Onitsha Market urbanism

This is the kind of urban space and architectures that we should be motorizing via digital technologies in Africa:

We need to get out in front not only in mapping these environments and networks, but also in re-engineering them for alternative futures. That is the best countermeasure to an array of narratives derived piecemeal via other geographies. It's not as mysterious as the The Economist (London) makes it out to be in their intro to December 2011 issue "The Hopeful Continent: Africa Rising" (not their March 2013 issue "The World's Fastest Growing Continent: Aspiring Africa"):

"THE shops are stacked six feet high with goods, the streets outside are jammed with customers and salespeople are sweating profusely under the onslaught. But this is not a high street during the Christmas-shopping season in the rich world. It is the Onitsha market in southern Nigeria, every day of the year. Many call it the world's biggest. Up to 3m people go there daily to buy rice and soap, computers and construction equipment. It is a hub for traders from the Gulf of Guinea, a region blighted by corruption, piracy, poverty and disease but also home to millions of highly motivated entrepreneurs and increasingly prosperous consumers."

Motorizing Architectural Paradigms

student testing out UFO's urban design app

500 liters of waterbased environmentally-friendly paint on asphalt spread by 2000 cars.
25/04/2010 · Rosenthaler Platz, Berlin
By IEPE & the anonymous crew © 2010

Students at l’Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture just started a research seminar exploring the concept of "Motorizing Architectural Paradigms" —MAP). 

The idea is that new digital tools can extend the (5) physical senses of our bodies and if architects are "smart" enough, we can harness these new forms of augmented capability to design cities in new more "super-sensitive" ways. They just started, but should get interesting. Last week their professor, Yasmine Abbas, connected students with Alain Renk, an architect and urban planner pushing these kind of boundaries across a number of intriguing projects and organizations: Urban Fab Organization - UFO; Unlimited Cities; Collaborative Urbanism; Evolving Cities.

Google translation of the course description (French):
"Digital culture has transformed the architectural and urban processes. This seminar explores the representation and use of sensitive parameters to the digital age. Students prospecteront and translate the potential of ordinary tools and innovative strategies to create spaces.
This exploration is first prepared by a sensitive reflection on the card - what a sensitive map?Then, in front of the collection of parameters, the discovery of various methods of investigation, artistic (Sophie Calle, 1999), urban (Kevin Lynch, 1960), or inspired by literature (Georges Perec, 1975), Science Humanities and Social (Richard Ocejo, 2013), the industrial design process (Patricia Moore, 1985). To consider the representation tool and "engine of reality" (Spuybroek, 1999), students will experiment with digital tools then eg consultation platforms developed urban UFO . They have five cards to develop sensitive / tools / MAP - Motorizing Architectural Paradigms, each engaging one of our five senses, the same song chosen the city of Paris.

The pedagogical intention is: 1 - to experiment with creative ways of architectural and urban research, 2 - Develop mapping sensitive / visible based on sensory data and are tools for creating architectural paradigms."

Also at l'ESA, Edouard Cabay of Appareil runs an atelier RE— that is exploring similar methods for exploiting cartographic techniques to identify emergent patterns for design (course description). The maps below depict migration of chairs, interaction of people and rubbish bins, and intersecting trajectories of ducks and toy boats in the Jardins du Luxembourg park in Paris.

As more Africans acquire smart phones, how can designers leverage this emerging mobile network to aggregate data digitally in order to expand our sense(s) of how we can motorize architecture and re-engineer the city?