Architectural Design V-IX: Roots, Shaping African Urbanities (H. Klumpner)

Abstract

How can we design a Health Care Center for KIGALI / RWANDA between the informal city and agricultural wetlands, connecting neighborhoods with public health spaces and education infrastructures, in the context of rapid urban growth and the question of what constitutes an African city?

Objective

Students will emerge in our Chair’s “urban method-design” to step by step develop their individual prototypical design projects. They will address both architectural urban scales and will be guided to collaboratively develop a baseline scenario. Mapping, identifying existing and future challenges and opportunities, students will take the role of stakeholders and translate their demands and resources into different scenarios. They will design urbanistic concepts and translate them into an evidence-based prototypical architectural project- intervention. This prototype is the synthesis of a process in time and space on different scales. The design project will be framed as a narrative that is consequentially visualized and communicated in analogue and digital graphic representations. Conceptual ideas will be co-developed with partners of Kigali`s Department of Architecture and local students, overlapping research questions with policies and guidelines of the Kigali Green City Pilot Project.

Content

The basic thesis for this Studio Fall Semester 2022 is the design of a prototypical Health Care Center in Kigali, integrating socio-economic networks, promoting health, education, and the wellbeing of communities in alignment with Rwanda`s Green Growth, Innovation, and Climate resilience -strategies. By 2050 the global population will change from 70 % rural to 70% urban population, particularly in Asia and Africa. The State of African Cities report, produced by UN-Habitat in 2018 show, that foreign direct investment, if distributed into secondary cities, and smaller towns, could promote growth of local economies, and that decentralization could impact inequality, poverty, employment, and food security on the continent. Kigali city has been shaped by postcolonial urbanism, post-conflict-state building, and neoliberalism. Since the 1994 Genocide, Rwanda`s government has rewritten its history, setting strategic frameworks to promote, social cohesion, unity, and peace. Processes towards the restoration of human dignity are reflected through community programs, dialogue, economic and structural reforms. Strong governance, the revision of policies, masterplans and regulated urbanisation relate to interdependent development drivers that accelerate innovation, integration, agglomeration, and competition. Providing access to basic resources like clean water, electricity, education, healthcare, and sanitation facilities to all citizens, stresses the need to reduce widespread poverty and promote a middle in comes society by 2035. The landlocked country's economic growth and attractivity drive in the East African Community is supported by a ban on plastic bags since 2008, and making use of 21st-century technologies. Kigali has re-designed itself to be Africa`s model gateway city, a global example for implementing environmental cleanliness and leapfrogging future-orientated IT and startup sectors. `The Shanghai of Africa` has doubled in size in the last 20-30 years, driven by foreign investment, internal migration, and continuous urban growth. The contrast between densely populated hillside villages, gaping standards of formal and informal housing, blur notions of center, periphery rural and urban. Whilst many African and global cities battle desertification, build sponge cities, re-construct large scale-eco systems, to mitigate climate change, Kigali`s unique aquatic wetlands in the valleys are at threat. Degradation, increasing pollutant input come with human settling, farming and inadequate land-use along movement corridors. In collaboration with the University of Rwanda`s Department of Architecture (SABE) in Kigali, we our studio envisions trans-scalar processes and small-scale interventions, addressing the city's social and ecological challenges. The parameters of Kigali`s urban development and Green City Pilot Agenda will be translated into selected sites, sustainable systems and placemaking. The studio applies a systemic urban design methodology, responding to the urgent need for concrete projects that promote the well-being of communities, climate action, and the UN´s SDG targets. Policy recommendations and general advice to upscale prototypical concepts are already successful in other cities globally and apply to the Kigali Case. At the interface of architecture, urban -landscape design and art, design can create a measurable impact in cities increasing social justice, health, and wellbeing. The development of robust frameworks in environments that are adaptable to change, can enable process driven growth, long-term operational, environmental and social benefits in response to global, local, and site-specific conditions. The studio is an opportunity to engage in global south challenges, to imagine and model sustainable urban scenarios and to articulate a transformative architectural response interrelating the quality of the built and natural environment with systems of health and wellbeing.

Resources