This community engagement project, which was funded by SHLC’s Capacity Development Acceleration Fund, introduces urban planning and architecture students to the importance of participatory design and uses an upgrading project in Kigali, Rwanda, to increase understanding of strategies for ‘embracing informality.
A community workshop will help students to unpack the challenges of informal housing in Kigali. Feedback from the community and the outcomes of the workshop will be used to propose neighbourhood development that focus on the users’ needs and community dynamics. Students will immerse themselves into the real world of informal settlement living, allowing them to collect raw data from the community and interact with the potential users of their architecture project intervention.
Background
According to UN-Habitat, the key five slum deprivations are lack of safe water, access to sanitation, durability of housing, overcrowding, and security of tenure. The path to achieving these benefits for slum dwellers is the real issue and the major challenge, but rather than eradicate the informal settlement, physical upgrading with street networks and improved access to municipal basic services has proven to be an affordable solution to make positive social and economic changes in many cities.
As part of this project, the University of Rwanda’s architecture students will take part in a participatory community workshop to help them unpack the challenges of informal housing in Kigali.
The participatory design approach will be supported by lectures, readers, design charrettes, guest lectures and field visits. At the end of the trimester, students will be asked to develop spatial and systematic solutions to complex contextual housing problems that respond to community culture, across all scales of the selected case study as well as the social behaviors of the community it is designed for.
Project Outputs
Nothing found.
The project was led by Josephine Malonza from the University of Rwanda.
This research project ‘The Studio ‘IV’ Module – Kigali, Rwanda’ was funded by the Centre for Sustainable, Healthy and Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods (SHLC)’s Capacity Development Acceleration Fund. SHLC is funded via UK Research and Innovation as part of the UK Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund.