INFORMAL ARMATURES

Written by Leo Robleto Costante

As the population increases within and adjacent to metropolitan boundaries, the number of self-constructed communities multiplies. African cities are increasingly at the forefront of this urban phenomenon where the numbers of informal growth are nothing short of gigantic. In the 21st century informality will become the new normal, and as such, design disciplines and academic institutions are beginning to pay attention to this new form of rapid urbanization.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Landscape Architecture has a long held tradition of being at the forefront of inquiry into multiscalar and multidisciplinary research as it pertains to landscape design. Central to this is the investigation of landscape systems within urban areas and how they can interact so as to create more robust and resilient ways of urbanization. Landscape is no longer an afterthought but a driving tool in urban generation. With this idea in mind the Harare Studio was launched as a testing bed of ideas for a city like Harare that is experiencing informal growth in a unique environmental stage.

The phenomena of informal growth was tackled by the studio as a central theme in reorganizing the future of the city. Informality was not seen as a problem, but as an opportunity to explore new ways in which services could be provided for poor communities through landscape armature strategies that coupled economic, social and environmental benefits. The traditional way of engaging with the informal city through retroactive approaches, (fixing what exists without catering for what is to come) was abandoned. Instead, the Harare Studio took a different approach by looking at the informal city preemptively, that is,designing for the future growth of these areas by bundling sites and services in a way that addresses the arising needs of these communities.

Landscape, in emerging cities, is usually an afterthought, a plane that gets conquered by human intervention. The need for shelter is more important than establishing a dialogue between what gets built and where to build. Yet landscape can become the incubator for disaster when it is ignored. As such Harare has a unique relationship to its dambos and to its agriculture, both conditions that should be addressed as starting points an endeavor to forecast growth in the informal city. These two factors can become generators of new relationships between building and site, a way to bring the informal city up to par with the formal city that surrounds it. It is a leveling of the playing field.

In designing for the informal city, existing conditions are as important as what any new proposals intend to implement. Strong social capital and economic models are deeply embedded in the way that informal dwellers conduct their daily routines. Therefore it is essential to incorporate as much of the existing logic into what the future vision for an informal settlement proposes. Simple occupation patterns like paths, nodes and the placement of houses can reveal a rich palette of tools from which the designer can operate. These patterns emerge out of a deep informal order, carefully assembled by the dwellers. By understanding where things occur, and why they occur there we can begin to understand informality in a new way. Not as a problem, but as a different type of neighborhood, albeit one that requires extra programmatic additions to complement the richness of the informal site.

With this in mind, the following projects establish a framework that develop ideas from the existing logic of the Hopley Farm settlement. The dambo and the nodal path system become centerpieces for the establishment of a new landscape framework and programmatic hybrids that preemptively address future growth. In these scenarios landscape systems are as important as the future self-built homes since they provide ecological, economical and social benefit. These benefits elevate an informal area like Hopley Farm into a more coherent, humane and sustainable urbanism.