Towards Circular Neighbourhood

Abstract

A solution to the urgent need for new urban housing that could translate current social cultures to the physical environment is essential to avoid further ghettoisation and provide sufficient accessibility of amenities, infrastructure and employment. Seeking the balance between resiliency and efficiency at a low environmental cost requires adopting modular, adaptive and resilient design principles that would enable affordable quality housing. For instance, the sites and services scheme could provide such a solution combining efficient use of resources and community participation, that can greatly increase the market value of the house and adapt it to users’ own needs. Circular strategies are being pursued mainly in Europe, however, are often already present in the informal sector of developing countries.
Applying alternative building principles in a developing country such as Ethiopia sets a new set of challenges in comparison to a housing scheme developed on the same values in the western world. Different conditions may be already present and therefore not necessary to recreate, for instance, the strong social network embedded in the informal sector. The goal of the design project is to explore the potential of various alternate circular strategies and solutions in low-income neighbourhoods such as Kolfe, Addis Ababa.