First Person - January 26, 2000
Building homes in the land of apartheid
An architecture major learns the value of collaboration
By Maria Burnett-Gaudiani '98
Completely ignorant of the intense topographical elegance of South Africa,
I enrolled in the University of Cape Town for my junior spring semester.
Florence is the suggested study abroad destination for architecture majors,
but I sought a greater adventure. I congratulated myself as the plane turned
and Table Mountain came into stunning view; the Atlantic and Indian Oceans
stretched endlessly into the sunrise. It was February 1997.
Six months later I had written a junior paper on the contentious issue of low-cost housing design under the new African National Congress government, taken classes on various aspects of the culture, and become forever bonded to the other Princetonians who witnessed Cape Town that spring.
The junior paper had been a struggle. Starting in the library proved fruitless. The history of black housing in the Cape and its impact on the present situation remained to be written; the National Party had censored what documentation did exist. Though I had passed the vast landscapes of squatter camps on the highway, I had no way of accessing those people and their histories.
My plan of attack changed course repeatedly. All were fruitless until, by happenstance, I met a woman who knew an architect with similar interests. I remained skeptical (people had tried to help, but often urged me to write about Cape Dutch architecture). Convinced that an important topic brewed within those shacks, I met that architect, and research sprang to life. He led me day after day into the winding narrow streets of Crossroads, Guguletu, and Philippi. Eventually, communities opened up to me, and I learned how this tragic landscape had developed and how they lived each day. The architect was in the process of negotiating with a squatter women's group and a landowner to erect a large housing development on an empty tract of land. It was close to main roads and not too far from the central business district. Surrounded by shacks, armed chicken vendors, and a sheep abattoir, the land was considered a diamond in the rough.
As I finished my paper and made plans to travel to Zambia for the summer,
the architect's vision of development was becoming a reality. Saying goodbye
to the community, I swore to come back after I finished my degree.
The Henry Labouisse '22 Fellowship, which funds recent graduates to work in disadvantaged communities, brought my promise to fruition. Within a year of departing, I was back, car shopping, moving into a flat, and amongst a community beginning construction.
They poured the first foundation and began the laborious process of constructing 250 houses on a bare site.
Beyond the challenges of the construction itself, we wanted a collaboration (to find an architectural form that accommodated the community needs and a process that could be widely replicated). Because the women had long idealized one-story houses, the architect's vision of two-story homes with 33-square-meter foundations proved a difficult battle. The most financially economical house was certainly the latter. But age-old perceptions of rural versus urban settlements and black versus white housing prevented design based on pure economics. Compromises were made; many older women chose the one-story while the younger opted for our design. Even after we settled those issues, untrained workers rarely built precisely from the approved plans. That led to hours of Sisyphus-like work redrawing to satisfy the town council's requirements.
I had enrolled in Xhosa classes, the language of the community, because I wanted to communicate with the women and workers on their terms; it seems they spent decades doing the opposite. While teaching soon-to-be homeowners how to read plans and elevations and helping to actually build the houses, I learned that this is where the resolution of apartheid's legacy will transpire. Centuries of British and Dutch colonization and the abuses of those regimes caused miscommunication between the races on our site every day. Although I left to pursue graduate school in London, I know I will return.
Maria Burnett-Gaudiani is finishing a master's in the history and theory of architecture at the Architectural Association in London.
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