Votes:
5703
Museke
CEICA (Centro de Estudos e Investigação Científica de Arquitectura)
Media
Drawings, plans, elevations
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SUSTENTABILITY – SOCIAL DIMENSION The Musseque is now a social place referencing poverty, urban violence and claims for social equality, to the point that it has become an identifying category that extends to its inhabitants. Although part of the city, the Musseque is at the margin of the city’s economic, cultural, social and environmental resources. It restricts its inhabitants from accessing resources and services available, and it realizes segregation thus making urgent the need to eliminate social exclusion through citizenship expansion initiatives. CULTURAL DIMENSION The expression of the urban Musseque in the urban history of the city of Luanda makes it a cultural place of special interest. Some Musseque have become repositories of the memory's, of its human identity, and also have become a place of transculturality. ECONOMIC DIMENSION The importance that peddling has in the city of Luanda is indisputable. It drains out the insufficiency that this society has in the absorption of the productive force of the city thus generating employment, whether self-employment or not. It is exactly this assimilation and this appropriation that are seen in the constitutional perspective as a violation of public order, a fact which determines the starting informality. ENVIRONMENTAL In environmental terms, the city of Luanda is collapsing and the musseque is clearly the worst example. The absence of a green supporting structure, the weak sanitation system, a very high building density, among other factors, make the Musseque a territory with alarming indicators of poor quality of life. URBANITY – HOUSING The construction of “home ownership” is marginal to regulations and does not obey architectural projects. Models have common traits, few variations and the methodologies can be seen from the building system (urban waste for shelters, adobe, and cement for buildings, etc.) to the phased process characteristic of self -construction. The actions of building and dwelling are not only a manifestation of property but also of a notion of belonging among the residents of the Musseque, because the Musseque itself constitutes a community phenomenon. EQUIPMENT In the slum, the predominant proximity of these typologies for traditional reasons is readily perceivable and its connection with the urban space is inseparable from the public and semi-public spaces. The articulation between ephemeral architecture and public space is fundamental to building adaptable solutions that do not delimit themselves to the reality of the slum. ROAD SYSTEM Not revealing of itself, the public space in the slums is a misleading and little attractive labyrinth serving the purpose of a life that is rich and denouncing of the diversity of its inhabitants. Made on the sidelines of the general planning, this “city apart” (BILAC: 1916) is a random stain, a marginal consequence of building under a given space. The concepts of the modernistic city do not apply to the reading of the slum’s space since the route acts as an immediate and pedestrian means of access.