the INCREMENTAL house

To finish up my time in Kenya , I decided to hit the coast. Lamu is old Swahili town in eastern Kenya , and with the exception of Zanzibar , is the most well preserved Swahili culture on the eastern coast of Africa . In fact, in 2001, it was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The place is amazing. The people are so friendly. Everyone on the street says “jambo” (hello) or “karibu” (welcome). The crazy thing is that I felt like I have been here. The similarities in the built space to Koliwada in Dharavi (Mumbai) is extraordinary. The narrow alley ways. The open doors. The public walkways that go under people homes, the cool breeze and constant shade. It may not be much of a coincidence, as both of these very old communities originally very much depended on fishing, and there has been quite an influence from India all over East Africa . And the architecture is rich. The old houses have extraordinary friezes and carved decorations in many of the roo...

“ I am privelaged to be living next to the slum. We hire a lot of them and most of them have had access into our homes, and they know we are not really rich. Even them, if they had a better job, they would find a better place to live. But now, their jobs are casual, small, unpredictable. They see a lot of struggle living here as well.” Priscilla lives in a gated estate right next to Kibera (the largest slum in the Nairobi ) and was doing a lot of work on her house. She is one of many people I have met here in Nairobi who either work or live with walls around their buildings. In fact, Nairobi is a gated city. In fact, much of the developing world is. If you are upper class, middle class, or even lower middle class, living in a city, you most likely have a wall around your home and a security guard protecting it. However, many of these seem to be different from some of those now taking firm hold in the US , and consequently much of the rest of the world, which are based m...

60% of Nairobi lives in slums, but some housing remains empty Ultimately, much of these housing challenges are about land. In fact, the issue of land has continued to be a divisive issue, and was one of the main reasons that such extensive violence broke out after the elections. After independence, the redistribution of land, and the process by which it took place left deep divisions among different tribes, as preference was given to those who had connections, regardless of who had owned the land before the Europeans claimed it as their own. And of course, these challenges to land continue today, and in fact is very indicative of the political problems of corruption and favoritism that keep the rich and powerful just that. This crazy world introduced itself to instantly as we piled out of the Matatu on valley road as we headed to Kibera for the first time. Looming over the entrance to Kibera were sprawling apartment blocks. The windows were busted out, grass over grown, ...

During one of our initial conversations here, an architect described an interesting evolution. Originally, architects designed buildings for gods, then it was governments, and now generally, it is for rich people. The question remains, what is next in that evolution? To me, it is obvious, regular people, especially poor ones. I see some serious glimmers of such a shift taking place in the US , but to what extent it continues to happen remains to be seen. Given the state of the built environment around the world, especially in terms of the dwelling unit, it is amazing more architects aren’t involved in lowest sectors of housing. Well, I guess plenty have been historically, but many of the more famous architects are better known for their failures than successes in these realms. Many people here seem to think that informal settlements and slums are not an architectural problem, so why should they waste their time working in such environments? While it may be true that suc...

Bathrooms, showers, community space and sustainable energy One of the more exciting and interesting things I saw was a biogas project that a community was building with the assistance of the Pamoja Trust. As part of the eventual upgrading process of a small informal settlement of 30 families, they decided to build a common facility that would house all the bathrooms and showering facilities, a community space, and a tank to collect the human waste, and then catch the methane. Eventually, the methane will be piped to the houses to be used for cooking and heating hot water. It is pretty sweet. And it is a visually significant object, and has generated much interest from the surrounding community. In many ways, it is the start of an incremental process of upgrading the entire community, starting with the bathrooms. It is common start, and ties all the interests of the community together. Ladder

Homogeneity: same or different? While the Kambimoto project is extraordinary in the depth, comprehensive nature, executive, and community based approach, one criticism I have is that all the additions are carefully controlled and regulated, and are all the same. One the surface, one could argue that, while it is incremental, it will still end up producing the same, homogenous housing across the entire community. While I certainly spend enough energy railing against homogeneity, in a weird way, this could be a good thing. Communities need diversity, but one of the shortcomings of some earlier projects I visited was the open freedom for people to sell their land, tear their home down, or build newer and bigger ones. In this case, the market takes on a life of its own and the homes end up further stratifying individual communities. When Pamoja Trust was doing the assessment of the Kambimoto community, one of the biggest challenges was striking a cord between renters and struct...

Precast on site using local labor Pamoja Trust is part of a group called Slum Dwellers International (SDI) , which was actually started through the support of SPARC (Society for the Promotion of Area Resources) in Mumbai , India . SPARC was one of the collaborators with Urban Typhoon workshop in Dharavi that I attended. SDI is established in a number of Africa countries, and uses information exchange to better support poorer community groups in urban areas to improve their living conditions. In the Kambimoto project, Pamoja Trust used some technology developed for slum upgrading in India . Using small, precast pieces of concrete, the technology not only makes a sturdy house, but is also something that can be done by local community members. This is just one small example of the benefits of such information exchanges. The benefit of this is that community members are learning skills throughout the process, as well as earning money. The current construction foreman wa...

'Design Dreaming' Exercises Through a couple of contacts, I was able to come to know Pamoja Trust, who have been doing some really great work in a number of the slums and informal settlements around Nairobi . They have been working diligently, helping communities better understand their own dynamics, initiating savings schemes, securing tenure, and eventually, at the end of all that, building new housing where people were previously living in shacks made of whatever metal they could get their hands on. They work in collaboration with a local community group called Muungano wa Wanavijiji, and some local architects. One architect, in particular has been working almost exclusively for them and has been especially generous with his time. Much of my reflections here are based on conversations with him. A process of intensive and inclusive community building Overall, the approach of Pamoja Trust is very methodical and multi-pronged, digging deep into social challenges, but us...

Upgrading After spending some time in slums in India and Bangladesh , this one definitely was hard to swallow. Its reality is harsh. A strange site greeted us upon entering. The City was upgrading one of the main entry points into Kibera. Good, I thought. However, as we actually entered the slum, the challenges of upgrading became clearly obvious. A large bulldozer was sitting on the side overlooking a number of already demolished structures. In order the make the road work it has to widened. And in order to be widened in a place as dense as Kibera, structures have to be demolished. And since it is a main thoroughfare, just about every one of these structures is income producing. I asked my friend about compensation, or something. He said, “Tough luck.” As we continued down the path, all the structures along the road had a big red X on it. Either you take down your structure or we’ll do it for you. But, a road is good, right? Maybe. Goods seem to make...

Laying out a future pedestrian bridge A future reclaimed public space Composting barrels turning food scraps into income One of the projects I was able to team up with is the Kounkouey Design Initiative (KDI) working in a large slum called Kibera, one of the largest in East Africa . The particular project is called Kibera Public Space Project and is a joint initiative started through some graduate students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the University of Nairobi , in conjunction with the community of Soweto in Kibera. Here in Nairobi , the project is supported on the ground by Eco-Build Africa , a great little office doing housing, research, and projects focused on sustainability. The first step of the project is to develop a public space at the lower end of the settlement. As part of this project, they are developing some composting bins, with hopes soon that they will be able to sell the resulting mix as fertilizer as a starting point that will generate indepe...

The entire settlement is resistance. It is on someone else’s land. Morphologically, it couldn’t be any more different than the surrounding wealthy estates of Gulshan and Banani. The water bounds is. The inhabitants have set up full formal transportation networks of boats to ferry people to and from their jobs. People walk off the boats, indistinguishable from any other class. The boat drivers even sing. One day, Venice . Maybe…. But, is the community and way of life really incremental? Not really, I wonder why people haven’t started to go vertical there. I guess it is really an issue of access to money and materials, and the ability of bamboo to not be able to. It can’t grow any more. That is a problem. Are their legal issues that are limiting the nature of its growth? Dharavi kept growing to a certain extent. But, it can’t anymore. But, within Karail are many spaces of resistance. It is pretty clearly planned, does that make it a space of resistance? Wh...