Visible Infrastructures

2024

Group Studio Project

Professor Felix Heisel

Team:

Vibha Sarangan

Adwait Joshi

Jasper Owen

Visible Infrastructures (2024) proposes a housing scheme in collaboration with Slum Dwellers International and UN Habitat, for Mathare 4B in Nairobi, Kenya, after a week-long site visit and series of meetings with stakeholders and residents. The neighborhood is characterized by dense slums and lack of services and is currently faced with intense and unpredictable flooding and government evictions. The project proposes incremental development in which primarily, a sewer line plan is drawn with lines running through the least dense ground space. 

These lines are then used to place the foundations for a series of structural and infrastructural cores: stairwells and bathrooms, which host supports for a series of floorplates spanning between them. The cores, walls and their spanning beams are designed for incremental building, allowing the design to scale according to a variable budget.