• Empower Shack / Urban Think Tank

Architects: Urban Think Tank  
Location: Khayelitsha, Cape Town  South Africa
Project Team: Partners: Ikhayalami Development Services; Collaborators: De Villiers and Hulme, Transsolar, Arturo Brillembourg, Jessica Altenburger, Jonny Harris, Susan van Schie, Mathew Walton Associates, OKRA Landscape Architects, Ben Mansfield, Paul Carew Consulting, Information Architecture ETHZ, Managment Information Systems ETHZ
Project Year: 2014
Photographer: Jan Ras
Website: http://u-tt.com/

Local Architect: Design Space Africa
Sponsor: The Swiss Re Foundation
Support: Vhernier and Individual Donors
Leads: Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner
Coordinator: Scott Lloyd
Research and Design: Danny Wills, Marcin Kurdziel, Emma Flores, Clara Bitter, Daniel Schwartz
Collaborators: De Villiers and Hulme, Transsolar, Arturo Brillembourg, Jessica Altenburger, Jonny Harris, Susan van Schie, Mathew Walton Associates, OKRA Landscape Architects, Ben Mansfield, Paul Carew Consulting, Information Architecture ETHZ, Managment Information Systems ETHZ

From the Architects:
While South Africa is usually seen as a source of stability and prosperity in its region, approximately 7.5 million people live in informal settlements and the country faces an overall housing shortage of 2.5 million units. Arising from this context, Empower Shack is an interdisciplinary development project directed by U-TT and the local NGO Ikhayalami Development Services, in collaboration with the BT-Section community and associated local and international partners.

 

The ongoing pilot phase is focused on a cluster of 68 houses within the BT-Section of Khayelitsha. Through innovative design and organizational models, the project aims to develop a comprehensive and sustainable informal settlement upgrading strategy centered on four core components: a two-story housing prototype, participatory spatial planning, ecological landscape management, and integrated livelihoods programming.

Empower Shack / Urban Think Tank

Employing the socio-spatial “Blocking Out” process alongside new digital visualization tools and micro-financing, Empower Shack has created an interface between residents, professionals, and the government.

Empower Shack / Urban Think Tank

Together, with its partners, U-TT is developing an approach that responds to contemporary social, ecological, and market dynamics, and which will provide incentives for the state to extend tenureship rights. This would create a legally durable foundation for future incremental upgrading, as well as a system that can dovetail with established policy mechanisms.

Empower Shack / Urban Think Tank

The physical upgrading of BT-Section will be complete by the end of 2017, at which point a year-long evaluation project will monitor the outcome and plan for future upgrades in the region. In the meantime, the City of Cape Town is supporting the program as a pilot project for potential replication.

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