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?

Voltascapes

VRA & 'Garden City' concept

Block quote from introduction to Voltascapes: Rural Interventions architecture design thesis:

"Volta River Project – New Towns

“It is important to reflect upon the heritage that the ex-colonial countries have left in developing countries all over the world: India, Africa, South-America and the Orient. This heritage that comprises both the good and the bad has been the point of departure for urban development after independence. . . . Today all these countries are autonomous. And even if the heritage of the past has not always made things easier, they have the possibility of decision in their hands. But this possibility of decision is extremely limited because the means for study and realization does not exist”.  Michel Ecochard

One such gargantuan project was the Volta River Project (VRA) – also once called the Golden Triangle Project – which was intended to industrialize the country through the exploitation of its natural resources, minerals and water power. The Volta River Project consisted of the Ajena Power Development, new railways, the Bui Gorge Hydro-Electrical Project, the Aya Bauxite mines, Tema Harbour, Tema New Town, the Kpong Smelter and the resettlement of over 80,000 people in 52 New Towns along the newly created Volta Lake.

The project had been on the drawing board before independence, but was put into effect by then Prime Minister Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as a part of his post-independence agenda of Pan–Africanism:  an agenda designed to yield a prosperous and stable African country able to take care of its own affairs.

But today, however, most of the New Towns are ruined or deserted and the following three focal points of the VRA – intended to resettle the flood victims in the New Towns in what could be termed a process of ‘imposed modernity’ – have been failures.

• To use the resettlement as an opportunity to enhance the social, economic and physical condition of the people.

This has not resulted in improved conditions, but rather in deprivation, something possibly due to the cash and food handouts at the beginning of the programme.

Insufficient social and economic infrastructure was provided to sustain the growth. Not even basic amenities were provided with the housing.

• To improve their system of agriculture and so enable residents to effect a transition from subsistence agriculture to commercial farming.

Not enough farm land was provided. In addition, most traditional inhabitants lived on or near their farm lands, not in distant houses.

• To plan and locate the New Town in a rational manner so that those resettled, as well as others (the host community) in the Volta Basin would benefit from the creation of the lake.

Since not enough infrastructure was provided, no one benefitted from the programmes. The plan also resulted in problems with sanitation and overcrowding"

Thesis presentation next month Immanuel Kwaku Sirron-Kakpor via Adventurers in the Diaspora.

Takes me back.