Sustainable Living Urban Model / Issue 9

SLUM Lab MADE IN AFRICA

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EDITORIAL

Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner From Casablanca To Cape Town: Reimagining Urban Possibilities (8)

CONTRIBUTORS (12)

CREDITS (14)

PHOTO ESSAYS

Filippo RomanoThe Vivigals (57)

Stan Engelbrecht and Nic GroblerBicycle Portraits (103)

Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick WaterhousePonte City (120)

The ‘Ponte City’ photo essay appears courtesy of Goodman Gallery

AFRICA

Andres LepikAfritecture: Building Social Change (24)

Dirk E Hebel and Felix HeiselFormal, Informal And Forms Of In-Between (28)

Active Social ArchitectureEarly Childhood Development Centers For Plan Rwanda (34)

Harald GründlA Slum Toilet (38)

David MortonChamanculo In Reeds, Wood, Zinc And Concrete (42)

Kéré ArchitectureDesigning For Climate: Future African Sustainability (48)

Yutaka ShoOn Membership (54)

Killian DohertyStrengthening Kigali’s Redevelopment Through ‘Weak Urbanism’ (60)

Jenny F MbayeOn The Biopolitics Of Hip-Hop Galsen: Contestation Art And Democratized Imaginations (64)

Jonathan SilverThe Geography Of Incremental Infrastructures In An Accra Slum (68)

J M LedgardThe Microscopic Safari: Into The Last Forest Of Nairobi (72)

Beyond EntropyEnergy And Entropy (76)

Laufen Manifesto (80)

SOUTH AFRICA

Edgar PietersePushing Against The Frontiers Of Urban Studies In (South) Africa (88)

Peter Rich and Patricia TheronMandela' s Yard, Alexandra: Documentation As A Research Tool For Learning About Space And Place (94)

Sarah CharltonHousing Dreams And Lived Realities: The RDP Program In Practice (100)

Thiresh GovenderHome Sweet Resilience: Lessons From Shebeens (106)

Liza CiroliaThe Architect Can’t Save Us: Some Thoughts On The Limits Of Tech Fix Housing Solutions (112)

Kristen KornienkoFinding Hope And The Spatial Dimensions Of Human Rights In The Urban Informal Vernacular (116)

Charlotte Lemanski‘Hybrid’ Gentrification In State-Subsidized Housing Settlements (136)

Alexander OpperProductive ‘Leakage’ And The ‘Folding’ Of The Studio Into The Field (140)

Paula MethSecurity And Dignity For All: Informal Settlement Upgrading And Experiences of Violence (144)

Ben MansfieldUrban Agriculture In Informal Settlements (148)

Astrid Ley, Josefine Fokdal and Peter HerrleFrom Beneficiaries To Negotiators: How Urban Poor Networks Bargain For Better Housing (152)

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

[in]formalStudio: Marlboro SouthThe Processes Of Engagement Map (159)

EMPOWER SHACK

Introduction (164)

The Housing Context (165)

Research Phase 1 (166)

Swisspearl Workshop (168)

Workshop Prototype (174)

Research Phase 2 (177)

Components Library (178)

Two Story Shack Analysis (180)

Materials And Structure (182)

The Modular System (184)

Blocking Out (185)

Spatial Analysis (186)

The Cluster System (187)

Financing Options (189)

In Situ Construction (190)

The Future (192)

Exhibition (193)

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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.

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

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.

Alexander Opper

Alexander Opper is Director of the MTech Architectural Technology program at the University of Johannesburg.

Paula Meth

Paula Meth is a Senior Lecturer in Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield.

Ben Mansfield

Ben Mansfield is an independent land-scape architect with project experience in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Astrid Ley

Astrid Ley is a post-doctoral researcher in the HABITAT Unit at the Technischen Uni-versität Berlin and visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Josefine Fokda

Josefine Fokda is Senior Researcher in the HABITAT Unit at the Technischen Univer-sität Berlin.

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 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.

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.

Thomas Auer

Thomas Auer is a partner and Managing Director of Transsolar, an engineering firm specializing in energy efficient building design.

Heinrich Wolff

Heinrich Wolff is co-founder of Wolff Archi-tects and a guest professor in the Depart-ment of Architecture at ETH Zürich.

Arturo Brillembourg

Arturo Brillembourg is President of Farmington Asset Management and an economist interested in the economics of the urban poor.

Andy Bolnick

Andy Bolnick is founder of Cape Town-based informal settlement upgrading NGO Ikhayalami.

Scott Lloyd

Scott Lloyd is founder of design and re-search studio Deliver and coordinated the Empower Shack project for the Brillem-bourg & Klumpner Chair of Architecture and Urban Design at ETH Zürich.

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.

C O N T R I B U T O R S

In Order of Appearance

● Chapter: Africa ● Chapter: South Africa ● Chapter: Empower Shack

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The Formal

Besides 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

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 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-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.

WHILE A POSITIVE FACTOR IN POVERTYREDUCTION, URBANIZATION REQUIRESCAREFUL PLANNING AND INNOVATIVEHOUSING DESIGNS CAPITALIZING ON LOCAL RESOURCES AND PRACTICES. EFFORTS TO DO SO HAVE LARGELY FAILED IN THE FASTGROWING CITIES OF AFRICA –ETHIOPIA IS NO EXCEPTION.

By Dirk E Hebel and Felix Heisel

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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

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-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

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.

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-

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

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

The moonlight construction of a chereka bet informal dwelling

The Sustainable Incremental Construction Unit (SICU) typologyIN THEORY, THESE HOUSES ARE BUILT OVERNIGHT ONGOVERNMENT LAND, WITH THE GOAL TO LOOK FINISHED AND ‘OLD’ IN THE MORNING, AS IF THEY HADALWAYS BEEN THERE.

The Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit (SUDU) typology

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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 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

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 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

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

SECURE LITTLE NICHE.

AbdouMaliq SimoneUrban Sociologist

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

Nelson Mandela