An Innovative Learning Facility towards basic service provision within informal settlements

Abstract

According to the UN-Habitat, Africa has one of the fastest rates of urbanisation and it is expected that Africa will double its urban population by 2050 (UNFPA 2007: 7). The relevance of this is that informal housing accounts for 62% of Africa’s urbanism, thus, informal settlements become Africa’s real city. Despite this, academics suggest that the pedagogy has not yet explored the complex dynamics of informal settlements enough to suggest apt solutions for future development (Pieterse 2011: 8-20). This can be due to the lack of what is described as “engaged theory making” prompting for a shift away from “Northern” functionalist theories, catered towards solving perceived issues of informality, towards a practical approach that sees the value of incremental change (Duminy et al. 2014:4-5). Furthermore, architectural practice up to recent years has excluded itself from this discourse due to its elitist nature resulting in an ever-present gap between practical applications within practice and theoretical speculations within the pedagogy (Meyers 2011: 14). Therefore, the critique towards architects is that for the field to remain relevant architecture must adapt and move away from its past exclusivity through redefining the role the architect has to play within the sustainable development of our African cities (Osman 2015: online). Not as a static specialist with sole authorship, but as a spatial agent who works within emancipatory theories to incrementally design a new way of seeing informality as part of African urbanism (Awan, Schneider & Till 2001: 30-34). This intricate narrative within informal settlements has the potential to play out through exploring the gap architects can fill between local communities and the government (Perold et al. 2019: 96-97). This is especially true when thinking of ways basic services are being provided as a form of incremental upgrading (Drimie et al. 2016: 262-275). Emphasis is specifically placed on the need for innovative ways services such as sanitation (Komakech etal., 2018:14-19), education (Huchzermeyer & Karam 2006: 53) and healthcare (Murphy et al. 2021) can be provided, the lack of which has been found to have detrimental effects on the socio-wellbeing of women and adolescent children within informal settlements (Barchi & Winter 2018: 609-625). The architectural approach is thus founded within emancipatory educational theories (Greenbaum 2002) where through an innovative approach to learning facilities (Young, Cleveland & Imms 2019) the opportunity of merging sanitation, healthcare and educational services exists.