CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA The Distributed Cooperative

The exhibition documents the Empower Integrated Development Project. The project leverages innovative design and organisational models to upgrade informal settlements through the development, implementation, and evaluation of three core components: a two-story housing prototype; a participatory spatial planning process; and integrated livelihoods programming.
The installation explores the theme of the mobilizing force of collective participation in shaping the city. The focal piece is a full-scale collation of the first mapping of an occupied site by its residents, who have collectively built and managed this fragment of the city for the past twenty-eight years. The mapping was conducted by the residents with the Urban-Think Tank, ETHZ, ETH architecture students, and local NGO, Ikhayalami. Community groups were tasked to survey their area of the site with the aid of a tape measure, graphite, and paper. The drawings were then collated together to became the first official document of occupation, and a powerful tool to secure “the right to stay” upon presentation to municipal officials.
The first collective mapping of BT Section Site C (U-TT, ETH, Scott Lloyd, 2017)