Diale S Takona - Undergraduate Architecture Thesis

EUROPE IS NOT MY CENTRE DIALE S. TAKONA UNDERGRADUATE ARCHITECTURE THESIS VIRGINIA TECH DIALE TAKONA 5TH YEAR B.ARCH

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MUM, DAD, LAKOI, AND MABELLE, THE LOVE AND CREATIVITY YOU INSPIRE HAVE BROUGHT ME THIS FAR AND WILL CONTINUE TO CARRY ME THROUGH. I CAN’T WAIT TO BRING YOU ALL ALONG ON THIS JOURNEY THROUGH THE NEXT PHASE IN MY LIFE.

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FOREWORD: This Thesis began as an exploration of Nomadic cultures in Kenya and the ways in which their lifestyles could influence the future of refugee housing. I looked into the way people from the Maasai tribe create a sense of place/placelessness as they travel along their journey. The Thesis was to be an exploration of “Journey.” The “Journey” in question was about refugees fleeing war in their respective countries, Maasai’s relocating in various seasons, and the potential for the two to interact or inform each other in terms of building practices, and the culture of communal living. To tell this narrative, a refugee camp case study site was picked, Kakuma refugee camp.

I read stories about how the Kenyan government was trying to shut down the refugee camp and gave the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) an ultimatum to provide a strategy to relocate residents by April 2021. This led to an idea in my Thesis about creating some type of structure that was portable and allowed residents to build a life wherever they went in a scenario where they were not allowed to stay in Kakuma.

The thesis question became about exploring “where does one go when they can’t go anywhere.” This proved to be a fruitless endeavor because it always led back to creating an advanced tent that would facilitate a nomadic lifestyle for the refugees being forced to leave. I felt like the Thesis was much richer, and it begged for so much more.

The first major turning point in my Thesis involved a deep dive case study into Kakuma refugee camp. I discovered why it was termed “The Invisible City.” People owned multiple businesses here, lived here for decades, and turned this place into their new homes, but they were not recognized as Kenyan citizens because of the land they occupied. This realization brought on the fact that maybe my Thesis was not about advocating for a life outside Kakuma, but perhaps a re-imagination life in Kakuma. I wanted to use my explorations to critique how the tent solutions and the refugee camp by-the-book solutions did not work well as longterm solutions. I wanted to present an alternate reality, perhaps a fictional one not bound by the laws of physics. This led me to Afrofuturism, which provided an avenue to create a portrayal of Kakuma’s future that existed outside the bounds of colonial governmental structures.

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The forms in this design are derived from a massing composition of different buildings from the four fastest-growing cities in Africa.

These creates the framework on which to begin to explore the type of movement that sci-fi cities facilitate. Textures are then applied to these surfaces to adhere to the material palette present in Kakuma right now. The program follows the story of 4 characters and creates a space for them to run their business. Not only does this add validity to the existence of Kakuma as a thriving city, but it also fosters a sense of empowerment for the residents who now have a home-based for their businesses. Each different room incorporates textiles as a way to connect the room to an African culture of the potential owner of the space. Textiles hold immense cultural significance, and incorporating them into the design further reinforces the identities of the different people that thrive in Kakuma. The last character serves as a speculative figure for what another addition to the design could be. Her inclusion in the Thesis emphasizes that other people in Kakuma are running successful businesses, and finding areas for them to call their own in the city is needed.

This documentation serves as a small dent in the conversation around refugee spaces. I learned a great deal and got to show up as my authentic self through this year-long exploration. I hope this body of work serves as a reminder to ALWAYS explore the insane ideas that exist in your mind and never let your creativity die.

Diale Takona

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THESIS STATEMENT

AFROFUTURISM AND ITS ABILITY TO COMBINE FICTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES WITH AFROCENTRIC AESTHETICS CAN BE USED TO IMAGINE THE WAYS IN WHICH LONG TERM REFUGEE SETTLEMENTS ADVANCE AS REFLECTIONS OF THEIR EVER-EVOLVING RESIDENTS

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CONTENTS INTRODUCTION....................................................................................... 10 KAKUMA REFUGEE CAMP, KENYA..................................................12 AFROFUTURISM EXPLAINED...........................................................22 PAPER ARCHITECTURE...................................................................... 30 SHANTY TOWN....................................................................................... 34 WHO ARE MY COLLEAGUES?..........................................................39 PROCESS WORK.................................................................................... 46 DESIGN WORK.........................................................................................52 CONCLUSION............................................................................................72

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INTRODUCTION In this thesis, Afrofuturism is utilized as a tool to visualize what an African solution to the evergrowing population in the Kakuma Refugee camp in Kenya could look like. Perhaps Kakuma can become a thriving futuristic community that contributes great financial wealth to the Kenyan government and a city where refugees can imagine creating a long-lasting and fulfilling life for themselves. The thesis explores movements such as; Afrofuturism, Paper Architecture, informal marketplaces as urban anchors, shanty building practices, and futuristic shanty town imagery.

These explorations attempt to not only make sense of the very real transition that Kakuma Refugee camp is currently undergoing but also speculate about its possible future as an economically independent city.

The title, “Europe is Not My Centre,” is a quote from a 1998 interview with Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène. In the interview, Oliver Barlet asks Sembène if his films are understood in Europe to which Sembene responds “Europe is not my center and I’m less concerned about the success of my films there” (Dewaele, 2007). He emphasizes that the target audience for his films is not in Europe so therefore it does not matter if his films are understood there. This statement embodies all that this thesis hopes to accomplish in its goals to envision the future of Kakuma not as a patchwork of humanitarian aid, but as a bustling city.

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Kakuma, Kenya on Map of Africa

1998 interview with Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène.

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KAKUMA REFUGEE CAMP Kakuma –termed “The Invisible City— was created in 1992 after the “Lost Boys of Sudan” arrived in the region. Located on the outskirts of Kakuma Town in the Turkana West District, Kakuma refugee camp began as a temporary settlement but has since grown to have a population of 196,666 residents as of July 2020 (“Kakuma and Kalobeyei population statistics”, n.d.). Like all other refugee camps, it was created as an emergency, temporary solution to people seeking asylum. However, the harsh reality of crises is that with little hope for resettlement, and the conditions in their countries of origin worsening, refugees living in Kakuma have no other option but to call this place their home. What started as a refugee camp decades ago now exists as a growing city of its own. There is an evolving culture of informal business ventures with refugees in Kakuma Camp holding jobs as drivers, teachers, guards, or translators. In the survey conducted by John Kluge, Timothy Docking, and Joanne Ke Edelman for the Refugee Investment Network, it was reported that 12% of refugees in Kakuma own businesses (Kluge et al., 2018). Most of the businesses are small corner stores, kiosks, food stalls, restaurants, and Internet cafes.

Located in a semi-arid desert, the surrounding areas do not provide much opportunity for agriculture. The area is known for extreme heat (40 degrees Celsius) during the day, infestations of snakes and scorpions, and frequent dust storms. Organizations such as UNHCR carry the responsibility of providing food and shelter for the people of Kakuma usually in the form of monthly rations (Romportl, n.d.).

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Map showing the various businesses in Kakuma

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Existing site in Kakuma, Kenya

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WOODEN GABLE FRAME SHELTER location: Ajuong Thok, South Sudan structure : bushwood, timber, bamboo roof Materials: tarpaulin, thatch, corrugated iron

wall meterial: tarpaulin, glass cladding, mud plastering, bamboo

floor options: tarpaulin, local natural material mat, platform open fire not reccomended inside Models i, ii, iii

Model i structure: Wood poles and brush sticks roof material: UNHCR tarpaulin wall material: UNHCR tarpaulin Dimensions: 13ft x 16ft area: 130ft2 estimated cost: $223

Model

structur and brus roof mat tarpaulin wall mat cladding floor ma tarpaulin Dimensio area: 13 estimated

transitional shelter global shelter “Shelter is contextual and there exists no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution which can be applied worldwide. Whilst emergency phase responses often o involve the provision of tents or emergency shelter, it is essential to ensure that shelter assistance programmes can evolve toward more durable and sustainable solutions maximizing, wherever possible, the use of local material, skills and building techniques.”

UNHCR Shelter and Settlement Section. (2016). Shelter Design Catalogue. https://cms.emergency.unhcr.org/documents/11982/57181/Sh elter+Design+Catalogue+January+2016

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The Family Tent footprint: 700ft2 weight: 121.254lb volume: 7.0629ft3 cost: $420

framed Ten weight: 191 volume: 12 cost: $700 Ideal for U suitable fo uses less s than family

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re: Wood poles sh sticks terial: UNHCR n terial: thatch g aterial: UNHCR n ons: 13ft x 10ft 30ft2 d cost: $229

nt 1.802lb 2.3601ft3 0 Urban areas or family of 5 surface area sur y tent

Model iii

Model iv

structure: Wood poles and brush sticks roof material: corrugated iron sheets wall material: thatch cladding floor material: UNHCR tarpaulin Dimensions: 13ft x 10ft area: 130ft2 estimated cost: $299

structure: Wood poles and brush sticks roof material: corrugated iron sheets and a mettalic rodge cap wall material: adobe plastering technique (bush sticks and plaster) floor material: UNHCR tarpaulin Dimensions: 13ft x 10ft area: 130ft2 estim estimated cost: $328

self-standing family Tent weight: 121.254lb volume: 7.0629ft3 cost: $420 enhances living space and comfort fire retardant re inner partition diveds space in two

REFUGEE HOUSING UNIT floor area: lightweight steel framing solar energy: 4h light/day modular weight: 352lb price: $1,150

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AFROFUTURISM EXPLAINED For a long time, fictional worlds that depicted future universes lacked Black and Brown people.

Afrofuturism emerged as a reaction to the lack of Black and brown people seen in science fiction books and movies. This movement combines historical fiction, digital fabrication, and Afroinspired imagery to imagine a future where problems concerning the African diaspora are solved without Western influence. Afrofuturism has its roots in music, literature, and the visual arts but has since evolved to include an infinite number of creative forms. At its core, however, the movement is about embracing the narrative that black people can be the heroes in their own stories and reclaim the narratives surrounding their existence. This research uses Ytasha L. Womack’s book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture as a foundational text to unpack the building blocks of this movement (Womack, 2013).

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Afrofuturism deals with the major themes of otherness, feminism, reclamation of culture, Utopian imagery, and the digital landscape. The ideas of otherness in the Afrofuturism movement stem from the belief that the way that Black people are treated in America could be comparable to how alien abductees are treated. The Transatlantic Slave Trade illustrates the narrative that black people were stolen from their land and now are forced to assimilate into American culture while still being othered because of their race. For this reason, the earliest onset of the Afrofuturism movement saw black creators trying to formulate spaces where they could feel safe. They looked beyond planet Earth to find these spaces. This fascination with Black people trying to carve out space for themselves be it on Earth or as “aliens” on other planets, led critic Mark Dery to investigate the reasons why there were only a few African American Science fiction writers.

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In his essay “Black to the Future,” Mark Dery points out that the unimaginable realities created in Science Fiction almost directly coerlate to the way African-Americans have been forced to live.

He writes “African-Americans, in a very real sense, are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements…moreover, the sublegitimate status of science fiction as a pulp genre in Western literature mirrors the subaltern position to which blacks have been relegated through American history” (Dery, 1997). With this discovery, Mark Dery coined the term Afrofuturism which he defined as an investigation into science-fictional realities where African-American culture is examined in the context of newly emerging technology. He used this term to describe the conversations that were being had around blackness, science fiction, and the Cyberculture springing up in the 1980s and 1990s. Mark Dery and his colleagues Kodwo Eshun, Greg Tate, and Mark Sinker were among the first few thinkers to engage the dialogue that built Afrofuturism (Womack, 2013).

Music had a major influence on the emergence of Afrofuturism because it created an avenue for new technologies and imagery to be explored.

Artists such as Jimi Hendrix began using reverb on his guitar which up until this point was unheard of. According to Womack, the movement saw music that “[embodied] the times but literally sounded out of this world” (Womack, 2013 p.

55). Some of the notable Afrofuturist soundtracks include Sun Ra’s Space is the Place”, Parliament’s “Mothership Connection”, and Jimi Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland”. “Space is the Place” by Sun Ra is considered one of the most important musical pieces in Afrofuturism because it began to define an aesthetic for the movement. “Space is The Place” follows Sun Ra, a being from outer space, who returns to 1970s Oakland, California to convince young Black people to return to outer space with him. After competing in a card game with the satanic overlord, holding a concert for the World, and almost being assassinated by the FBI, Sun Ra carries victory and saves his people in the nick of time (Northwest Film Center, 2019).

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“Space is the Place” by Sun Ra

Parliament’s “Mothership Connection”

Science Fiction writer Octavia Butler

Sun Ra in his film “Space is the Place”

Marshall Allen of Sun Ra Arkestra in concert

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“THE IDEA OF USING SCI-FI AND SPECULATIVE FICTION TO SPUR SOCIAL CHANGE, TO REEXAMINE RACE, AND TO EXPLORE SELF-EXPRESSION FOR PEOPLE OF COLOR, THEN, IS CLEARLY NOTHING NEW. THE BLACK VISIONARIES OF THE PAST WHO SOUGHT TO ALLEVIATE THE DEBILITATING SYSTEM AND END THE RACIAL DIVIDE USED THESE GENRES AS DEVICES TO ARTICULATE THEIR ISSUES AND VISIONS.” - YTASHA L. WOMACK Both Sun Ra and George Clinton used music to push the boundaries of musical technology at the time to create new sounds and channel imagery that allowed black people to place themselves in the Cosmos. The messages prevalent in Afrofuturism not only spread quickly through music, but the popularization of the Internet sped up this process.

The inception of the Internet allowed Afrofuturism to reach a larger audience because it facilitated an easier way to engage in these kinds of conversations. Alondra Nelson launched an AOL listserv in the 1990s where college students could gather to discuss space, technology, black culture, and art with science fiction as the lens through which the topics were being examined (Womack, 2013 p. 18). Nelson used this listserv to connect with more people who were interested in discovering the ties that science fiction shared with Black culture in America. The conversations in the listserv uncovered that in the history of African writing and art, there existed an embracing of the supernatural as a way to challenge existing power structures. These power structures ranged from Colonialism and White Supremacy to Racism and Sexism. However, they were often explored through the world of Science Fiction. Afrofuturism still holds Sun Ra, George Clinton, and Science fiction writer Octavia Butler as figureheads of the movement.

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The fictional world exaggerates real-world problems in an attempt to expose the true nature of these issues. For example, the film District 9 tells the story of an alien species nicknamed “The Prawns” who appear in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1982. The humans place them in refugee camps in order to provide them with the basic needs of survival. There is minimal government effort directed towards the upkeep of this settlement, and it eventually begins to deteriorate.

A member of the alien population from the film District 9

The alien invasion scene from the film District 9

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“IMPROVISATION, ADAPTABILITY, AND IMAGINATION ARE THE CORE COMPONENTS OF THIS RESISTANCE AND ARE EVIDENT BOTH IN THE ARTS AND BLACK CULTURES AT LARGE.” - YTASHA L. WOMACK

28 years later, the refugee camp is an eyesore and the government tasks the Munitions Corporation with forcefully evicting the alien population. In addition to this forced eviction, the aliens are also ostracized, looked down upon, and generally not welcomed amongst the locals (Chisholm, 2009).

This is all reminiscent of how black South Africans were treated during Apartheid. District 9 was based on real events that took place in South Africa’s District 6 neighborhood during the time of Apartheid. District 6 was a thriving community of about 55,000 non-white people. The community was described as a cultural hub until the 1940s when the South African government declared it a ‘White’s only’ area. This is when they began to demolish homes and implement the forceful relocation of all South Africans in the neighborhood who were not white. The neighborhood became a famous example of the suffering that apartheid inflicted on South Africa as a nation hence the reason that movies like District 9 began to find ways to tell its story.

Using Science Fiction to tell this story put into perspective the massive injustice that people who were perceived as different, or even alien, endured in District 6. This practice of using fiction as a means to critique society rings true in a lot of Afrofuturist works to date (District six, n.d.).

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Map of District 6

District 6 prior to February 11, 1966 when it was declared a “White’s Only“ area

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PAPER ARCHITECTURE The aesthetics in Afrofuturism were not created with the intention to ever be translated into reality, but instead to expose injustices in society. For that reason, one could draw parallels between Afrofuturism and the Paper Architecture movement. Paper Architecture was a movement that spurred in Soviet Russia in 1984 when a group of Architecture students from the Moscow Architectural Institute began to create imaginative, dystopian works that criticized the dehumanizing nature of Soviet Architecture. Soviet Architecture featured buildings that were cheaply made with not much care allotted to their design. Yuri Avvakumov, Micheal Belov, and Alexander Brodsky are thought to be the originators of the movement (“Yuri Avvakumov”, n.d.).

The movement spread through a series of competition entries. International competitions served as a good vehicle to explore the ideas of whimsy in architecture because these competitions existed outside of the strict constraints of Soviet Architecture. Drawings allowed these young architects to create buildings beyond their wildest dreams. The common elements in their work were “precariously drawn scaffolding buildings, classical domes, glass towers” (Piepenbring, 2015).

The aesthetic of this movement also borrows from Post-modern imagery. This movement was a blatant form of protest because it showed a direct reaction to being artistically suppressed. In looking at the pieces from the Paper Architecture movement “Contemporary Architectural Art Museum”, “Doll’s House” and “Glass Tower II” the theme of the sublime rings true (Onion, 2015). All of these pieces aim to make a commentary on the existential dread that people at this time seem to be feeling. This dread was fueled by the monotony of modern architecture.

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“Contemporary Architectural Art Museum” by Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin

“Doll’s House” by Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin

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“Glass Tower II” a piece by Paper Architect duo Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin aims to formulate a critique by presenting an alternate universe where a tower is created to project an image to the city of any man that walks into the tower. This commentary calls to question the idea that perhaps the creation of these lifeless towers during that time in Soviet Russia was a reflection of the human ego (Meier, 2015). The skyscrapers existed only as symbols of power and the only way to make other people feel the intensity of this critique was to create these kinds of exaggerated illustrations. The duo’s other piece, “Columbarium Habitabile” tells the story of a museum created to mourn the death of the communal apartments torn down to build modern high-rise apartment buildings in the city. The title of this etching translates to “Museum of Disappearing Buildings” and shows older buildings being preserved in the same way one would preserve the ashes of a dead loved one. The narrative in this museum is that each of these buildings begs for the attention of the visitors to the museum so much so that if someone overlooks one of them, the massive ball in the middle swings to destroy it. The drawing is nostalgic about a time before modernization when people were perceived to have more individuality and self-expression. Paper Architects were rejecting the elimination of these classical houses because they were a large part of Russian history. The most common type of housing in the Soviet Union before the 1980s was the communal apartment. The group of families that lived in these communal apartments would share a kitchen, bathroom, and telephone room. Although this style of living grew to be unhygienic, inefficient, and cramped, Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin associated communal apartments with feelings of nostalgia hence the reason their reactions to modernism were so strong. They began to create buildings that would store their feelings of nostalgia towards past forms of building and clearly illustrate their disdain for modernization.

The museum setting was chosen in an attempt to preserve not only architecture but to preserve childhood memories as well (Crowley, 2012).

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Columbarium Habitabile by Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin

“Glass Tower II” by Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin

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SHANTY TOWNS

SHAN·TY (n.) / ’ shan(t)ē/ A small, crudely built shack.

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Shanty towns are a form of informal settlement found on the outskirts of large cities. They are sometimes referred to as squatter settlements and are usually built on land that was previously considered uninhabitable (Sheth, 2017). It is not uncommon for these types of settlements to lack urban planning, established sewer systems, or access to clean water (“What are shanty towns/favelas?”, 2018). The populations in these settlements are often impoverished with most people working either domestic jobs or trade jobs.

The largest shanty towns globally are Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa; Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya; and Dharavi in Mumbai, India. Shanty towns develop for many reasons but the three main ones discussed in this thesis are rooted in racial discrimination, colonization, the East African refugee crisis, and poverty. This research does not aim to turn a blind eye to the often dangerous and unlivable conditions in shanty towns, but instead aims to highlight some of the positive factors that occur as a result of their growth.

Exploring shanty towns also requires an exploration of the parameters that define one type of living as formal and another type of living as informal. For the sake of this thesis, informal cities are defined by “extra-legal housing and unregistered economic activities” (Hansen & Vaa, 2004, p. 5). These settlements are usually on government-owned land but the government does not have any obligation to the people living on these unregulated plots. For this reason, people living in informal cities are often tasked with building their own homes, finding jobs in markets that are unregulated by the government, and creating their own infrastructure to support their lifestyles. Conversely, formal cities “[consist] of the urban government and its agents, institutions and rules and regulations that over time have been introduced in order to control urban space and economic life (Hansen & Vaa, 2004, p. 8).

Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa

Dharavi in Mumbai, India

Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya

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“CAPE TOWN WAS CONCEIVED WITH A WHITE-ONLY CENTRE, SURROUNDED BY CONTAINED SETTLEMENTS FOR THE BLACK AND COLOURED LABOUR FORCES TO THE EAST, EACH HEMMED IN BY HIGHWAYS AND RAIL LINES, RIVERS AND VALLEYS, AND SEPARATED FROM THE AFFLUENT WHITE SUBURBS BY PROTECTIVE BUFFER ZONES OF SCRUBLAND” - OLIVER WAINWRIGHT

Both formal and informal cities present their own set of issues. The biggest problem, however, is that while formal housing aims to present a solution that fits people’s basic needs, this methodological system of building cannot keep up with the rapid growth of the city. Informal settlements allow for housing to go up quickly because there are no laws to bypass. One does not have to think about zoning laws, building codes, and legal issues when building in an informal settlement because the process functions on a more individual basis.

These housing restrictions do not accommodate rapid growth or create cheap housing solutions for poorer populations of people (Hansen & Vaa, 2004).

Khayelitsha Township, Cape Town, South Africa With a population of 2.4 million people estimated to be living in the Cape Town slum of Khayelitsha, it is considered one of the largest informal settlements in the world. Its creation dates back to Apartheid, and it exists as a reminder of that dark period in South African history. To understand the history of Khayelitsha, one must first understand the history of Apartheid and how it resulted in the creation of Townships. Apartheid was “a system of legislation that upheld segregationists’ policies against non-white citizens of South Africa” (History.com Editors, 2010). It officially began in 1948 after the all-white political party, The National Party, took control of the South African government. They enforced laws and regulations that restricted everything that non-white people could do including where they could and could not live. This resulted in the creation of Townships.

Townships were areas in the city designated for Black residents only (History.com Editors, 2010).

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In order for these residents to venture into other parts of Cape Town that were designated as “white-only” spaces, they had to carry special documentation to identify themselves.

Division of Captown by race during Apartheid

During Apartheid the city center was marked as a “White-only“ area. This graphic shows how land was allocated to other races with Africans pushed to the extreme boundary of the city.

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The Group Areas Act adopted in 1950 established these different areas of the city as places for different races to occupy. These areas were often located so far outside the city that black people were forced to commute long distances to get to work. This led to the creation of illegal/informal settlements such as the Crossroads neighborhood.

Crossroads was created when workers were forcefully removed from Brown’s Farm and relocated to a barren piece of land. When they arrived, there was no infrastructure set up, and they had to develop housing from the scraps they could find (Wainwright, 2014).

In 1975, the population of Crossroads was forcefully evicted again and moved to Khayelitsha (“Crossroads Township”, n.d.). In recent years, Khayelitsha has grown into a city with a vibrant economy. 75% of the population still live in shanty homes, and the remaining percentage live in government-built homes. The most common forms of employment in the area are domestic work, service work, skilled manual labor, unskilled manual labor, and security services (“About Khayelitsha”, n.d.). Although the living conditions in this township are unideal and at times unsafe, the community has still found a way to “incrementally [transform] its neighborhoods and settlements…into vibrant spaces with a unique mix of spaza shops, hairdressers, carpenters, welders, and other informal traders and service providers” (Cole, 2013). The creativity that comes with the need to improvise is of great importance to the central ideas explored in this thesis.

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Khayelitsha, South Africa

WHO ARE MY COLLEAGUES? In combining the various areas of research present in this thesis: Afrofuturism, Paper Architecture, Shanty building methods, shantytown organizational structures, and the Kakuma refugee camp, one can identify a few precedent projects.

The projects examined in this research include “Shanty Megastructures” by Olalekan Jeyifous, Warwick Junction in Durban, South Africa, “Agbogbloshie Makerspace platform” by Yasmine Abbas and Low Design Office, and “Fictional Futuristic Shantytowns” by Dionisio Gonzalez.

These projects can be grouped into two categories – projects that deal with the scale of the building and projects that tackle the scale of the city.

“Shanty Megastructures” and “Fictional Futuristic Shantytowns” are speculative works about how buildings in shanty towns could exist in the near future. Warwick Junction and “Agbogbloshie Makerspace platform” demonstrate how informal market spaces can act as urban anchors.

Combined, the study of both scales could begin to create the basis for a design imagining the future of Kakuma Refugee Camp.

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“FICTIONAL FUTURISTIC SHANTYTOWNS” BY DIONISIO GONZALEZ

Dionisio Gonzalez is a visual artist from Spain specializing in Surreal architectural representations. Much like the Paper Architects in Soviet Russian and the Afrofuturist writers, the whimsy in Gonzalez’s work creates a space for him to make “philosophical, political, sociological, [and] historical statements” (Dionisio González Archives, 2017). His project “Fictional Futuristic Shantytowns” was inspired by his extensive travels through the Favelas in Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His designs for these futuristic Favelas blend the patchwork nature of traditional shanty building practices with steel and glass elements from modern architecture to create a hybridized form of living. He describes his creations as architecture that combines “chaos and beauty.” A lot of his designs are driven by reimaging favelas as more structurally sound dwellings through the use of concrete elements.

While introducing these new elements, he still preserves the old ones as an ode to their history and the people that built them.

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OLALEKAN JEYIFOUS “SHANTY MEGASTRUCTURES”

Olalekan Jeyifous is a Nigerian-American Visual Artist based in New York. His works center around bringing to light injustices that Black people in Africa and the African Diaspora face. He accomplishes this by exaggerating them through Afrofuturistic imagery. His project “Shanty Megastructures” features a series of photographs showing Lagos, Nigeria built with these highrises constructed in the patchwork style of Shanty homes. The massive high-rises were created to shed light on the fact that those living in Shanty towns are often neglected in the city. “The dispossessed are given prominence and visibility, albeit through a somewhat dystopian vision, which highlights that these communities often suffer from a lack of appropriate sanitation, electricity, medical services, and modern communications” (Gibson, 2016).

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Agbogbloshie Makerspace platform Agbogbloshie, Ghana is known as the world’s largest dump for electronics making it an environmentally toxic place for its residents.

Architects Yasmine Abbas and Architecture firm Low Design Office set out to design a network of maker space structures for the people of Agbogbloshie. Their design centered around reframing the narrative used to discuss this community from one of pity to one of possibility. It was paramount to their design for the maker space to rebrand Agbogbloshie as an “urban-scale openair manufactory” (Potter et al., 2019) instead of an “e-waste dump.” The conditions that existed for this design include a large network of technicians in the area who refurbish the electronics that are sent there and then resell them to a larger market.

The design aimed to create a modular structure that could serve multiple functions and aid in the organization of this open-air manufactory (Frearso, 2016).

At the core of the design, the maker spaces are created “ to assist grassroots makers to gather the resources and tools that they need for their specific area of production, to learn through shared practice and to produce better quality items in larger quantities” (Potter et al., 2019). The mobile workstation can be assembled quickly and efficiently, because it uses an iron truss frame and recycled tires. The architecture can stand alone or be replicated as a system throughout Agbogbloshie.

The project embodies the duality of creating African futures by recycling the already existing building methods while sumutaneosly introducing new technology to elevate these existing systems.

This design approach shifts from the usual “What’s the problem?” to “What’s possible?” (Potter et al., 2019). This is the kind of design thinking necessary to ensure that as a society, we are not labeling everything that did not originate in the Western world as intrinsically flawed but instead looking at the possibilities that it holds.

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Warwick Junction Warwick Junction is South Africa’s largest commerce and transportation hub. It is composed of three different markets located on a repurposed highway. Historically, informal traders have been shunned and discouraged, especially under The Group Areas Act passed during Apartheid.

In 1973, the Natal Ordinance was introduced, which allowed informal traders to operate their businesses under very strict rules and regulations.

They could not legally sell goods in the same place for more than 15 minutes which limited the scope of products they were able to sell (“Warwick Junction Urban Renewal Project”, n.d.).

During apartheid, Warwick Junction served as the sole entry point for Black people into the city of Durban, which was considered a “whites-only” part of the city. Today, the area has “over 460,000 commuters pass through the transport node every day, making use of the main railway station, the five bus terminals, and nineteen taxi stands.

Additionally, the area attracts large numbers of street traders: between 6000 and 8000 street traders engage in a variety of activities ranging from traditional medicine, clothing, food, music, fresh produce, arts and crafts” (Karssenberg et al., 2016, p. 243). All the areas of commerce are organized into nine different markets on the site. Although Warwick junction has existed for years, it was not until 1995 that there was an official governmental push to revitalize it into a commerce hub.

The redesign required planners to study the patterns of informal traders in order to create an effective community for them to thrive. The design was based upon how the traders interacted with each other, how they interacted with their customers, the kinds of goods they sold, and the ways in which they acquired these goods. Taking these factors into account allowed planners to create low-cost ways to organize the space. Some of the major changes they made were, increasing the size of pedestrian pathways, providing access to water and electricity, adding places for traders to store goods, and adding shading structures (Karssenberg et al., 2016).

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PROCESS WORK

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DESIGN WORK Collage is used in this Thesis as a generative process to begin to imagine the future of Kakuma.

The first collage presents a future where mudbrick, corrugated metal, and sticks are used to add one more tier of existence to the city. The second collage overlays this imagery on a nearby major city, Nairobi, to speculate how these materials would interact. The third collage overlays Kakuma, Nairobi, and Lagos to see how this future would like as the population of Kakuma begins to grow tremendously. This final collage creates multiple levels on which cars and pedestrians can move throughout the city.

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“Cloud Atlas”

A process of analyzing Science-fictional cities such as Blade Runner and Could Atlas solidified movement as the main focus of an exploration of Futurism. Sci-fi cities are usually very densely populated, which facilitates all types of movement throughout in the city. There is the movement of flying cars, pedestrians on holographic roads, drone technology etc. This movement provided a framework on which the Afrofuturistic depiction of Kakuma was built.

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“Blade Runner”

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This method of creating forms takes the control of the design outcome out of my hands as the designer of this Thesis. This further emphasizes that the residents of Kakuma would be building these structures so only they could predict what the structures look like, how they operate, and how one moves through them.

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Once the material palette of corrugated metal, sticks, and textiles is added to these forms, this type of structure begins to emerge. The design creates various tiers of existence in the city for both vehicles and pedestrians. It speculates how these forms can spring-up in various parts of the city as the population of Kakuma grows.

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To examine the composition of these forms, characters were chosen from a series of interviews UN Women did in Kakuma. These interviews highlighted women in Kakuma who were trailblazers in terms of entrepreneurship. The Thesis design created a space for each of these characters. A playground, market places, and barbershop were added to this commerce-hub as extra program. These extra spaces, however, do not have characters attached to them.

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name: Amina Rowimoh Hortense Age: 25 Nationality: Congolese Occupation: Film maker, Kakuma Film School owner and educator Strengths: creativity, cre ambition, passionate Quotes: “Most of the stories I tell [through my films] are to make people realize what pain others are going through...I use the power of film to speak for them.”

NAME: AMINA ROWIMOH HORTENSE AGE: 25 NATIONALITY: CONGOLESE OCCUPATION: FILM MAKER, KAKUMA FILM SCHOOL OWNER AND EDUCATOR STRENGTHS: CREATIVITY, AMBITION, PASSIONATE QUOTES: “MOST OF THE STORIES I TELL [THROUGH MY FILMS] ARE TO MAKE PEOPLE REALIZE WHAT PAIN OTHERS ARE GOING THROUGH...I USE THE POWER OF FILM TO

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SPEAK FOR THEM.”

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NAME: BEATRICE SILAS KASIBA AGE: 28 NATIONALITY: BURUNDIAN OCCUPATION: DRESSMAKER, EDUCATOR, ACTIVIST, OWNER OF KAKUMA DESIGN SCHOOL STRENGTHS: CREATIVITY, PATIENCE, DETERMINATION QUOTES: “LOOK AT ME,” SHE SAYS. “I MAKE DRESSES. I GO TO CLASS. I AM A TRAINER. I GET MY OWN MONEY. I HAVE LEARNED TO BUDGET AND SAVE. I LEARNED MOBILE

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BANKING. I FEEL LIKE I AM IN A NEW WORLD!”

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name: Nyamam Gai Gatluak Age: 17 Nationality: South Sudanese Occu Occupation: Student, aspiring Software Engineer, educator, Manager at Al-mahal Cyber Cafe Strengths: coding quotes: “not many girls and women are in the field. Maybe I can create an app that teaches girls coding, even girls in rural areas [and refugee camps].”

NAME: NYAMAM GAI GATLUAK AGE: 17 NATIONALITY: SOUTH SUDANESE OCCUPATION: STUDENT, ASPIRING SOFTWARE ENGINEER, EDUCATOR, MANAGER AT AL-MAHAL CYBER CAFE STRENGTHS: CODING QUOTES: “NOT MANY GIRLS AND WOMEN ARE IN THE FIELD. MAYBE I CAN CREATE AN APP THAT TEACHES GIRLS CODING, EVEN GIRLS IN RURAL AREAS [AND REFUGEE CAMPS].”

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Barbershop

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Open-air marketplace

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CONCLUSION

In this thesis, Afrofuturism is utilized as a way to visualize an African depiction of the ever-growing population in the Kakuma Refugee camp in Kenya. Perhaps Kakuma can become a thriving, commerce-based community that contributes great financial wealth to the Kenyan government.

The creation of a space for each of these characters serves as a tool for empowerment and a way to project growth in Kakuma. There exist many more characters, some unheard and unseen, whose stories need to be told. This thesis lives on to speculate who these people are and how their futures unfold.

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