In the SpotlightIn the Spotlight

Searching African Architecture OnlineBy Anne-Katrien Denissen

After working for over a year on the search engine for African architecture we are fi nally ready to put it online! Searching African Architecture is jointly developed by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi (Ghana), the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo (Mozam-bique), the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (South-Africa), the University of Pretoria (South-Africa) and ArchiAfrika (Netherlands).

Though it is only the beginning of a continuing process of expanding, we are very happy that this phase of the project is completed. The structure is built and we have started to import the fi rst data of all partners.

The search engine aims to locate information on African architecture, within institutes, organisations and digital resources all over the world. By locat-ing the information and making it digitally available if possible, we aim to contribute to the knowledge of, and interest for African architecture. Searching African Architecture is a starting point for anyone wanting to know more about African Architecture. It offers a great variety of information, from self-made pictures to scientifi c publications.From now on the above mentioned parties will continue to import the data of the information available at their institutes. Further on other institutes are invited to actively participate in this project and make their information accessible through Searching African Architecture as well. By doing so we can jointly achieve our aim!Do you want to contribute to Searching African Architecture by adding data or by editing the information we put in? Please contact ArchiAfrika for more information on how to do this.

Searching African Architecture is made possible through the fi nancial support of Stichting Dioraphte and the Prince Claus Fund.

http://www.searchingafricanarchitecture.org

Newsletter March 2009

Reports

Community Participation in Determining Standards in Spatial Planning: The case of peri-urban Kisumu, Kenya. By Regina Muchai The importance of appropriate planning standards has been emphasized by various authors and planning professionals. It is truly not a novel idea. However, a key justification to the use of appropriate planning standards is to enhance infrastructure affordability by both the municipalities and the community as well as to minimize the use of buildable urban land thereby improving shelter provision strategies for the urban poor. In Ke-nya, there have been efforts to reformulate the planning standards in the past years. Despite these efforts, these new lower standards have not been widely embraced by most of the local authorities while others have implemented them only on an ad-hoc and a project by project basis.

I am a trained and experienced physical planner and recently completed my masters of Science in the field of Urban Planning and Management (March 2009). I undertook a degree in Urban and Regional Planning. I have ample experience in the preparation of Integrated Development Plans of the upcoming towns in Kenya. This ranges from the develop-ment of tools for data collection, data entry, modeling and analysis using state-of-the art GIS and statistical packages to report writing. Typical data collected focuses on broad thematic areas that include the eco-nomic sector, human settlement, infrastructure, institutions, social and cultural sector, population as well as environmental data.

This study focussed on using participatory GIS as a method of work-ing with the community in determining the current situation within their settlements and comparing the proposed planning standards with what has been proposed within the national planning standards. How can the community be involved in planning and in particular in the setting of ap-propriate local standards?

The study findings indicate that the official planning process is a rela-tively cheaper but less collaborative process of achieving plans. The community participation approach on the other hand presents a rather expensive planning approach where the planning standards achieved are a result of deliberations of the community and the planning officials.

This approach therefore gives the community and the of-ficials an opportunity to partake in the planning process and thereby derive standards that are responsive to the socio-economic and spatial realities.

The study observes a difference in planning standards pro-posed from a community participation perspective and those stipulated within the official circles. While the standards ap-plied within the official approaches are still remarkably high, community participation indicates that it is possible to lower the planning standards as a collaborative process to meet the needs of the local community by whom the standards are negotiated, agreed and adopted.

Given the strengths and the weaknesses inherent in both processes and the standards proposed, the study concludes that the responsibility of determining the planning standards cannot be assigned to a single actor for effective urban de-velopment. Further to this, adopting Participatory GIS will enhance these planning processes as well as the deter-mined standards. The study therefore recommends a plat-form where all actors; state, municipalities and community can negotiate planning standards that are commensurate with settlement characteristics.

The Obunga informal settlement case study was undertaken through the use of 0.6 m Quickbird imagery and the Government plans. The gist here is to observe and compare the planning stan-dards observed by the government and those within the community approach in the low income area. For instance, access roads of 5-8 meters were proposed within a community approach as opposed to those within the official circles measuring 9-12 meters. This was achieved through a rationalization with the community members on the need for the standards and how they need and are willing to observe the standards. This was also undertaken for other services such as schools and health facilities.

This study briefly described above was carried out in partial fulfill-ment of an MSc course at the International Institute for Geo-infor-mation Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in the Netherlands. My master topic choice was motivated through my experience gained in planning the upcoming towns and towns that reflect dif-ferent characteristics as has been the hoped and anticipated trend. The study therefore sheds light onto how informal areas can adapt to the current urban realities.

My strength lies in the ability to combine planning skills with current technology in the use of mapping tools. I have developed a keen interest in Geographic Information Systems that have been used to map and analyze information collected on the ground. Softwares include ArcGIS, ArcView, AutoCAD, Ilwis, community viz, What-if and Adobe Photoshop. This knowledge has thus facilitated produc-tion of high quality work that is visually represented in tables and maps.

Further information on this work and other aspects concerning ITC can be obtained at: www.itc.nl or via www.archiafrika.org

‘Cities and Architecture in Africa’ in SPACE, Korean magazine on Architecture & Art.By Antoni Folkers

SPACE no 495, February 2009, Feature 02_Cities and Architecture in Africa 02, (pp78-113), edited by Lee Jung-ouk

SPACE’s commendable initiative goes beyond an ephemeral and su-perficial introduction of African urban and architectural issues. The large amount of - though be it bilingual - pages that have been reserved for this subject are proof of true curiosity. The chosen formula of inviting experts of international renown and diverse stock, coupled with data sheets and an ample amount of images, casts a broad and transparent perspective on the issues chosen. SPACE no 495 highlights the ‘comprehension of the African cities’, a fair starting point for further exploration and horizons.

After an introduction by editor Lee Jung-ouk the theme is unveiled through essays by R A Obudho, Fantu Cheru and Edgar Pieterse as well as inter-views with David Anderson, Jos Maseland and W Onyango-Ouma.

The overall picture is deeply pessimistic, full of depressing statistics and quotes from the great world institutions such as the WHO, Unicef and the Worldbank, confirming the gloomy perspective that Mike Davis in his Planet of Slums has depicted.

This perspective is not new. I must confess that I experienced a profound feeling of déjà-vu in reading these reports. The prophecies that influenced me in choosing Africa as my professional field in the late seventies of the last century sounded remarkably similar to these warnings, thirty years later. So do the analyses of the causes and the proposed frameworks for remedy such as the emphasis on diversion of attention from the rural to the urban and improvement of urban management systems. Nothing new under the sun so far.

With this I do not want to say that another wake-up call is useless. The sheer scale of the challenge of Africa’s urbanization differs from thirty years ago: when I started my work as assistant in the restructuralisation project of the spontaneous settlements in Ouagadougou in 1984 the city counted 250,000 inhabitants, today it could well be 1.5 million.

The recent establishment of the African centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town is a promising and new development because, as far as I know, it is the first time that the comprehension of the African City is under-taken from the academic architectural and urbanist’ background based on African soil. Edgar Pieterse, director of the institute, pleads for a paradigm change in this comprehension. He advocates the understanding and em-brace of the spontaneous, the vernacular, the popular dweller himself

- an unavoidability as the exploding population of the unplanned Africa city will make itself heard one way or another. This truly sounds like a new approach, distancing itself from the institutional panaceas, which proved insufficient to cope with the complexity of the hybrid African City, and provoke a certain feeling of fatigue and disillusion in reading some of the essays in SPACE 495.

Again, I had to think of Ouagadougou 1984. Sixty thousand house-holds - close to half a million inhabitants - of the spontaneous settlements obtained a ‘formal dwelling permit’ (Permis Urbain d’Habitation) and their own plot within the city according to the new masterplan by 1989. This was achieved by the combination of the down-to-earth approach coupled with an overarching masterplan guided by the DGUT of Joseph Guiébo, Gilbert Kibtonré and Coen Beeker. It was the interaction between well managed urban policy and city planning with an openness and willingness to truly involve the population itself that stood at the base of this success. The costs? Not more than $100 per household.

It is to be hoped that SPACE will continue its exploration in Africa and deepen the debate on contemporary and future architecture and urbanism in the issues to come.

Reports

http://www.vmspace.com

News

Is shared heritage of shared interest?By Berend van der Lans

During my trip to South Africa in preparations of the African Perspectives event in September, I took the chance to attend the CIE heritage day South Africa in Cape Town on 6 March. As mentioned in our Newsletter of November/December 2008 in the article by Hanna Leijen of CIE, the event was organized to enhance coherence between various initiatives on cultural shared heritage between South Africa and the Netherlands.

During the conference, papers on issues concerning maritime heritage, built heritage, archives and language were presented and discussed in workshops that followed. The day was organized within a framework, sup-ported by the Dutch government, and concerning shared heritage in the priority countries as identified by the Dutch government.

It was commonly concluded that there is only minor interest in heritage issues in South African politics, while political support is essential for suc-cessful inclusion of heritage issues in future planning. As Robert Carthe-sius stated in his introduction, heritage is only in the people’s minds, and does not have a meaning as long as the people do not see the importance of heritage values.

If one wants to become successful in implementation of heritage strate-gies for future development, it is clear that one has to take the policy mak-ers along. They can be addressed directly and indirectly. By organizing projects with the public and at schools, a wider support can be obtained. A more direct approach could be to organize training and workshops for city councilors and policy makers.

Now, how can one convince them to take part in this? What agent does one need to make policy makers see the need to take action on heritage issues? I wonder if the route along ‘shared heritage’ is the most convinc-ing one. Already during the conference, it was clear that we were talking on a more general level than the narrow focus on the shared heritage between South Africa and the Netherlands. The problems discussed were in a much wider interest than only the shared heritage.

If the Netherlands is concerned about the status of the heritage which is shared, one should firstly make sure that a broader support for care for heritage in the general sense is convicted. One should convince the policy makers, and the public, that the cultural heritage of a country, whether it be pre colonial, colonial or post colonial, tangible or intangible, is together with minerals and environment, the capital of the country. As it was stated during the conference, South African history did not start when the Dutch landed in Cape Town, but many years before! A sustainable policy to-wards the future can only be obtained successfully once this capital on the whole is used as a basis.

It is understandable that, to raise enough public and political support in the Netherlands, one need to show the interest for the Netherlands. Also it is understandable that one cannot tackle everything at once, and certain restrictions are unavoidable. However, chances for successful policies have to be taken into account and it is questionable if a message from Dutch parties to particularly raise interest for the ‘shared heritage’ will con-vince South African policymakers to give heritage issues the attention it deserves.

What might be the most useful effect from the CIE initiatives, is that South-South relations between the priority countries are being explored; exchanges of experience between the priority countries, selected by the Dutch, are often based upon former colonial relations. As Karin Lach-missing, Surinam writer, stated, there was a lot to share between herself and her South African colleagues, much more than there is to share with Dutch writers. These perspectives might contribute a lot to the position of the shared heritage, also for other disciplines than writing.

Agenda Topic

KNUST (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology, Ghana) architecture school awarded full accreditation by Commonwealth Architectural Association (CAA).by Dr. George Intsiful, Associate Professor and Senior Mem-ber of the Department of Architecture at KNUST.

The Department of Architecture initially received accreditation from the British Commonwealth Architectural Association (CAA) in 1969 and has, although not an easy task, retained it since. Ordinarily, the Department received the accreditation for five years and this meant that our students received the equivalent of the ARIBA PART II professional examination at the end of the six years training. Over the last ten years, however, the last two previous visits by the Visit-ing (Accreditation) Board gave us a conditional accrediatation for two years each time with conditions to be fulfilled. All the condi-tions have therefore been fulfilled and the Department has now received a full five-year accreditation. The Department’s products (graduates) will be accorded whatever recognition all holders of the ARIBA Part II receive. Additionally, the Department is one of about only four Schools of Architecture in Africa recognized by the CAA. Simply, the CAA recognizes and accepts the work that the Department does.

KNUST Architecture Main Hall photo by Claire Wilkinson

Delft University of TechnologyDe Twee Snoeken Automatisering

FBW Architectenbkvdl

Dioraphte Foundation

ArchiAfrikaP.O. box 14174

3508 SG Utrecht Netherlands

tel +31 (0)30 223 23 20 fax +31 (0)30 251 82 78

www.archiafrika.org

ColofonText

Anne-Katrien DenissenRegina MuchaiGeorge InstifulAntoni Folkers

Berend van der LansDesign

Rachel JenkinsEditing

Berend van der LansTranslation

Anne-Marie van den Nieuwenhof-Damishimiro FONDATION SHIMIRO, Pointe-Noire, Congo

Supported byArchiAfrika receives support from the following institutes and

organisations:Stichting Doen

Acquisitions Agenda

10 March - 15 April 2009Cities of the World: Exhibition Titus Matiyane,

University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa

19 March - June 2009In the Desert of Modernity

Exhibiton, Visits, Art Installations, Morocco

4 - 5 June 2009The Planned vs. the Unplanned City,

The Netherlands

21 - 22 July 2009NSF US - Tanzania: Advancing the structural use of

Earth-based Bricks, Tanzania

24 - 28 September 2009 African Perspectives, South Africa

12 - 14 October 2009International Conference on Sustainable Built

Environment Infrastructures in Developing Countries, Algeria

Granted: Granted by Amira OsmanLone Poulsen (2007) Brixton Urban Renewal Project: Brixton a neighbourhood in transition! LFi Media inc, Johannesburg.Granted by Brendon Bell-RobertsAntje Rickens-Körner (2003) Stone Town Styles of East Africa. Bell-Roberts, Cape Town.Granted by Godson EgboJohn Godwin & Gillian Hopwood [ed] ( 2007) The Architecture of Demas Nwoko. Farafina, Lagos.Granted by Iain LowIain Low [ed] (2008) Digest of South African Architecture 2008/2009. Picasso Headline, Cape Town.Granted by Institute for Tropical Architecture (IAT)Jimena Ugarte [ed] (2001) Architecture & Urbanism; Tropical En-counter 2. Institute for Tropical Architecture, San José.Jimena Ugarte [ed] (1998) Architecture & Urbanism; Tropical Encounter 1. Institute for Tropical Architecture, San José.Granted by International NewTown Insititute, AlmereD.H. Frieling [ed] (2007) Reasearch on New Towns; First Inter-national Seminar 2006. International New Town Institute, Almere.Granted by Júlio Carrilho & Anselmo CaniJ.Carilho, S. Bruschi, C. Menezes, L.Lage [eds] (2004) Traditional Informal Settlements in Mozambique: from Lichinga to Ma-puto. FAPF, Maputo.Granted by Karel BakkerEstelle Alma Maré [ed] (2008) The South Africn Journal of Art History: Space and Place (Volume 23 Number 1; 2008). SAJAH.Granted by Koen OttenheymInge Bertels [eds et al] (2008) Stadsgeshiedenis 3: Volume: 1, Issue: 2. Uitgeverij Verloren B.V., HilversumGranted by Lawrence EshoLawrence Esho (2009) The Mode of Extemporization: The Role of Informality in Reconstituting Formal Urban Spaces: The Case of Nakuru, Kenya. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Heverlee.Granted by ‘Ora JoubertAlec Wapnick (2008) Pretoria; Views from the Past. University of Pretoria, Pretoria.Hannes Meiring (1980) Pretoria 125. Human & Rosseau, Cape Town.Granted by Paul MeursPaul Meurs (2008) Building in the Stubborn City. VSSD, Delft.Granted by SPACE MagazineSpace Magazine; Lee Sang-leem (Publisher & Editor) #492 & #495, Seoul, Korea.

CD Granted by A. Jansen: Restoration of Tudor Chambers (2008) AJ Renovatum (pty) Ltd, Pretoria.CD Granted by Pretoria Institute for ArchitectureLiving Concrete. Cement & Concrete Institute

Purchased: Brace Taylor [ed] (1983) Aga Khan Award for Architecture: Reading the Contemporary African City (Proceedings of Seminar Seven in the Series: Architectural Transformations in the Islamic World held in Dakar, Senegal Nov 1982). Con-cept Media Ptc Ltd, Singapore.

Françoise Chabbert [ed] (2001) Titouan Congo Kinshasa. Galli-mard, Italy.

José Forjaz (1999) José Forjaz; Entre o Adobe e o Aço inox; Ideias e Projectos (Between Adobe and Stainless Steel). Editorial Caminho, Lisbon.

Landscape and Urban Regeneration - Head of Projects, Nigeria

We’re looking for an experienced Architect or Project Manager to coordinate an extensive portfolio of landscape and urban regeneration proj-ects. You will be an integral part of the Senior Management structure, reporting directly to the Partners. Current projects including memorials, golf courses, and urban regeneration of town centres. To be considered for this architect job, you must be self-motivated, proactive and innova-tive. You will be managing a team of up to 10 people, therefore excellent communication and coordination skills are required. You will also be dealing with architects, civil engineers and surveyors, as well as coordinating the in house design and delivery of projects. Preferred skills include programming, scheduling, resourcing, coordination of internal colleagues and external clients/contractors. This is an excellent opportu-nity to work with a successful international practice.

Send an email to architecture@adrem.uk.comOr apply online: www.adrem.uk.com