Omburo: the link between water access, re-housing and mycelium: From too little to too much

Namibia has been home to some of the world’s oldest ethnic groups since the dawn of civilization. One of these cultures is the Himba, often referred to as ‘the last true pastoral nomads’ of Africa. They are known for inhabiting the water scarce desert region of Kunene in Namibia for centuries. Now, various factors, including climate change and...

Grajaú for the next generation: How a new form of social housing provides a fostering living environment for the next generation of Grajaú

Children are the future. Providing a fostering living environment for the next generation in the favelas of Sao Paulo might enable them to break negative patterns of behaviour, so energy towards crime an violence is redirected towards productive ends for them and their communities. Gaining insight from the field of developmental psychology, this...

Monetizing Sommalife’s Social and Environmental Impact: Exploring opportunities for Sommalife to scale its impact and disturb the shea industry

Smallholder farmers in the Shea Industry live a challenging life. From lack of economic opportunities to climate change, if they are not helped their already troubling situation will worsen. Sommalife is a social startup who strives to sustainably improve the lives of rural farmers in West Africa by helping with production, protecting lands from...

Using design and entrepreneurship for inequality reduction in Colombia

This project addresses the inequality gap that exists between the city and the countryside in Colombia in terms of education, access to opportunities, and<br/>technology literacy. By using design and entrepreneurship together with the “Más Por TIC” foundation, we developed the program “1,2,3 x TIC”, an entrepreneurship program for rural...

Housing is Dynamic, Not Static: Shifting the Development of Affordable Housing with Circular Materials and Methods in Kenya

In the built environment, the continuous growth and expansion of urban areas worldwide have become alarming. The built environment is continuously developing in an unsustainable manner, and in the mid-term future, resources will be scarce if practices are not changed. Therefore, new building materials and methods need to be implemented to...

Towards Sustainable Urban Water Management in the Global South: The Case of Mozambique

Many cities in Sub-Saharan Africa struggle to access reliable and adequate quantities of potable water for diverse water requirements. Under pressure of climatic change, urbanization and economic development, freshwater resources are becoming scarcer. These pressures combined with outdated infrastructure, pose a giant challenge to the Greater...

An Architecture of Enablement: A Participatory Housing Process for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

An Architecture of Enablement documents the design of a participatory housing system in the context of Addis Ababa. It represents the first application of the principles put forward in Patterns of Participation. It focuses on formulating a new standard of housing applicable city-wide, perhaps even nation-wide rather than a particular, site...

Empowering the Urban Females: Creating gender sensitive mass housing in Addis Ababa

With almost 110 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is the largest and most populous<br/>country in the Horn of Africa. In the current trend of global urbanization, Ethiopia’s cities are rapidly growing. A tripling of the urban population is to be expected in 2050, putting a big pressure on the housing stock and employment opportunities. Addis Ababa,...

The exposition of aspirations: Embracing multiple ethnic groups within a smart replicable strategy that has the potential to transform into a specific matter

Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, is challenged by the phenomenon of rapidly growing urbanization. The city is targeted at the risk that fast-tracked urbanization will cause loss of existing habitats and socioeconomic qualities (Tesfaye, 2012). The initiated condominiums have caused a mismatch between the Architectural approach and the...

Development Induced Empowerment: The Roof Villages of Addis Ababa

The following design hypothesis addresses the spatial dilemma between city development and lack of tenure security of informal housing dwellers with a special emphasis on improving the economy of both of the individual households as well as supporting the development of the city.<br/><br/>The goal of the research and the main goal for the design...

Exploring the connection between arriving young adults and current residents of Addis Ababa: The redevelopment of bole sub city Woreda 14, Gerji, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The goal of the graduation studio is to research and design housing solutions that improve the livelihood of Addis Ababa’s urban dwellers. Combining analysis, planning and design, the participants of this graduation studio were challenged to use multidisciplinary research methods and tools to elaborate design proposals for the development of a...

The new arrival city of Addis Ababa: Creating resilient urban clusters for city's dwellers and newcomers

Ethiopia alone is one of the most rapidly growing countries not only in the continent of Africa but also in the whole world. The country is populated by almost 110 million inhabitants and only 20% of the whole population is living in the cities. Over 65% of the population from rural areas have started to follow the migration patterns from rural...

On the Fringe: Toward an inclusive City

In last decades, the housing sector have been going through profound transformations imposed by the society’s changes. The number of city dwellers is increasing all over the World, especially in the Global South where the shift from rural to urban life is still ongoing. Nevertheless, the resulting strategies to cope with the challenges that are...

Bridging Realities: A Response to Spatial Inequality in Mumbai & Nalasopara

In Mumbai, “two-thirds of the city’s (Bombay) residents are crowded<br/>into just 5 percent of the total area, while the richer or more rent-protected one-third monopolize the remaining 95 percent.” The Development Plans for Mumbai, criticized as “a form of ‘planned’ exclusion of the poor and the middle class”, have failed to address issues of...

Synergistic Heterogeneity: Fostering resilience through inclusive development for a transient population

From the very beginning, Mumbai, was made up of migrants. Its main population growth, at various points throughout its history, occurred primarily through migration. It was a popular place for people fleeing poverty, war and religious prosecution, as well as an attractive place for work and aspiration. ‘Floating populations’ or seasonal migrants...

LEVERAGING SOCIO-CULTURAL NETWORKS: Local adaptation strategies to bring about flood resilience in Chennai Metropolitan Area, India

This project is set in the Chennai Metropolitan Area (CMA) in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. Currently spanning 1189 sq. km, the region forms a unique delta with three rivers, namely, the Koshashtalaiyar, Coovum and Adyar, which eventually drain into the Bay of Bengal. With an estimated population of 10 million and a population density of...

An Informal Frame: Incorporating social & economic production of space in redevelopment of informal settlements

The objective of this research is to investigate to what extent the existing production of space in informal settlements is related to its social ties and economic needs, and how it can be incorporated into a strategic framework for future redevelopment schemes. This stems from the meteoric rise of informal settlements in the global south,...

Retaining a life together: Collecting courtyards in Addis Ababa

The thesis aims to develop a collective knowledge base and investigates design methods and strategies to provide housing in the developing territory of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia