Evolving African Built Environment: Catalysts Of Sustainability, Resilience and Culture Relevance

Continents around the world have been increasingly threatened by territorial issues that negatively affect their overall development, identity, and subsistence. To address these challenges, this article examines strategies for creating a sustainable, resilient, and culturally African built environment.

Socio-economic challenges (poverty, lack of access to basic services, inequality), political instability and poor governance, and cultural disruptions (loss of traditional knowledge and imposition of foreign values) are among the most negative and impactful challenges our regions have faced to date. And Africa is severely affected by these situations.

Despite these substantial challenges, Africa is known as the Continent of the Future. Experts agree that the Mother Continent is now undergoing rapid growth, driven by global population growth, rapidly rising needs, abundant energy potential (including renewable sources such as solar power), rich cultural diversity, plentiful raw materials, and more. Drawing on previous works, case studies, and reports, this article identifies and addresses the catalysts of sustainability, resilience, and cultural relevance as solutions for the development of the African built environment. Delving into these catalysts, the article explores how the dimensions of sustainability, resilience and cultural relevance are crucial for the development of the African built environment.

Fig. 1. Aerial view over Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, showing densely packed houses at the edge of a busy road. Source: African Cities Research Consortium (Photo credit: derejeb / Getty Images)

1.   Sustainability

Sustainability is rooted in 3 central pillars (economic, environmental and social). In the African built environment, it should be understood as the approach that through the processes of designing, construction, and operation, minimises and mitigate the negative impacts (attached to its pillars) while promoting profound shifts towards sustainable developments in this sector, according to the Sustainable Development Goals, considering the local needs and potentialising the local resources African countries possess by regarding the exclusive space notion that African people have, that is different from the other regions, from idealisation to the use of locally-sourced materials. A real example from Angola is Kilamba New City, which struggles with the absence of key sustainability catalysts due to its misalignment with affordability and a lack of cultural-social integration.

Fig. 2. Dimensions of sustainability. Source: Adapted from (Boschi, 1997)

 

 

Fig. 3. Kilamba City, Luanda, Angola Source: Africa Research Institute, 2015

 2.   Resilience

Resilience is the capacity to adapt to and recover from disruptions. In the built environment, resilience is the city’s capacity to withstand and recover from natural disasters, economic shocks, and other disruptive events. Adaptive and flexible infrastructure, inclusive decision-making, nature-based solutions, technology and data usage, and community engagement are key factors and strategies that can effectively enhance the resilience of the African built environment. To achieve it, African countries must combine systematic approaches at the building, community, and urban levels.

According to researchers, resilience and human social capital are interconnected in the built environment through the following strategies: Building social networks and relationships, promoting community engagement and participation, fostering trust and cooperation, and encouraging knowledge sharing and learning.

It is crucial to adopt a holistic approach that integrates historical knowledge, scientific insights, policy interventions and community engagement to foster the implementation of these strategies in the African physical surroundings in which people live and work, since social interactions and relationships are influenced by the design and layout of buildings, neighbourhoods, in urban and rural areas. Mixed-use developments that combine residential and commercial spaces are a great way to promote social interactions and community engagement.

 

 Fig. 3. Built environment resilience qualities covered in this study.  (Source: ScienceDirect)

This all within the context of the resilient architecture design approach as a cycle of four key phases: Original State (original building conditions, safe and functioning state), Mitigate (minimises the impact of disruptions by addressing vulnerabilities), Adapt (adjusts to changing conditions to reduce overall effects of disruptions), and Recover (restores to a functional state after disruptions occurred), in other words, the approach that ensures the buildings can return to their original state after disruptions.

3.   Cultural Relevance

“A person who does not know where they come from cannot know where they are going.”

This African proverb emphasises the importance of recognising and considering identity. Culture is about identity. In the African built environment, it is reflected through the use of traditional building materials, diverse architectural styles, and symbolic or spiritual elements.

Also considered the “fourth dimension of sustainability” by UNESCO (2001), culture in the built environment relates to the infrastructural identity of a space, as through this, people contemplate and care for the tangible and intangible patrimony they have. We must learn to see and use culture by involving the cultural groups in the design and construction processes of the building they are supposed to inhabit, so that the building is not some building somebody did; instead, it is their building, because it identifies them and belongs to them. The Baobab House, in Luanda, Angola, is an excellent example of identity, being a house with a patio in the centre, extending the interior spaces, that contemplates the use of traditional local construction techniques and materials, such as adobe walls, Mopane poles, and more.

Fig. 5. Baobab House, Source: Archello, 2010

  Real culture is alive; authentic culture grows, evolves, and cannot fail. (Cheikh Anta Diop, 2016), argued that development strategies cannot fail when they take local cultures into account. So, we must conserve the legacy our ancestors have earned in terms of understanding, care, and cohabitation in space, creating or projecting valuable places that honour our origins and ensure a free and developed African built environment, capable of drawing inspiration from global best practices and forging partnerships across continents.

 

Fig. 4. The diversity of traditional African houses

Conclusion

By embracing and implementing these context-specific strategies presented in this article, we can understand that our African built environments can strongly evolve, since it takes African approaches to be more discussed, African sustainable catalysts to be increasingly acknowledged, tested and implemented, to finally guide African solutions that will effectively ensure a context-specific, sustainable and resilient built environment for the Continent. Therefore, an African sustainable built environment must be designed with and for the communities that will inhabit it, respecting local traditions and knowledge.

 

About the Author

 Camilo Alsimiro Alberto Cutala is an African born in Angola. Currently, a 5th year student of the Architecture Course, in the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, at Agostinho Neto University. Camilo, as a finalist student, has a strong interest in acquiring comprehensive knowledge better to understand Architecture, Urban Planning, and Leadership. He regularly participates in lectures, workshops, seminars, and conferences, including the last World Congress of Architects (3-6 July 2023) in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he served as a keynote speaker, sharing his experience with his colleagues at the University. He is passionate about developing new skills beyond sketching, such as learning new languages, reading books, and visiting new places around the world, to gain a progressively better understanding of identity, the sustainable past, present, and future, and the development of cities around the world.

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