Reciclagem do Grande Hotel Beira Mozambique: An open building intervention for socio-economic empowerment in Mozambique

Reciclagem do Grande Hotel Beira Mozambique: An open building intervention for socio-economic empowerment in Mozambique

Cruiming, R.
Cuperus, Y.J.
Mulder, A.

Architecture and The Built Environment

Architectural Engineering +Technology

2014-07-03

Poor economies find themselves in an almost no-win situation: They would benefit from improving the economic situations of the very poor by making them self-supporting and economically productive. However, the very poor are occupied by daily survival and thus cannot afford themselves to improve. This paper describes the status quo of a dilapidated hotel in Beira, a so-called vertical slum that is squatted by one thousand inhabitants trapped in self-sustaining poverty. It builds on the assumption that if a technical intervention creates conditions with clear lines of control, defensible space and basic conditions for trade and productivity the downward spiral can be reversed towards improvement. The concept of Open Building gives guidelines for a built environment that works based on a clear division of control. Then a proposal to improve the hotel is presented, based on Open Building levels of intervention: the urban fabric reconfiguring the base building and adding modular units that can house small businesses around collecting, recycling and selling materials. In the final analysis a scenario is painted as proof that interventions that create controllable space could be the first step towards improvement and could work as a template for similar cases.

vertical slum
colonial heritage
recycling
Open Building
self-empowerment

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6e562f0b-d75e-4647-9557-13a600d3f208

XV Union International des Architects congres "Architecture Otherwhere", Durban, South Africa, 3-7 July 2014

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2014 The Author(s)