Surfaces, images and Lectures!

I have been so crazy busy!
I will be giving my first lecture tomorrow...yikes!!! Even though i know there will be like 5 people there i am still very nervous. Very extremely nervous. The lecture is for a scholarship I was awarded in 2007 to go to Lamu to research swahili architecture. Yeah long time ago for me to be talking about it now!!! but I am kinda grateful to have the opportunity to learn how to talk about research.

Great news too, I got the chance to have my photographs shown in the student gallery in Bentonville Ar. The concept for the collection of pictures (for the gallery) is surfaces.
While taking photographs for my thesis research in the slums I noticed beautiful details on the buildings, details that tended to go unnoticed when viewed within the chaos of everything else So i thought isolating that beauty might be a plan.

I wanted to show the beauty of the materials giving a glimpse into aspects of the slum that should be celebrated. For each photograph I zoomed in into sections of the wall surface to show texture, shadow, colour, or overlapping materials. The colours of the buildings were so unreal- the paint would mix with rust and dirt to create the most gorgeous hues. Some of the zoomed in pictures look like paintings...that I had not expected but was not surprised at all.
Will try and take pics at the opening this Friday.
Here is a teaser...
*The bottom image is how the pic would be viewed at the gallery- focused in on a particular portion of the wall.

Words floating in my head

It is a little strange standing where i am, time that elusive ever present companion,
has been whispering coded messages to me revealing always a little at a -time that today is really all there is. That my now is the ony thing really gauranteed and that i should celebrate that and do the best that i can with it. What exactly i am supposed to do i do not know... that i guess is the coded part. I believe somewhere inside me i know the answer but i have not learned to listen to myself that well- yet.
Standing here i know my thesis is important, that within this study i am developing my discourse, my purpose through architecture becasue i don't believe we could possibly have one purpose! The one i intend to fulfill through buildings lies here...somewhere; this is the start. That gives me some comfort to know this journey means something, but this journey through school has also kept me really busy, I have not had time to discover other parts of me. My heart and spirit seem different my mind has been slow to catch up. Somewhere along the last 5 years i changed over and over and over again and i could not always keep up, but suddenly standing here things seem to be gaining clarity a little at a time.

I feel like the start of a new year means the begining of a new time...as corny as that sounds. I feel like i am getting another chance to get to know myself, learn my heart and follow it. Kinda scary, mostly exhilarating!...for now at least.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME!

Research ventured

You never find what you expect to find- when you go looking. You have one idea about something but it turns out to be something else more or less spectacular than your expectation, but what if you had no expectations? I was so busy preparing for the trip home I never had time to build up any illusions; I went to the slums prepared to meet- the slums I sort of expected what physical conditions i'd find there- what type or buildings but I had no idea what to expect from the people who lived there. I assumed they would be regular Kenyans struggling to make ends meet mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers…just like the rest of us. You hear the saying almost every day no matter what part of the world you live in. "People in the slums live on less than a dollar a day" -70 ksh give or take some, the price of 2 packets of milk, or 7 cucumbers, or one pili pili hoho… in other words not much can be acquired with that sum!
I was definitely interested to learn how exactly people living in slums made it work. Some things were expected, the wood, mud or sheet metal structures patched over and over to stop a leak, block holes or cracks or keep out thieves…problems that occurred as the building aged with time. I read about how people living in slums kept their homes clean and free of dust- amazing considering the amount of dirt surrounding many of Nairobi’s slums but seeing it was a different matter. These rusticated seemingly pieced together buildings were thoughtfully and meticulously organized, and cleaned. Decorations whether newspaper cut outs or magazine pages plastered on the walls were purposely chosen, many of them had vinyl flooring, and the ones with kangas draped on the walls and ceiling to keep dust or debris from falling on their belongings had bright colored, fancy patterned fabric that matched furniture coverings or other elements in the home.
I was always amazed how my hosts welcomed me into their home I mean hospitality is very much a Kenyan norm but when people living on that less than a dollar story welcome you by offering you tea made with the packet of milk they purchased specially to welcome you, you sip it thinking wow! There goes half their budget for the day! as they sit there thanking you for paying them a visit. Everyday was so amazing, so simple even when so much was going on. People did not seem to stress about life even when they had need to there always seemed to be an understanding that things would work out eventually no matter what the problem.
Emmanuel, my mac body guide as I called him (which was funny cause he is about my size but mac body non the less as his hard life has made him walk so much taller and stronger)walked me through slums he had lived in when he was younger or slums his friends lived in. He also escorted me through some neither of us had been to before, on those days we just walked through the slums for hours stopping to rest when our feet got too sore. He was always confident encouraging me to take pics even when people around us looked at us suspiciously. We finally came up with a strategy where he would walk in front of me and I'd act like i was taking pics of him so people would become less suspicious of this random girl taking photos of their buildings...as such he is in many of my pics. Still working out how i'd like to exhibit them.
Will be putting some up soon

ready, set...wow it's over?!?

That's how I've been feeling these last few days -the semester is over just like that! well, one more week to go but classes are done!?! Looking back at my research I am shocked at how much I have learned about home...na bado! there is so much more i don't know about my little big town...but such is the quest for knowledge the more you know the more you know you don't know, cliche but true! ( could that be the addiction knowing you'll never have enough?

I have spent the last two weeks concluding my research mainly to find a departure point- as far as design, there is so much i could choose to focus on but design is so much better when you lay out your interests hierarchically and then make a smaller list of the top things that interested you from the previous extensive list and use that to generate space.

I presented my summation to a jury this past Wednesday it went well got a positive response, many questions as usual but they did not chew me out as they often do students. My proposal is to design Toilets, Markets and Gardens, my site is a portion of Kwa Ndegwa slum near Mukuru. I have not yet selected a specific area as I hope to do that after visiting the slum, what I may perceive as a segment of the slum from Google might be various communities in one; I'd like the freedom to negotiate this kind of dynamic after i obtain enough info. about the area.

Needless to say i got a few chuckles from the students and the group, I am sure no one has opted for toilet design as their fifth year project?!?! but, some excitos accompanied the amusement so that made me feel, better, somewhat.

I look at toilets as a variety of sanitation issues including water provision for hygiene ( showers included) as well as food preparation and consumption. I am fascinated with the idea of water tanks that are habitable, a new form of bath houses more to do with communal space in the developing world than a connection to Nordic countries or those bloody Romans. The idea of Markets is to incorporate places to sell goods esp. vegetables while gardens is about the celebration of urban farming which already happens sporadically in many areas in the city.
Narrowing my focus allows me to narrow my site specific research so when i do visit my (broad) site I'll know the kind of spaces I'd like to envision in them and what cultural, psychosocial, or socio-economic aspects i will need to document while there.
Below are some of the boards i pinned up. My next step is turning my interpretation of my research into a design proposal- excited I am...you should be too, really you should!

Mid -Reviews

I had my mid reviews Tuesday, the purpose of the exercise was to introduce your subject and explain what you intended to do and how you intended to do it. It went well got a lot of feedback from faculty, there were so many questions about the issues of the city and the ultimate goal of the project they seemed to have so many ideas of where i should go next or what i should focus on...most of them helpful..some not so much.

We only had 10 min to talk about our projects introduce them and explain what we intended to research and design- i ended up taking 20...with all the historical research i had done there was a lot to explain about the city, how it works, why, what happened over the years for it to function the way it does. The hardest thing about this project, which is also the most exciting thing to me, is how different it is from anything else i have learned in architecture so far. Cities of the developing world are different, there are some common features with European and American ones but for the most part they function with a different mode of operation- this is what i intend to focus on for the next weeks. I want to pull these differences out to clarify my design considerations so hopefully by next review (on Dec. 2nd!!?!?!?!) I will be able to point out what exactly about the city and these slums stands out to me and what i am doing as a response to these issues.
These are some of the presentation boards i presented.

So much, so fast...always so little time!!!

It has been a while since i updated this page I was stuck in a zone trying to figure out my research what i was trying to get from all of it cause the set back of finding out all this wonderful information is how much of the wonderful there is; so much so that the ultimate goal of the research begins to get lost and the magnitude of the issues we face in our cities and the slums that frame these cities begins to overwhelm, discourage and squash any creativity that exists.
The truth is though that the problem is hugely overwhelming but unless we start to think of things in an out of the box, crazy lined with creative way nothing would ever get done we would all look at the situation feeling tired even before we begin and in the end do nothing because it is just too much. If I could achieve anything i would like my project to at least initiate a dialogue with the way things "could be" "if we..."
That said, that still leaves a monstrous amount of work to be done, resourcefulness to be acquired and design to be creatively executed. Good luck to me!

Tracing the Colonial Landscape

Mapping out Nairobi's colonial history has been a really interesting process, very helpful in understanding how the city developed into what it is today. My first studies begun with an analysis of Pumwani -the structural layout of the slum, location, relationship to the city...etc. I just happened to choose Pumwani by chance...I was looking at the Sidarec community center competition entries from 2007 wondering if the winning entry was really the best option for the site (from my perspective) I am planning to visit the site during my visit home...Global studio did a good job with the project design, it would be nice to see if their design transferred well into the built object...(check out the links above).

Anyway, looking at the sidarec site led me to start analyzing the surrounding slum which in turn led me to ask how, when and why this particular slum had developed. Turns out Pumwani was the first settlement officially developed under the British colonial government the first time they thought "okay the Africans are spreading all over the place lets organize them into some formal settlement before things get more out of hand."

Before this they had controlled the African population by restricting them to certain parts of the city or prohibiting them from moving into "white areas" which usually meant fertile or economically strategic land (as far as location), remember at this time Africans were not allowed to own land or build on anyone else's land but they would come into the city in search of jobs and set up informal settlements wherever they could. The settlers would often have raids where they would dismantle their homes, round them up, arrest them or deport them to reservations.
Funny to learn that the city council raids we see on TV are just a continuation of colonial behavior...

So because the colonial government did not want any permanent settlement for Africans...they purposely neglected to set up infrastructure in these areas...no roads, no water, no sewer or electricity services...they also refused families to move into the areas only allowing men to live in the city, and when they did start constructing settlements like Pumwani, they only allowed single units to be built with communal washroom areas or kitchens. The set up they preferred was for African males to work in the city for short periods and periodically return to the rural areas to visit their families this was mainly to control the population and since this same African male was refused to own property or establish permanent settlement on his own they basically had to live wherever the Brits placed them.


The single (bachelor) units settlements that developed under colonial rule became the single unit systems most slum areas use today where structures are built with about 8-10 single unit rooms measuring about 10 X 10 feet each. After independence the tenants were about one family per room unlike what we find today which is about 2-4 families per room...