The aims of the study are the analysis and the development strategies of an informal settlement in the Township of Khayelitsha.
The research and the analysis carried out, during an internship with C.O.R.C. NGO, have been the basis for the following project strategy.
Field visits, meetings with the communities, photographs and drawings, have been fundamental for understand and show a difficult and particular reality like a South African’s Township, otherwise hard to understand.
The project strategy wants to show a different approach of slum upgrading, contrasting the tabula rasa’s process, and make the Township’s citizens leading actors of the informal settlements’s upgrading. The objective is first to make the site safer, working on the streets’s upgrading and making them the principals tools for a safety and healthy place.
A series of spots visually tied along the streets, are thought to create news public spaces and improve the settlement’s security. By a passive monitoring of the area, the inhabitants can control unconsciously each others and make the place safer. The second step is the design of a flexible housing unit, built following the strategy of a progressive replacement of the existing shacks reusing local materials. Providing an expandable unit, the citizens are involved in the construction process, making them the protagonists of the settlement’s evolution.
