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Making
SpaceKibera Public Space Projects, Nairobi, Kenya
This series of projects was designed in partnership with local representatives to improve the physical, economic, and social quality of life in Kibera, southwest Nairobi, which is Africa’s largest informal settlement. Home to approximately half a million people, the settlement is without legal recognition and so lacks basic municipal infrastructure including any waste disposal or sewage facilities. As a result both are deposited in the small rivers which traverse the sloping site, severely diminishing the quality of life for residents and creating a continual danger of disease transmission.
Kibera locals do their laundry in a new wash station that employs water from a natural spring. (All photos courtesy Kounkuey Design Initiative)
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KOUNKUEY DESIGN INITIATIVE (KDI) partners with residents of impoverished areas to develop and implement design solutions that improve the physical, economic, and social quality of life. KDI believes that participatory planning and design are key to sustainable development. By working collaboratively with communities from conception through implementation, KDI builds on their ideas, enhances them with technical knowledge and design innovation, and connects them to extant resources. In doing so, they empower communities to advocate for themselves and to address the major physical, social, and economic challenges that they face.
PROJECT: Kibera Public Space Projects 01 – 05
LOCATION: Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya
PROJECT ARCHITECTS: Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI): Margaret Knight, Michelle Sintaa Morna, Los Angeles, USA/Nairobi, Kenya
DESIGN TEAM: April Schneider, Jack Campbell-Clause, Jessica Bremner, Chelina Odbert, Arthur Adeya
CLIENT: Slumcare, Ndovu, and Usalama Youth Reform (community-based organisations)
CONSTRUCTION DATE: ongoing since 2006
Pursuing an approach known as “urban acupuncture”, a concept first implemented successfully in the Rio favelas in the ‘90s by Jorge Mario Jáuregui, six then-students from the fields of landscape architecture and architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design joined together to launch the Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) in 2006.
The first project between 2007 and 2009 was devoted to transforming a riverbank into a publicly usable space by stabilising it with gabions. This created a stable surface no longer inundated with refuse, and a new open space which is now the site for an assembly and educational building, a small garden centre with composting facilities, a playground for children, an office building and a rainwater tank. Later projects resulting from workshops with residents include a public sanitary facility and a multifunctional building accommodating a sales kiosk and bathrooms. A laundry station, situated by a natural spring discovered at the site, uses water that is not potable but can be used to wash hands or clothing.
Kibera Public Space Project 03 emerged from workshops with local residents, aiming to create new economic, social, and infrastructural perspectives.
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