The Private Sector In South Africa Comes Up With Affordable Housing Schemes

Cape of new hope

By Margaret O’Connor

Published: November 13 2009 23:36 | Last updated: November 13 2009 23:36

The 10x10 Affordable Housing project by Design Indaba in Freedom Park, South Africa

The corrugated iron and scrap shacks scarring the Johannesburg landscape in the recent sci-fi film District 9 embody stereotypes about where the South African poor live. But the country’s self-appointed guardian of design, in conjunction with 10 teams of “starchitects” and the national government, is trying to alter this for thousands of households.

Ravi Naidoo, the Cape Town-based founder of the annual Design Indaba conference and exhibition and a fixture on the international design circuit, conceived the 10x10 Affordable Housing project to create a better blueprint for homes that could be built for R50,000 (£4,000, $6,000) each – the national government’s housing subsidy. Global architects such as David Adjaye, Tom Dixon and Shigeru Ban partnered with local luminaries to conceive solutions that could be replicated countrywide and help the ANC-led government deliver on its promise to eradicate townships of jerry-built dwellings.

The challenge he has set himself has proved immense – but also produced revealing insights about the interaction between design and community and into the difficulties of making design work when the clients and professionals are from economies at very different stages of development.

Naidoo’s first step was to convince The Niall Mellon Foundation to set aside a parcel of land for 10 new homes in a township about 20km from the Cape Town city centre, where the Irish philanthropic organisation was already building new homes for 500 families. The participating architects grumbled, however, about the site, saying they would prefer to develop homes closer to the inner city so that residents would have easier access to schools, jobs and transport links. The government was unwilling to offer inner-city land for a much-needed exploration of high-density housing and municipal authorities were reluctant to endorse variations on street widths, drainage and electricity connections.

The second step was to create each individual design brief. The Development Action Group, a non-governmental organisation, ran a housing lottery for existing residents of the area. Each of the 10 winning families was assigned a pair of architects, who received a short film documenting their new clients’ wishes and passwords to a dedicated internet site to allow them to exchange ideas. But, working remotely before they had a chance to establish commonality or chemistry, the cross-border collaborators often struggled to agree on solutions. Some clashed over different interpretations of their clients’ needs and the cultural values of materials. A recommendation to use banana leaves, a plant not found in the Western Cape, for roofing on a site that is pounded by cold, winter rain was one of several misplaced attempts at sustainability by time-pressured non-South African professionals.

Internal power struggles also hampered several teams. The most dramatic occurred between Luyanda Mpahlwa and Will Aslop. Mpahlwa, a graduate of the Free University of Berlin with 15 years of European experience, objected to having “someone in London try to tell me what to do”. Agreeing to disagree, they pursued separate solutions. Other pairings followed a similar course and Design Indaba received a total of 14 affordable housing plans. Quantity surveyors assessed the building cost of each to ensure they were structurally sound and within budget but two blueprints that met both criteria were discarded because of Naidoo’s concerns about community reaction.

Henning Rasmus, a Johannesburg-based pioneer in developing prefabricated building solutions for logistically challenged markets such as Angola and Rwanda, engineered a home entirely from glass and a synthetic board material made of resin and recycled wood known as Versaqube. This low-cost material, developed and patented by a fellow South African architect, enabled Rasmus to design a R50,000 home that was 16 sq metres bigger than the programme stipulated. However, when news of this proposal reached their neighbours the client family received death threats. Allegations of unfair advantage to the family prompted Design Indaba to abandon Rasmus’s solution. “It would have been a dereliction of duty to give participants more or less than the government allocation. We couldn’t afford to cause a riot in Freedom Park,” Naidoo explains.

Building work under way using a sandbag and plaster technique

Other blueprints produced different challenges. Jo Noero, the inaugural winner of the Royal Institute of British Architects annual International Prize and former head of the University of Cape Town’s architecture school, proposed that his client family bring their existing shack to the project site, attach it to the back of a simple 25 sq metre home that the client had a role in configuring and generate instant rental income from the additional space. His proposal was based on his belief that good quality shelter is only part of the solution. He insists that integrating homes with quality public spaces as well as access to education, employment, and transportation is essential to creating a successful community.

“Government needs to recognise that shack dwellers use recycled materials at no cost to taxpayers. The desire to promote black pride by eradicating informal settlements demonstrates their middle-class view of development. I’m tired of this control freak approach which dictates what poor people get,” Noero says.

The pairing of David Adjaye and Martin Kruger also encountered political tensions. London-based Adjaye, born in East Africa to Ghanaian diplomat parents, was quoted in a US magazine asserting that: “Architects are good at building. They are not good at politics.” Meanwhile Kruger, best-known for the green design of BP’s Southern African headquarters but most proud of a crèche he built in the Brown’s Farm township, countered: “More architects need to become housing activists. Ravi started a critical debate – even if he came to it without appropriate architectural experience.”

A member of South Africa’s political aristocracy, Mpahlwa was the first architect to have his scheme – shortlisted for The Brit Insurance Design Award and included in a Design Museum exhibition in London earlier this year – built. He used a system developed by Cape Town’s Eco-Build Technologies that promised excellent insulation and ease of assembly and consists of a timber structural frame filled with sandbags. His clients initially objected because they associated sandbags with military bunkers and flood prevention but acquiesced when they learnt that a plaster finish would make their new homes resemble those of their middle-class neighbours.

Scaling the learning curve slowed construction – materials vanished from the site until security guards were appointed and the builder wrestled with practical problems of using a new material for the first time. Eventually David Jonkers, his wife and their six children under the age of 11 moved into the double-storey residence. However, the self-taught craftsman rejected the architect’s idea of securing the home by opening it to the street and encouraging community self-policing. Instead he barricaded his family behind a gate constructed from recycled metal, carving wooden owls, traditional symbols of watchfulness, to stand guard in the street-facing windows to complete his security plans.

Construction of other architects’ plans will require another round of private sector sponsorship. The Vodacom Foundation, a social investment programme run by one of Africa’s leading communications groups, is evaluating a proposal to bankroll the implementation of three new designs during the next year. Naidoo plans to build the next 10 homes on state school grounds. Local administrators and the regional education minister have agreed to allocate land adjacent to existing schools for housing teachers and in so doing hope to reduce the levels of vandalism and theft of school property, expand the range of extra-curricular programmes offered by resident teachers and help in the recruitment and retention of better-qualified teachers. The design developed by Adjaye and Kruger leads the list of those that could be rolled out next.

Meanwhile, the affordable housing debate in South Africa continues to engage new audiences. The launch of an Iziko South African Museum show, The Everyday and The Extraordinary, examining three decades of architectural design by Noero is attracting interest from architects, academics, students, the media, and design aficionados. In keeping with the theme of his 10x10 submission, Noero stated at last month’s launch: “Architecture is first and foremost a social art that is shaped by people and society.”

It seems that satisfying raised expectations about where – and how – people should live requires the 10x10 initiative principals to put aside their differences and figure out how to align their visions with those of government. But even if the pace at which better affordable homes are built accelerates, it is unlikely to outstrip the pace at which impoverished migrants and economic refugees assemble District 9-like dwellings.

‘The Everyday and The Extraordinary’, Iziko South African Museum, Cape Town, until November 30