Addis Ababa, which is the capital city of Ethiopia hosts 5 million people and like many developing cities, more than half of its residents live in informal houses which lack basic infrastructure such as water and electricity. They are characterized by single-story houses constructed by the residents themselves or local masons using locally available materials such as earth, makeshift objects, corrugated metal, and recycled plastic.
They usually serve as transitional dwelling spaces that are inhabited by people coming from rural areas and frequently replaced by newcomers. They are densely populated to minimize cost and their primary program is to provide shelter for sleeping and minimal indoor activities as most of the daily rituals such as food preparation happen outdoors. They are prone to demolition as the city is rapidly developing and the residents relocated to other informal settlements further away or to government-built affordable condominiums.
In order to address this challenge, the government started building generic 5 to 10 story affordable condominiums in the early 2000s. They developed cheap and efficient construction technologies and designed a modular architectural system. They were constructed using hollow concrete blocks, a material that is becoming increasingly expensive and scarce, and prefabricated elements. Once the condominiums were built, they were allocated using a lottery system.
However, the cost of the condominium units as well as the design were more suitable for the middle class whose lifestyles fit in with the layout of the condominium and did not accommodate the livelihoods of the informal settlement residents who lived with extended family members and used more shared outdoor spaces than individual indoor spaces.
To address this mutifaceted damage, I analyzed one particular neighborhood that is home to 250 households. Like nearly all of the others, it is likely to be demolished in the near future to make space for high-rise commercial buildings. My intervention is a gesture against the relocation of these residents and proposes a housing project that accommodates 100 households using the same materials found in the informal settlements. It would provide centralized infrastructure such as water and energy, necessary outdoor space for daily activities, flexible indoor spaces that expand and contract depending on the users’ spatial needs.
