Indalo + Collectif saga

Social Development Project

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

 Indalo + Collectif Saga

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

ARCHITECTS
Indalo, Collectif Saga

LOCATION
Port Elizabeth, South Africa

CATEGORY
Cultural Center

AREA
138.0 sqm

PROJECT YEAR
2015

MAIN BUILDING
100 m2

PARTNERS
Alliance Française de Port Elizabeth Werk_ Engineers Without Borders Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

DESIGN TEAM
Kevin Kimwelle, Anastasia Rohaut, Pierre Guérin, Camille Sablé, Sylvain Guitard, Simon Galland, Jason Dinant, Maguelonne Gorioux, Nolwenn Gervais, Pauline Richard, Cécile Jaouen, Eglantine Bulka, Eva Fojtu, Andrès Sanchez, Adèle Bertrand

FUNDER
General Motors ChildLife Foundation Crowdfunding, KissKissBankBank, Williams Hunt

SUPPLIERS
Coca-Cola, Cannibal, Amalooloo, Builders Warehouse Port Elizabeth, Penny Pinchers Port Elizabeth, IBIS, Voltex

PHOTOGRAPHS
Joubert Loots, Maguelonne Gorioux

CONTRACTORS
Love Story (NGO) & Patricia N. Piyani (Directrice)

QUANTITY SURVEYOR
LDM Quantity Surveyor

WATER POINT
38 m2

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

Text description provided by architect.

Joe Slovo is a newly established township and only part of it benefited from the RDP housing program (Reconstruction and Development Program, action launched by the South African Government 20 years ago).

The site where the project takes place has no facilities and no tar roads. The surroundings are mainly shacks made out of second hand wood and corrugated metal sheets.

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots
Social Development Project
© Maguelonne Gorioux
Social Development Project
© Maguelonne Gorioux
Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

This project takes place in Joe Slovo Township, located on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

It is mainly un-serviced, there is no water, except one tap every two blocks, and only a few houses have electricity.

A few years ago, noticing the lack of services dedicated to her community, one of the Joe Slovo's local, Patricia N. Piyani started a little creche in her own shack. It quikly got too crowded and she decided to build a dedicated building.

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots
Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

The existing creche is small in comparison with the number of children it hosts (between 50 and 80 per day). It is also in a really bad condition, especially in terms of waterproofing.

In fact, it is continuously flooded even with light rainfall. Considering this, Love Story, a local NGO that has been involved in this particular community for a while, has decided to launch a project to rebuild this crèche but also to uplift it by adding new facilities such as a skill centre, a community centre and vegetables garden.

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots
Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

The new crèche has been designed and built by the architect studio Collectif Saga, in partnership with Indalo and Love Story.

The project intends to fully integrate the community in to the process, the idea being to make sure the improvements are sustainable and continue to bring a new dynamic throughout the community.

Social Development Project
© Maguelonne Gorioux
Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

With on average the same budget as an RDP house (houses built by the government) the project tries to show that by building in a different way we can off the uses better, bigger and more flexible spaces.

The second objective of the project was to try to develop simple and reproducible processes, which would give the community the tools and knowledge to reproduce these processes for their own development.

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots
Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

Thus, a RDP house is in average 36m2 while the building we erected is 138m2. This was made possible by using mostly recycled materials which were mostly free or of low cost and by establishing efficient building techniques.

The second objective of the project was to try to develop simple and reproducible processes, which would give the community the tools and knowledge to reproduce these processes for their own development.

We decided to use similar materials to what they use for construction (palettes, corrugated sheets, tyres etc.). Those were then transformed in order to make a durable, solid building with a high architectural value.

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots
Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

We also integrated various members of the community throughout the process in order to continuously share this knowledge.

It was a two-way knowledge exchange in the sense that we have a lot to learn from the community who everyday build and rebuild using limited resources from their own environment.

It was important for us to show that we can also have fun with these cheap materials and that, as architects, we have to find the means and the tools to transform those in unique and functional objects.

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots
Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

The project consists in two building facing each other: on one side, the sanitation building with eight toilets and two sinks and on the other side, the main hall. A container that was there when we started the project is plugged to the main building and hosts a kitchen and a storage room.

To fully understand the project, you have to know that it is only supposed to be a temporary crèche. The idea is that it hosts the children while we build the actual preschool on the opposite plot. It will then become a workshop dedicated to wood and metal work.

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots
Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

The idea is to offer a space for the many local small entrepreneurs to launch their business. They will then be able to share their tools and knowledge but also have a proper space to work other than their homes.

That being said, the building was designed as a hall that could host various usages throughout time. For now, partition walls can be pulled down in order to separate the three classes of the preschool.

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots
Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

Finally, we tried to use our skills and these of the others to put in movement and give a direction to latent energies that surround us. To gather people, the construction site has been used as a stage to experience cultural blending.

This mental posture changed our role and behaviour as architects, moving us in a brand new human experience, and again redefining our vision of architecture. We tried to involve as much people as we could, from companies to workers, including children and their mothers, in a society where female work is clearly defined and male's one by the way.

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots
Social Development Project
© Maguelonne Gorioux

From a simple advise to a whole involvement in the project, we realized how, by simply offering the possibility to take part to this social development project, people were happy to feel useful. Indeed, in a traumatized country as South Africa, fatalism, suspicion and lack of understanding are common.

Also we organized and took part to some various events, in the township as in the downtown area to put down prejudices by sharing a great moment together, simply. The project became then way broader than we could have imagined, the physical crèche materializing the human and social process going on all around.

Social Development Project
© Joubert Loots

Thanks to all the people from such different conditions, thanks to all those moments we spent together on site, thanks to all the passion taking place on the construction site, appropriation did not took long to appear, way before the official opening.

As small as the project is, architecture became life, and life became architecture. That's what we tried out, that's what we want to show now, that's what we want to do tomorrow.


Social Development Project
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Social Development Project
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Social Development Project
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Social Development Project
Perspective Section


Social Development Project
Ground Floor Plan
Social Development Project
Ground Floor Plan


Social Development Project
Axonometric Detail
Social Development Project
Exploded Axonometric
Social Development Project
Exploded Axonometric


Social Development Project
Bottle Wall Detail

Indalo + Collectif saga
T +33 2 55543215
Indalo + Collectif saga
2 Pl. de la Concorde, 44200 Nantes, France