Teaching sustainable construction techniques in khayelitsha and facilitating courses that teach foundation trench digging, mixing and pouring cement. as well as bricklaying and floor screed floating in informal settlements - i came across the concept of electrical cable vine organics. while busy teaching it is not uncommon for the overhead electric wires to fall over our site. their are hundreds of thousands of shop bought electric extension leads that run overhead and on the ground in informal settlements. each cable is from an eskom power source to an individual informal settlement dwelling. i can only guess as to the dangers faced by these communities as the laying and monitoring of these cables is up to the individual home owner.
so i thought it would be prudent to create a pre cast concrete conduit system that could have multi faceted connectivity and uses. installed above ground below ground - created out of bright pigment concrete they could inject colour and a sense of gridded order within the informal settlement environment. all the while safely carrying electricity in a more formal setup - below are some initial sketches of this concept which could create street furniture and a framework for the erxell vegetable garden concept - whereby mosaic images are created from vegetables and key into the erxell concept.
