This is a Cape Town inspired cap in hand synaptic, left of center fringe design conceptualisation of Africa fauvistic design ideas. WHAAAT the hay ho?!!!!!!!!
So with a very wide wry smile - This Cape Town Muizenberg designer punts unique wildetecture ideas tirelessly. To the moguls at the local design institutions and beyond. Oh, and to SA's design elite. As a designer their are protocols and processes to go through to crack the nod of design acclaim acceptance. I tend to stumble forward on these process's and aligning myself with all these protocols is a huge challenge. Might be easier for you, infact im sure it will be.
The Erxell concept is one such unique design concept challenge that will go down as a very workable concept when the future finally integrates with the present. Not exactly sure why this concept has been completely passed over. But we have a meeting with informal settlement dwellers this friday and some city planners. Straight to the people. If it works out great of not we tried a left of center idea and completely struck out.
Informal settlements are meant to be halfway houses between absolute urban living poverty and eventual promised formal urban living spaces. However they have now become the living normal arena for the destitute and a poor misplaced people. With absolutely no upgrades in sight for these destitute masses living under deplorable conditions, the informal settlement urban environment gets bigger everyday. The structures are very temporarily, hastily built at best. They have no proper, fire, structural, ventilation and urban living specifications attached to them at all. If a fire breaks out in an informal settlement community, people die on mass. Thats a very real fact that is an everyday hazard in a tinderbox with no proper built environment regulations. With some irresponsible dwellers making huge bonfires, its a real nightmate situation in the winds that blow through cape town. A tinder box in the hands of a few pyromaniacs with a match. Ive seen how a tikked up loon feeds a fire in the middle of a small pathway between tin shacks. Everyone just walks around and waits for the firewall. This is taken as a very normal hazard of the lived in informal settlement environment. Nobody has the full power to regularize the space safely. The community does a self cleanse every so often, however that is a very different conversation. The built structures appear to be a hodge podge of very badly built tinder box tin shacks all linked to satelite wi fi and the fast paced IT of the world. What is really happening to my little mind is that unscrupulous land expriopriation landlords are gaining more land for free. Then unregulated renting out this expriopriation land space to poor families for premium rent prices. The poor masses are put infront of these unscrupulous characters by a government run system completely ripping off the very poor they claim to protect. Not a cent of this rent money, that im aware, goes back into upgrading the informal settlement communities. All rates roads and land taxes is demanded to be paid for by the formal sector. While the informal sectors huge rent flow cash stays in private landlord hands only. Private hands that do not pass on a red cent to better, make safe the informal settlement community they oversee. Why? Because the formal sector must pay for the infrastructure, roads, electricity, etc etc through huge additional formal sector rates for the informal poor sector taxes. This i dont mind doing, however the additional funding does not go into making these informal living areas safe to live in. Who knows where the finance goes, because these informal settlements are certainly not safe to live in. Structures built on sand, no proper damp proofing, no regularised fire plans, no ventilation to stop TB and other comunicable diseases. The list goes on and on, with no regulations put in place, in sight. Millions of people living under government run squalor are in acute danger. If a fire breaks out, and they do often, there is no safe fire evacuation process. These folk have to run through a labyrinth of highly flammable material to get to safety. In that smoke nobody knows which way to run in an early morning panic. Its impossible to navigate the thousands of miles of passages safely.
Who does this system completely crush? The very poor informal settlement folk and families being run rough shod over by unscrupulous land expriopriation unregulerised owners who take absolutely no responcibility for the community. These landowners who got the land for nothing now milking the poor and the informal settlement system hand over fist. Being allowed to operate in this fashion without any proper government controlled regulations.
So to my mind by using the informal settlement roof space as a blank canvas for advertising is not a bad idea really. It starts to regulerise a current unregulerised part of the built environment. Create the erxell of trade and sell off well tendered signage back to the people. Give money back to the person living in the informal settlement dwellings. Start numbering homes as erxells and finding out who owns each of them, whos getting what rent and start regulerising a huge industry.
Regularize each informal settlement dwelling and find out who is getting the inflated rent and has several dwellings in several SA informal settlements across the SA landscape. One owner should not be allowed to own blocks of these informal settlement homes in several informal settlements across SA. Coupled to the additional land owned in the homelands. I might be off the mark with this, however with no regularized process, informal settlements are open to rank abuse. These informal settlement landlords renting to poor families will operate with impunity without being regulerized?
Getting the informal settlement community regularised wont ever happen it appears. Because to many hands are grabbing the spoils and taking from the poor. (Robbing the poor really) The poor inturn burn the roads out of utter frustration for nothing being done. From my vantage point, and i might be wrong. Its a cycle that has no end and no proper planned solutions in sight. Other than making a few invested in the current informal system very, very rich.
So creating giant pictures using the roof space of these informal settlements might just trigger a formalised process? A regularized built environment less like a tinderbox waiting to ignite. Where people can live with dignity. Thats just an outside view looking in, but what really do i know? One day when all is said and done, this might have been a small solution to a massive challenge. Safe housing for all, even if your between getting a formal home to live in. Peoples current living conditions shouldn't be a very dangerous plight compromised living condition. Everyone should be safely protected from unscrupulous landlords and fires. Not even mentioning all the strict regulations, specifications that govern the formal sectors building codes. Suddenly the same institutions that govern the formal sector minutely, go very silent as they overlook the regulations that humanely should also apply to the informal sector? The silence is deafening after yet another rampant fire through a vulnerable community.
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