The author's experience of low-income self-help housing in South Africa provides some cautionary lessons on the difficulties likely to be encountered in attempting to implement…
Abstract
The author's experience of low-income self-help housing in South Africa provides some cautionary lessons on the difficulties likely to be encountered in attempting to implement Community Asset Management. Where communities have seen the State co-opt them into accepting responsibility for those services and support for which the State has been traditionally responsible, the result has typically been resistance by the community and ultimately the failure of otherwise finely conceived policies. Only where the community hold the freedom to choose how to shape their lives in terms of those issues which form the basic stuff of life will it be possible to engage the energy, enthusiasm, imagination and commitment of local people to take charge of their own lives. Further examination suggests that blockages exist that will need to be taken into account if Community Asset Management is to be taken forward; these include: a mismatch between the expectations of funding agencies and the needs of local community groups; competing systems of delivery; the idealisation of the capacity of local communities to both manage and maintain community facilities over extended periods of time; unrealistic expectations of communities; the failure of development professionals to both understand and act on behalf of divided and competing interest groups; the inability to design for rapidly changing social, economic and political environments both locally, regionally and nationally; and a mismatch between noble intentions and end products.
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Robert Brown and Michael Theis
The reader might be forgiven for not being familiar with the term Community Asset Management. Indeed, doing a web search for ‘community asset management’ yields a disparate range…
Abstract
The reader might be forgiven for not being familiar with the term Community Asset Management. Indeed, doing a web search for ‘community asset management’ yields a disparate range of responses, suggesting connections to lessons from financial crisis, to knowledge management technology, to nutrition support in home care, to name but a few of the more interesting articles found in a preliminary web search. It certainly was not part of the lexicon in international development when the Max Lock Centre began using the phrase several years ago at the start of Department for International Development (DFID) - UK funded research on Community Asset Management (CAM) in India and Eastern and Southern Africa. Indeed, lack of recognition was one of the two reactions most often received when the term was first mentioned in discussions with various stake-holders in community development in these locations. Once the ideas behind CAM had been explained however, most quickly remarked something along the lines of, ‘Oh yeah, we're doing that’. (See for example MUTTER 2001; see also KRETZMANN and McKNIGHT 1993)
Amira Osman and Catherine Lemmer
The Department of Architecture at the University of Pretoria is working in the South African housing context while gaining knowledge of such issues worldwide. Various innovations…
Abstract
The Department of Architecture at the University of Pretoria is working in the South African housing context while gaining knowledge of such issues worldwide. Various innovations are being carried out in terms of housing design and delivery methods in South Africa. Through a methodical approach to design, it is believed that future architects will be able to answer to contextual needs without compromising the high standard of design expected by the Department.
This paper evaluates an exercise in open building principles, carried out in 2003, with post−graduate architecture and interior architecture students at the University. The focus was the application of open building principles from the urban design level to that of the building and the residential units. It involved the design of social housing and the upgrading of existing workers’ hostels into family units as well as the provision of social amenities. Students were to design various types of housing, showing alternative ways of ‘living’ and study housing in the area. The project involved close interaction with community representatives.
The area of study was located in Soshanguve, a township with predominantly black inhabitants, situated to the northwest of Pretoria. The previous political dispensation designated specific areas on the outskirts of the city as locations for black migrant workers, known as townships. Subsequently these townships have become cities in themselves, housing a large portion of the total population of Pretoria. It is here that there is a need for urban development and social housing.
Soshanguve offered an excellent opportunity for learning and the dissemination of good design principles in housing design. A debate on the relevance of open building to South Africa has been initiated. It is concluded that open building systems are an effective tool to achieve diversity and can accommodate for wider sectors of the population.
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Carin Combrinck and Caitlin Jane Porter
Despite the proven importance of co-design as a way of improving the social relevance of architecture, there is a lack of opportunity for meaningful co-design processes in the…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the proven importance of co-design as a way of improving the social relevance of architecture, there is a lack of opportunity for meaningful co-design processes in the current professional Master of Architecture programme in South Africa as it is largely modelled on the professional work stages of the South African Council for the Architecture Profession (SACAP), which are based on the assumption of primary authorship and authority of the architect.
Design/methodology/approach
This problem has been investigated by way of ten workshops with high school learners in the Mamelodi East township in South Africa, as part of a professional master’s degree in architecture.
Findings
The findings of the workshops indicate that the initial stages of design could benefit directly from the participation processes and could be critiqued constructively. However, increased resistance to the process by crit panels was experienced once the sketch design phase was completed and the expectation of primary authorship increased. Engagement of the learners in the latter part of the design decision-making process also diminished as levels of experience in spatial design became evidently further removed from the expected outcomes.
Research limitations/implications
In terms of co-design discourse and the evident value of participatory skills in practice, it is evident that the initial work stages of concept, brief and ideation are fairly easily assimilated into the pedagogical requirements of the degree programme and as such could enable a more socially relevant and responsive approach to professional practice.
Practical implications
The South African standard of practising architecture leaves little space for the process of co-design, even within the educational environment. The value of co-design within this context lies predominantly in the values and conversations generated rather than the aesthetics of the end product. The process of co-design opens up the opportunity for new dialogues to emerge and for relationships to form.
Social implications
Co-design illustrates how architectural intelligence can be exercised in a much broader spatial field that acknowledges more than just the building itself but social, global, ecological and virtual networks, thereby changing how the authors design, what the authors design and who designs it.
Originality/value
It is in the realm of co-design that the beauty of architecture oscillates between strangeness and the ordinary. If the authors embrace the power of the collective and collaborative thinking, the authors are able to conceive new ways in the making of architecture. In order to arrive at this, however, the straightjacketed approach of modelling the master’s programme on professional work stages and outcomes needs to be challenged so that true transformation of the profession can be enabled through its pedagogical instruments.