourg, Bolnick, and Phumezo.
These presentations, like others that would follow in the
initial days, covered contextual topics such as the history of
urban planning in South Africa (Heinrich Wolff), the architec-
ture of slum upgrading (Nobaza and Jhono Bennett) and the
future of African demographics (Jonathan Ledgard). Subse-
quent lectures sought to expose workshop participants to
Heinrich Wolff discussing post-apartheid urbanism Andy Bolnick of Ikhayalami delivering the introductory lecture
We desire to make the shack
dwelling take on new
meanings and distinguish it
from its original significance as
a ‘minimum existence’ house.
Alfredo Brillembourg
The beginning of the first day of the workshop in the main work hall
EMPOWER SHACK
Investigating the possible dimensions of a built shack
 170 Swisspearl Workshop Swisspearl Workshop 171

relevant technologies such as the potential for off-grid solar given the task to each construct one side of the volume and
power generation (Thomas Auer) and interactive digital tools assemble it together with the other groups on site within
EMPOWER SHACK

for urban planning (Reinhard König, Juliana Sutanto, Lazaros the first hour. A member from each group was designated to
Goutas, and Mihai Calin) and the reinvention of sanitation ensure parity between the building components. The themes
systems in informal settlements (Harald Gründl and Chris- of the ensuing nine days were condensed in this initial rapid
toph Lüthi). Additional guest lecturers included Felix Hall- exercise. The second stage required pairs of participants to

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wachs of Studio Olafur Eliasson, Guillaume Othenin-Girard of develop initial ideas with revolving desk critiques and short
EPFL, and Siobhan Rockcastle also of EPFL. reviews. We consolidated the team into themes of inter-
est based on stage two final presentations – some groups
On the initial day, we required the collective construction of focused on smaller building components, like shutters and
a full-size volume model of a sample two story house. This thresholds, while others began investigating foundational el-
provided the scale from which to design and measure the ements such as footings. Stage three then took the shape of
dimensions of the eventual prototypes. Four groups were a competition based design studio, in which the design that
Harald Gründl presenting the proposed toilet system Huh Eun Yeung and Varun Amar before the second presentations

Thomas Auer outlining a possible solar model for the settlement Christoph Lüthi from EAWAG

Andy Bolnick and Phumezo Tsibanto discuss land distribution with Varun Amar

EMPOWER SHACK
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Corrections to final working drawings Scott Lloyd reviews 1:20 models and drawings with the timber construction unit Marcel Aubert reviewing the timber truss construction
 172 Swisspearl Workshop Swisspearl Workshop 173

best responded to the brief and judging criteria was selected research. Importantly, this group conducted tests on SIPs to
for the documentation and production stage. Our team of determine their structural integrity. The main proposal even-
EMPOWER SHACK

teachers, guest lecturers, and building experts carefully eval- tually resulted in a coherent three-point upgrade proposal.
uated proposals with the intention of consolidating promis- Specific defining elements consisted of a raised platform,
ing ideas and filtering out the rest. We noted and shelved shared service core between two units, and a stable interior
any lines of thought that were impractical for Khayelitsha or stair between a firebreak. This break provided both the space

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unfeasible for the limited timeframe of the workshop’s scope. and support for each unit’s second story. Likewise, timber
pillions utilized used timber as a base floor to prevent the
The final stage of the workshop’s exploratory stage grouped interior flooding that afflicts so many households in Khayelit-
participants into specialized construction units, each re- sha. The shared service core infrastructure supports future
sponsible for the development and 1:20 documentation of a incremental and self-built development, either using formal-
specific building unit. One team remained to refine interest- ized building techniques or some of the existing owner-build-
ing ideas previously deemed unfeasible and conduct material er methods. We developed two tectonic systems to achieve
Jonathan Ledgard discusses the future of African urbanism Solar panels installed on timber trusses

REFLECTIONS ON THE
EMPOWER SHACK WORKSHOP
Many extraordinary ideas were discussed during the Em-
power Shack workshop. There were two things that stayed
with me. The first is that the advancement of security of
tenure should probably be explored more actively than we
are currently doing. The recipient of the Empower Shack,
Phumezo Tsibanto has been staying in his shack for 28
years. South African law on prescription would entitle
him to own the land that his shack is on within two years.
The difference that ownership could make to the possi-
bilities for improving his house would be immense. If the
South African government wanted to improve the lives
of people in informal settlements, instead of destroying
homes, they could get intensely involved in securing ten-
ure, whether through ownership or through rental. Even
with occupied building, transactions could be facilitated
where residents associations could buy the buildings.

The second observation is that the poor quality of South

African cities are in part attributable to the instinct
of many South Africans to maximize private space to
the detriment of the collective. Two Indian students
proposed a house that gave part of the ground floor to a
deck that made an outside living space, the logic of which
only makes sense at the scale of the collective (a street or
a court). As great as their proposal was, I knew that the
majority of South Africans would rather internalize those
few square meters. The reluctance to construct a shared
domain remains a challenge to the South African city..

– HEINRICH WOLFF

Samuel Devanthéry preparing the core

EMPOWER SHACK
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Phumezo Tsibanto inspecting window openings

When you think about the

this flexibility: an optimized timber frame, and a SIP system.
vast numbers of African Both systems were designed to fit into the infrastructure
core. Crucially, the teams designed all the components so
youth coming online in the that they could be constructed and assembled at sizes easy
enough to be carried by two people. The designs, if combined
next few years, the potential with a degree of prefabrication, allow for quick take-up, adap-
tation and eventual replication.
is remarkable.
Jonathan Ledgard
SIP bending moment tests Giacomo Nuesslein, Conor Scully, Andy Bolnick and Alfredo Brillembourg
 EMPOWER SHACK
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9020

3610 1800 3610

174

8060 430 60 540 60 540 60 540 60 540 60 510 60 450 900 450 60 510 60 540 60 540 60 540 60 540 60 430 6080
10 10
10

10
60

60
500

500
60

60
540

540
60

60
540

540
60

60
540

540
4200

4200
60

60
540

540
60

60
540

540
Workshop Prototype

60

60
500

500
60

60
10

10
8060 430 60 540 60 540 60 540 60 540 60 510 60 450 900 450 60 510 60 540 60 540 60 540 60 540 60 430 6080
10 10
3610 1800 3610

9020

Ground Floor Plan

450 2400 2400 1000

Section
880 1040 300 16020
Workshop Prototype

1255 490 635 40 860 1000 460 40

20
175

EMPOWER SHACK
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 176 Workshop Prototype Research Phase 2
While a valuable educational exercise that took the initial
Empower Shack concept from design to realization, the sum-
EMPOWER SHACK
mer school was ultimately focused more on process than
product, and restricted by time constraints and the complex-
ity of the theme – a challenge accentuated by open, inclusive
discussions, and the varying positions, building knowledge
and experience of the participants. The act of building cast
a clear light on conceptual flaws and potentials. At the
same time, we took with us from the summer school a novel
spatial layout consisting of a platform and a shared core unit
that provided vertical circulation, sanitation and a firebreak
between shacks. We also managed to find an optimal design
layout for a flexible interior space that could accommodate
Participants on the final day of the workshop typical daily use and respond to personal security consider-
Preparation for roof assemblage ations, flooding and fire hazards.
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A proposed core and platform design derived from the final workshop presentation
The shack prototype with the frame completed and partial cladding
177
In light of the technologies investigated, we established that
the SIPs had potential as a lightweight and robust building
system, but allowed very little room for error, despite the fact
we had built an allowance for this into the workshop design.
We decided to investigate the use of SIPs further as a simple
floor plane with limited perpendicular joining details. While
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the steel profiles offered flexibility, economy and strength,
we learned that any use of these components would need to
be accompanied by a training program based on the network
of skilled local building labor we encountered during our
field research. In the end, timber elements were used for
the platform and sample shack, but with the understanding
that this would have to be transitioned to a less combustible
material in the ensuing research phase. We also took away
from the experience in Glarus the need to investigate a more
homogenous façade surface, strong enough to take the load
off the structure. The idea was that this would reduce point
loads and allow a more ad-hoc placement of customizable
openings independent of structural demands.
EMPOWER SHACK
 178 Components Library Components Library 179

As part of our continuing research into lightweight, non-

flammable materials and components, we compiled a com-
EMPOWER SHACK

prehensive library of disparate options for roofing, cladding,

floor footings, load bearing walls, stairs and insulation. Our
goal was to establish a knowledge base on contemporary
building practices in South Africa – including details on pric-

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ing, weight and dimensions – that could inform the second
phase of the design process. More precisely, by testing dif-
ferent combinations of components we hoped to identify an
overarching modular system for the housing unit that could
leverage the availability and economy of prefabricated indus-
try standard materials.

We took inspiration from Walter Segal’s self-build housing

system, which makes use of materials that are readily avail-
able and simple to work with. In Segal’s house design, once
the positioning of the timber frame and a services and circu-
lation core are set, standard size panels can be positioned
according to user needs. We found, however, that notwith-
standing variations in price per unit, Chinese manufactur-
ers and suppliers are able to beat any local price offered by
South African companies. From a financing perspective,
looking globally and thinking at scale changes the equation.
At the same time, cost savings were not our sole consider-
ation, as a system relying wholly on imported components
cannot remain sensitive to local building and construction
heritage, nor account for sustainability or access issues
beyond the life of the Empower Shack project.

EMPOWER SHACK
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The full component and materials library is accessible at www.empowershack.com

 180 Two Story Shack Analysis Two Story Shack Analysis 181

To complement our materials research, a comparative analy- process support could be offered. Although unique, the six
sis of pre-existing two story shack typologies was under- cases revealed a general pattern – space was required for
EMPOWER SHACK

taken during a field visit to Khayelitsha. A series of on-site security or commercial opportunity, some connection with
interviews and measured drawings of owner-builder houses the building trade already existed, and the act of building
were studied, investigating material acquisition (bought/ was initially met by skepticism from the community. Half the
found/received/exchanged), and the process of building. By cases exhibited stable structures and fulfilled the expecta-

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understanding the access to material, financing and knowl- tions of the owner-builder, the others placed considerable
edge required for the construction of this limited typology, stress on the owners due to construction flaws or the use of
we could better understand where and in what stage of the inadequate materials.

My name is Lulamile. I was born in East After I bought all material, I called two As I completed the frame with the space My name is Anita Mosili. I stay in Site C. I The second floor was [built by] my neigh-
Cape and I am married with six children. I friends of mine to help me keep the level for windows and doors, people around here think it’s about three years now. Three- bors and my friends. It took a long time.
was working in Johannesburg when a work and straight line. When I started to build, started to ask questions. They laughed at and-a-half. This plot of land belongs to me. It took about a month, because I was col-
contract was terminated. I then moved to my current shack was inside. I didn’t me and said I was building rugby poles. This is my home. I use this home as a soup lecting the material and the money to give

EMPOWER SHACK
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Cape Town. I saved some money and after
a short stay with my sister-in-law I bought
this shack. But then, it was a small one-
room shack.
I found a job in construction. I worked casu-
ally, and later my wife and I decided to start
a small business – a liquor business. We
start this business in this small room that
we have. But we decided to start build-
ing upstairs, because I have an education
background up to standard 7 and I have
experience in construction. I know how to
build in a straight line and keep the level. I
found it easy to build upstairs.
demolish it. I just put timber around the
shack. When the frame was complete, I
demolished the old shack. I first did the
corners. I bought long timber that started
from the ground and went all the way to the
top. I dug in the ground, and put concrete
around timber to make them strong. As you
see, it is still strong.
It took me 1 month to finish, because
sometimes we had to wait for material in
retailers because they don’t have stock.
And it was challenging because sometimes
timber I bought lost its shape because of
sun and rain.
And they asked questions about whether I
had building skills. I answered them by say-
ing, ‘wait for me to complete this, and I will
give you all answers you want’. Later, they
saw what a good job I was doing.
My intention for this house was I wanted
to be bigger because we don’t have space
here. As you see this is an informal area.
And I am content. I like this house. It has
solved all my problems. I have a garage
downstairs, a shebeen [informal tavern],
and an arcade for local youth.
Site Interview, December 2013
kitchen and also I live here and I’m look-
ing after vulnerable children and crèche
children as well. I have trained this thing for
the kids. Social welfare training. They said I
must look after the kids as a foster parent.
There was a fire here, and Ikhayalami
helped me for the two rooms downstairs.
I decided I can’t stay and sleep there with
the kids. To build this was my idea. I had
the upstairs in my mind. I said the space of
this site is very narrow. But if I can make an
upstairs it will be good, because then I’m
going to get that space for the kids to play
and to put their things.
them. Nobody gave me money and said,
‘Anita, take this and build this house’. I was
just selling [used] clothes. When somebody
said I’ve got two zincs give me 100 Rand [8
CHF], I say I’ve got 80 Rand man. He brings
the pieces of material. No government
come and said ‘I give you this’. They just
give blankets. And small packets of soup
and stuff.
What I need is to rebuild again this thing. I
was thinking I must sell all this rubbish to
the scrap and then I can get someone who
can help me make this shack to get in a
good position. Site Interview, December 2013
 182 Structures And Materials
EMPOWER SHACK
Render of a shack construction in Khayelitsha
Following the workshop and field visit, we focused our at-
tention on two main architectural elements of the Empower
Shack design – identifying a fire-resistant structure and in-
vestigating options for an upgradable core unit that achieves
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necessary quality improvements despite limited means and
space. Experimenting with and discarding a series of struc-
tural approaches, we opted to pursue the idea of a scaffold-
ing system as one way to materialize broader ideas about a
schematic spatial configuration (in parallel to our continuing
research on other options, including lightweight concrete).
In part, this decision was also based on the assumption that
the system itself can hold its resale value – an important
consideration given the lack of tenure security in informal
settlements in South Africa – as a secondary market already
exists for scaffolding components.
Structures And Materials 183
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This testing of structural approaches has so far resulted in
a prototype where the clip lock façade is self-supporting,
but adds bracing to the structure. Openings can be made
depending on material availability and the needs of the
inhabitant. The owner is not dependent, therefore, on a
particular floor plan to determine the interface between
public and private space. Because the design is intended to
be assembled in a single day, all elements involve a very low
building skill threshold and are light enough for two people to
handle. The adjustable footings of the scaffolding system can
be adapted to varying heights on-site to respond to uneven
topography. The system can also be expanded without fur-
ther planning. Due to the raised platform, sanitation services
can be upgraded with greater ease, as pipes can be con-
nected through the gap created. Similarly, clusters have been
arranged to share a basic bathroom unit, but these can also
be installed in shacks themselves once residents have the
financial means.
EMPOWER SHACK
Investigating possible structural configurations Investigating possible façades
 184 The Modular System Blocking Out 185
BLOCKING OUT
Blocking out describes a design and implementation
To keep costs as low as possible and construction efficient, This modular system naturally creates a set of standard unit While the Empower Shack project is in essence a response process driven by the community. Pioneered by Ikhay-
we experimented with three unit modules to create a variety (SU) types and their costs can be estimated easily. For ex- to the continued need for dignified, affordable housing, it is alami, the scheme involves the reconfiguration of the
spatial layout of an informal settlement into one that is
EMPOWER SHACK

of housing designs using industrial materials and techniques.
We used a basic module (2.4 × 4.8 m, 11.5 m2) to provide the
backbone of the house. In order to build a larger house one
can add one or two ‘L’ module extensions (1.6 × 2.4 m, 3.8 m2)
ample, unit Type 1 is simply the basic unit. The costs of build- equally an investigation into how housing form can better more rationalized, allowing for the creation of demar-
ing a Type 1 unit are the costs of building: 11.52 m2 of floor, 14.4 contribute to the broader goals of strategic spatial plan- cated pathways or roads, public and semipublic spaces,
linear meters of wall, 11.52 m2 of roof and 11.52 m2 of acquiring ning in South African townships. Ikhayalami’s experience emergency services access, and improved possibilities
Unit
Unit Unit
types
typestypes
land. Even though the acquisition of land does not usually implementing the blocking out system has demonstrated
of long term shack upgrading. This should eventually

and subsequently, module extension ‘W’ (1.2 × 4 m, 4.8 m2). A
key feature of this system is that the modules can be stacked
to create two story shacks. There are also several logisti-
cal advantages – most importantly, the system makes use
of local labor. A sturdy building can be built by local work-
ers with only a small amount of training. Similarly, a minimal
building can be built quickly and then expanded over time. In
many cases, residents can pay for the construction of their
own housing but only in small increments. They do not have
access to commercial lending that would permit the use of
enough capital to build the desired house by paying loan
installments over time. Rather, they must resort to improving
their home in manageable increments over time. Employing
materials that can be re-used, the building can expand as the
resources become available.
Unit types
UNIT TYPES
involve market transactions, it still requires resources, and
once acquired land does have a market value in the infor-
mal economy. Land costs become relevant in the trade-off
between expanding the unit outward or up to a second floor.
Based on our modeling, a two story shack (SU Type 3) quickly
becomes more cost efficient than expanding the unit hori-
zontally only. The main driver for this is that the floor of the
second story becomes the roof of the ground floor, thereby
cutting material costs (notwithstanding that this saving has
to be balanced out with the cost of building a stairway).
The sections on the modular system, spatial analysis, the cluster system and
financing options were prepared by the research team in conjunction with
economist Arturo Brillembourg
SLUM LAB
facilitate the provision of infrastructure, resulting in
very positive incremental impacts, but we saw significant enhanced circulation, access to basic services and – above
potential to employ the blocking out principles in a scaled- all – the attainment of recognized legal status for squatter
communities. A more accessible public space also often
up urban strategy that incorporates both improved spatial results in a safer living environment. The approach has
planning and the roll out of a new housing prototype de- been acknowledged by government as a ‘best practice’
signed with such aims in mind. Through applied research at and supported and endorsed by thousands of shack
dwellers connected to the Informal Settlement Network.
a distance on possibilities for enhanced urban design, we
hoped to uncover hidden potentials to refine and expand the The act of blocking out consists of the physical disman-
blocking out approach. tling of individual shacks to either replace them with
an upgraded model or be reassembled according to the
improved urban scheme agreed. A shack upgrade usually
accompanies this initiative, with residents choosing from
a range of shack prototypes offered by Ikhayalami ac-
cording to their financial capacity. Shacks are dismantled
and upgraded shacks rebuilt the same day in situ. The
scheme is generally practiced in cohesive and organized
communities – ideally, where community based saving
schemes networked to the Federation of the Urban Poor
are already in operation. The program allows residents
to start saving towards the 20 percent cost requirement
for their shack upgrade. The rest is subsidized through
donor contributions. The blocking out methodology is
based on the notion that all phases of the process – from
identification of need, to design and implementation –
are led by the community and organized networks of the
urban poor, supported by NGOs and in partnership with
the state.

Cluster
Cluster
Cluster
types
types
types
GUIDELINES
1. Blocking out is currently applied incrementally to 2-7
shacks per day. The rearrangement defined by blocking
34m2
38m2
out depends on initial agreements between groups of
68m2
46m2
neighboring residents.
76m2
24m2 22m2
22m2
20m2 20m2
48m2

12m2 2. It is up to residents to decided whether those who have

large shacks will reduce their footprint, or whether all
14m2 42m2 10m2
16m2 10m2
12m2
18m2
100m2 24m2 86m2
6m2 26m2
30m2 30m2

42m2
32m2

22m2
households will maintain the same amount of floor area
32m2 10m2

they occupied prior to blocking out.

36m2 20m2
12m2
12m2
24m2
20m2 40m2
30m2 30m2 24m2 22m2
24m2
18m2 24m2
46m2
16m2 46m2
24m2
42m2
48m2
10m2
22m2
22m2 3. The decision about whether to include a ‘yard space’ is
16m2

68m2 28m2
46m2 32m2 12m2
40m2
also an element for the community to decide upon during
the course of the design process. Courtyards have become
a central design component of blocking out.
CT1
CT1 CT1 CT2
CT2 CT2 CT3
CT3 CT3 CT4
CT4 CT4
4. Public space for sanitation units near main roads
Max
Maxfloor
Max
floorarea:
floor
area:area:
84
84M2
M284 M2 Max
Maxfloor
Max
floorarea:
floor
area:area:
119
119M2
M2119 M2 Max
Maxfloor
Max
floorarea:
floor
area:area:
134
134M2
TheM2
134 M2
before Max
Maxout
and after of the blocking floor
Max
floor area
floor
area:area
process : 206
206:M2
M2
206 M2 needs to be taken into consideration during the planning
Land
LandLand
area:
area:area:
77
77M2
M277 M2 Land
LandLand
area:
area:area:
88
88M2M2
88 M2 Land
LandLand
area:
area:area:
108
108MM108 M Land
LandLand
area:
area:area:
154
154M2
M2
154 M2 process.
Ratio:
Ratio:
Ratio:
1.09
1.09 1.09 Ratio:
Ratio:
Ratio:
1.34
1.34 1.34 Ratio:
Ratio:
Ratio:
1.24
1.24 1.24 Ratio
RatioRatio
1.34
1.34 1.34
5. Secondary roads are introduced through the urban
Predominantly, our research explored the theme of densi- fabric and adjoin existing public roads for access and
fication – building denser urban configurations that could security.
generate an ‘economy of scale’ for shared infrastructural

EMPOWER SHACK
SLUM LAB

6. Firebreaks need to be introduced between shacks

interventions and contribute to the notion of reciprocated where thoroughfares are not present. These breaks
Cluster types social contracts at the micro-level through shared use of should not exceed 50 cm, as this would encourage infill
building.
common social spaces. This is one way of creating a degree
Three
Three
Three
THREE unit
unit
UNIT unit
modules
modules
MODULES modules of permanence and continuity in areas characterized by their 7. Construction materials are provided at a subsidized
temporality and societal flux. Shared space was defined not cost. These include walls for a structure that covers an
area of up to 20 m2. Families who have bigger shacks
through physical delineation or demarcations, but the clus- need to make their own plans for enlargements if they
tering of two, three or four shacks so as to subtly distinguish want to exceed this limit.
the shared space between clusters, versus the more private
8. The option of upgrading to a two-story shack must also
shared space created between groups of individual dwell- be viable. This will increase density and favor the develop-
ings. We also investigated the potential for this system to be ment of truly urban attributes. Correct planning of a
Core Unit Extension L Extension W upgraded on a landscape level through the introduction of two-story shack could be a decisive factor for the success
Core
CoreUnit
Core
Unit Unit Extension
Extension
Extension
LL L Extension
Extension
Extension
W W W of the blocking out system in the long term..
urban agriculture. We were working within certain limitations
throughout, including the need to maintain private sightlines, ANDY BOLNICK
and the restriction of interstitial spaces to one meter to avoid
CT1 CT2 CT3 CT4 in-fill building.
Max
The floor area:
development 84 M2
of a modular system based Max floor
on three area:
basic unit 119 M2
modules Max floor area: 134 M2 Max floor area : 206 M2
Land area: 77 M2 Land area: 88 M2 Land area: 108 M Land area: 154 M2
Ratio: 1.09 Ratio: 1.34 Ratio: 1.24 Ratio 1.34
 186 Spatial Analysis The Cluster System 187

In order to optimize our clustering strategy, we first had to (1) Based on our analysis of the existing situation in Khayelit- not by the community as a whole. As resources become
properly understand the spatial footprints that characterize These shacks come in a variety of sizes, ranging in floor area sha, as well as our initial investigation of a modular system, available, the stair cluster could be expanded and enclosed
EMPOWER SHACK

the existing shack typologies in Khayelitsha. Using the BT from a low of 7 m2 to a high of 82 m2. The accompanying chart we then explored how the Empower Shack design could be so that it becomes an entry area to the cluster as whole. The
area of the township as a more focused site of investigation, shows the distribution of the size of the shacks in square incorporated into a cluster strategy. A two story building clusters are formed by combining different size SUs. Each
we aimed to upgrade 65 shacks. BT has two salient features: meters. requires a stairway between the stories. These stairs can cluster type could accommodate a range of SU sizes. For
be thought of as an overhead to the units and, like any other example, Cluster Type (CT) 1 is formed by two basic two story

The existing and proposed (in blue) distribution of different shack sizes
(2)
Like most informal settlements, the urban layout has its own
unique logic connected to incremental growth patterns and
a fluid ‘ownership’ system. Overall, space is not allocated
efficiently, giving the impression of a very densely populated
area.
(3)
Our proposed solution was to swap as closely as possible
existing floor area for new floor area. The new space alloca-
tion would allow for every resident to have a space at least
as large in terms of floor area as that which they currently
enjoyed. Because it is very inefficient to build small units,
the smaller shack owners would end up with an upgrade in
terms of additional square meters of floor space. A key aim of
the Empower Shack urban design component is to improve
the efficiency of land use in Khayelitsha. At present, due
to an ad hoc spatial arrangement BT feels like a crowded
neighborhood with very little public space. Housing provides
approximately 2,000 m2 of floor space in about 3,500 m2 of
land. Through an expansion and development of the exist-
ing blocking out framework, we aim to provide the same
2,000 m2 of better living areas but using only 58 percent of
the land currently taken up by shacks.
overhead, the cost impact is ameliorated by sharing it with
other units. From this basic idea arises the concept of unit
clusters surrounding a stair core. The stair core becomes
the center of the cluster. It serves two purposes. Firstly, as
a common distribution hub for the modules. And secondly,
as a place where shared resources can be located. One test
used a small (3 m2) shared toilet as part of the core and as
resources become available, the core could be expanded to
include a shared kitchen.
The stair core is nestled in between 3 or 4 modules, all of
which have access to a central courtyard. Different standard
units (SU) are combined to create compact clusters that nev-
ertheless have room for circulation and common spaces. The
central organizing idea is that the central courtyard becomes
a shared common space controlled by the cluster units and
Unit types
UnitUnit
Unit
types
types
types
SLUM LAB
shacks (SU 3) and one expanded two story shack (SU 7). The
cluster is designed with the maximum expansion in mind. In
fact, any SU up to SU 7 will fit in this cluster.
One issue that emerges is how to design for future expan-
sion. Some expansion would naturally take place as not all
the clusters would be built initially for their maximum capac-
ity. Once that is reached, the Empower Shack vision is that
expansion could take place vertically. The structures used to
build the current modules would allow for the possibility of
going up one, if not two, stories more. In the actual assign-
ment of space, the clusters would have to be modified to
account for the relationships between the members of the
community and their families. For the sake of planning out
the use of the land area in BT though, four cluster types are
sufficient to assign every resident a unit.

A 3D printed model of the cluster system

Cluster
Cluster
types
Cluster
Cluster
types
types
types

EMPOWER SHACK
SLUM LAB

CLUSTER TYPES

CT1 CT2 CT3 CT4

CT1 CT1Max
CT1floor area: 84 m2
CT1 CT2 CT2 Max
CT2 floor area: 119 m2
CT2 CT3 Max floor
CT3 CT3CT3 area: 134 m2 Max
CT4 floor area:
CT4 CT4
CT4206 m2
Max floor
Maxarea:
Max
Max
floor
Land 84
floor
floor
area:
M2
area: area:
area:
84 M2
77 m2 84
84Max
M2
M2 floor
Max area:
Max
Max
floor
Land 119
floor
floor
area:
area:M2area:
area:
119 M2
88 m2 119
119 M2
M2 Max floor
Max
Landarea:
Max
Max
floor
134
area:floor
floor
area:
M2area:
108 m2area:
134 M2
134
134 M2
M2 Max floor
Land Max
area: area
Max
Max
floor
: floor
154 m2 206
floor
areaM2
area
area
: 206:: 206
M2
206 M2
M2
Land area:
Land77
Land
Land
area:
M21.09
Ratio: area:
area:
77 M277
77 M2
M2 Land area:
Land 88
Land
Land
area:
M2area:
Ratio: area:
88 M2
1.34 88
88 M2
M2 Land area:
Land 108
Ratio:Land
Land
area:
M area:
1.24 area:
108 M108
108 M
M Land area:
Ratio: Land
1.34 154
Land
Land
area:
M2area:
area:
154 M2154
154 M2
M2
Ratio: 1.09
Ratio:
Ratio:
Ratio:
1.09 1.09
1.09 Ratio: 1.34
Ratio:Ratio:
Ratio:
1.34 1.34
1.34 Ratio: 1.24
Ratio:Ratio:
Ratio:
1.24 1.24
1.24 Ratio 1.34
RatioRatio
Ratio
1.34 1.34
1.34
Existing shack sizes and upgrading scenario with a two story prototype Possible shack configurations using the cluster system
 188 The Cluster System Financing Options
One of the main challenges for the urban design component
of the Empower Shack project is identifying a suitable financ-
EMPOWER SHACK
ing model, especially one that is sustainable in the long-
term, sensitive to the community driven process we wish
to support, and sufficient to ensure the upgrade of enough
shacks at any one time to implement clustering and scaled
up blocking out strategies in a coherent manner. During the
research phase, we explored two potential sources:
(3)
(4) An aerial view of Khayelitsha township
(1)
External Financing
(2) Though tolerant – rather than supportive – of the blocking out
process to date, government activity does contribute to the
success of the program by parallel financing of the construc-
tion of sanitation and electrical infrastructure. Potential ex-
SLUM LAB
ists for the government to also finance the building of shacks
as part of the ‘starter package’ aspect of its housing policy.
We also considered the possibility of external charitable
financing through direct grants or a micro-lending program,
and also commercial and non-commercial financing options
linked to a potential role for BT as a solar energy provider.
Among the hurdles outlined earlier, the two advantages are
that labor costs are an increasing cost component of com-
mercial PV systems. Investments in the training and certifi-
cation of residents could also have the benefit of relatively
low cost labor to be used in maintaining the system. Simi-
larly, proximity to the city center means that the electricity
generated in such a scenario would not need to travel far to
be used. The reduced distribution costs could substantially
increase the value of the electricity produced.
The reconfigured BT section with the upgraded prototype and optimized cluster formations
189
At the same time, it is unlikely that a commercial PV dis-
tributor would be interested in investing the level of capital
required to launch a viable township-based solar scheme. Al-
ternatively, charitable foundations supportive of sustainable
electricity production could be willing to provide financing
at non-commercial rates. Since the payback of PV systems
SLUM LAB
ranges from 5 – 7 years, after paying back the loan the com-
munity could derive substantial income in the years to come.
Indeed, it could even be possible to borrow to build the
upgraded shacks by discounting the future income derived
from the PV system using commercial financing.
(2)
EMPOWER SHACK
Internal Financing
Another option would be to build over time, rather than pay
over time. The main problem is that – given the socio-spatial
realities of South Africa’s cities – it would be difficult for most
residents of Khayelitsha to accumulate sufficient capital, and
commercial financing is unavailable. An alternative could be
to lay out the blocking out process and build the new shack
prototypes over time, using the residents’ own resources.
The problem with this approach is that there is a heavy
administrative cost imposed on the project. There are micro-
lenders that would be willing to finance, at least in part, the
projects. The problem is that the residents would not be able
to post any collateral and therefore the size of the loan would
be reduced severely.
 190 In Situ Construction
Two months after the workshop concluded, in collabora-
tion with Ikhayalami we secured a private grant to subsidize
EMPOWER SHACK
the material costs of a new two story shack prototype. We
proposed the idea to Phumezo, the community leader and BT
resident who had attended the summer school in Glarus and
indicated at the time that he was interested in testing out a
refined prototype once the workshop concluded. The single
story shack that he built in 1987 was in need of major repairs,
and his wife and two daughters craved additional space. A
collective decision was made that December 2013 was the
ideal time to complete an in situ build project.
Phumezo lives on Maphongwana Avenue, a busy thorough-
Installing footings and the ground floor structure
SLUM LAB
Detail of the ground floor and footing connection
fare through the heart of Site-C. He is the founder and
organizer of Sikhonathi (We Are Here!) a social movement
focusing on informal upgrading. He is also a national leader
of the Informal Settlement Network (ISN) and a loan facilita-
tor to Masincedane (Let’s Help Each Other) Savings Group.
In 2011, he began working alongside Ikhayalami as the ISN
leader and facilitator for the Sheffield Road blocking out
project in the nearby township of Philippi. An injury to his
eyes several years ago has left him with impaired sight and
a decreased ability to work the usual construction jobs he
took to support his family. While his wife works as a part-time
teacher, he receives a modest government grant, which
allows him to focus on organizing and upgrading activities.
Phumezo and his family were able to invest some of their
savings to cover additional expenses, and on short-notice,
our team began to adapt our still evolving prototype designs
to fit within scheduling and budgetary constraints. Bolnick
successfully petitioned for the Anti-Land Invasion Division of
the City of Cape Town to allow the project, despite their usual
misgivings about any construction in BT that appears to be
permanent.
After three intensive days working in the Ikhayalami offices
and workshop, we prepared a simplified design and construc-
tion plan. The Ikhayalami construction team chose to work
with timber, as this was the most affordable and adaptable
material available. Likewise, we turned to clip-lock for clad-
ding. We innovated upon Ikhayalami’s normal upgrading ar-
In Situ Construction 191
chitecture by lifting the structure above the ground, creating
flood protection and the ability to one day bring in water and
sewage pipes. We also prefabricated as many components as
possible, including wall elements, to speed up construction
time, use material more efficiently, and improve safety by
building off-site.
SLUM LAB
Over a period of four days from December 7th, a team of four
to six people, composed of regular Ikhayalami builders, ISN
representatives, local activists, and of course Phumezo, as-
sembled a two story shack unlike any other in Khayelitsha.
The pillars dug into the sand at a depth of 60 cm, and were
filled with a dry concrete mix allowing for the foundations to
be set after the floor components were installed. Melvyn, the
Adding the cladding to the completed structure
foreman, quickly improvised clever solutions to unforeseen
predicaments, such as the previously unknown slanting
topology of the site or the discovery of concrete slabs hidden
beneath the topsoil. Scrap treated timber was used to rein-
force the footers and floor plane, and between joists to allow
for thinner MgO floor boards. Clip-lock panels were trimmed
and windows cut according to Phumezo’s specific customiza-
tion requests. Stairs were constructed around the back of the
shack to allow for outdoor access to the top level and maxi-
mize room on the sides of the structure. Neighbors, pass-
ing drivers, and pedestrians walking down Maphongwana
Avenue congregated around the site. They were fascinated
to watch the unusual structure rise up, and our group fielded
multiple inquires about the cost, construction process and
involved parties.
Installing a first floor wall module
EMPOWER SHACK
An interior view of the door installation
 192 The Future Exhibition 193

From: Andy Bolnick <andy@ikhayalami.org>

Less than two months after the shack was finished, Subject: Re: First site meeting with community representatives
Phumezo increasingly receives requests from fellow com- Date: January 29, 2014 9:50:45 PM GMT+01:00
EMPOWER SHACK

munity members about how they too can construct a double

story shack reminiscent of his design. As detailed in a recent Phumezo is inundated with queries about the double story. We received our first request today to build
email from Bolnick, one resident has even petitioned to one of our double story shacks instead of an RDP house. A women asked Phumezo that if she could get
spend the money she saved for an RDP house on a double the money directly she wants to build one of our shacks instead of a brick RDP house! Imagine what

SLUM LAB
is going to happen when we crack the model we want to take to scale. We will change the shape of the
story shack. Without publicizing plans, slick renders or build- city! 
ing elegant architectural models, the in situ prototype has
spurred the creativity of other residents to reimagine what -Andy Bolnick
their homes and city could be. In that same mode, the build
project inspired leaders in BT to resume meetings to discuss
a community-wide blocking out plan. Phumezo, astutely
aligning hyper local political forces and using his new shack
as a flag, is pushing for a neighborhood upgrading project.
Such activity gets to the heart of our Empower Shack ambi-
tions, which is not to deliver a product or definitive ‘solution’,
but rather facilitate a process.

We are under no illusions this project is, or should be, about

architects coming to the rescue of a family, community
or urban situation. But we are convinced that design and
architecture has the potential – and obligation – to contrib-
ute to positive social change. The challenging dynamics
shaping everyday realities in Khayelitsha and other informal
settlements across South Africa (and indeed urban African)
are largely systemic. Any attempt to address the quality of
life and access to opportunities of township residents must
operate simultaneously on a number of levels – changes to
the built environment are part of that equation, but cannot
achieve real change in isolation. As a research program and
evolving design process, the Empower Shack project still
has distance to travel. But even as we look ahead to the next
phase of refining a final prototype and taking it to scale in
collaboration with industry partners, we have already seen
the catalytic value of doing. Stepping away from the sketch-
Variation of in situ shack from original workshop design
pad and computer screen and producing a physical product –
imperfect or not – that by its existence encourages commu-
nities to envisage a different urban reality.
The Empower Shack exhibition at Galerie Eva Presenhuber is
an interim presentation of our research and design process
to date. The exhibition uses film, photography, drawings,
painting and large-scale architectural installations to explore
the complexity of living conditions in South African informal
settlements, and the social role of architects in helping to
address the economic, ecological and security challenges
faced by residents. In addition to the content reproduced
here, the exhibition features more in-depth documentary ma-
terial from site visits, including resident interviews, analyses
of existing double story structures and contextualization of
the project within the broader urban development and social
history of Cape Town. By combining art and architecture, we
seek to communicate our position to a broader public, raising
awareness of how architects can improve slum upgrading
strategies through a planning ecology, as well as reveal how
individuals and communities shape the use and development
of the built environment in these areas.

EMPOWER SHACK
SLUM LAB

View of the completed shack from the street Animation stills from a multimedia installation
CORE TEAM SUPPORT TEAM WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS

Alfredo Brillembourg Christine Baumgartner Varun Amar Kaushik

Hubert Klumpner Mirko Gatti Carmen Baumann
Scott Lloyd Daniel Hudson Arthur de Buren
Andy Bolnick Nicole Reamy Samuel Devanthery
Phumezo Tsibanto Alexandra Zervudachi Tom Doan
Siyavuya Nobaza Laura Salvador Gonzáles
Marcel Aubert Akshay Goyal
Arturo Brillembourg FILM TEAM Eunyoung Huh
Giulia Celentano Daniel Itten
Martin Andersson Nan Jiang
Daniel Schwartz Melanie Mayr
GUEST RESEARCHERS Giacomo Nuesslein
Isabella Ong
Thomas Auer ADMINISTRATION Dilara Orujzade
Jhono Bennett Eleni Papadaki
Elias Boulé Flavia Reginato Kathrin Pest
Mihai Calin Sabine Sarwa Tibor Rossi
Tom Emerson Sophia Salma
Lazaros Goutas Roohia Salma
Harald Gründl Pim Schachtschabel
Felix Hallwachs Conor Scully
Reinhard König Qingxian Du
Jonathan Ledgard Markus Stolz
Christoph Lüthi Joel Tay 
Guillaume Othenin-Girard
Siobahn Rockcastle
Juliana Sutanto
Maurits van der Staay
Heinrich Wolff

With support from

‘FREEDOM WOULD BE MEANINGLESS
WITHOUT SECURITY IN THE HOME
AND IN THE STREETS’
Nelson Mandela