A Canadian's Smorgasblog

From February 9 – 12^th my thesis group (Stephanie, Tuna and I) went to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, to meet with our collaborating organisations to collect re/sources and to further refine and align our vision and plans for the project. We met with Enviu and Open Source House project coordinators and others who have done research on housing issues in Ghana.

We met with Samson Nibi, a part-time Enviu researcher from the north of Ghana who was instrumental in compiling much of the data relating to our “target group” – the lower-middle- class in Cape Coast, Ghana. One step above slum dwelling, many of the teachers, civil servants, nurses etc. in this group struggle to meet their housing needs. They are excluded from the formal housing sector, since most new homes are built for the middle- to upper-classes.

Samson gave us valuable insight into the methods and cultural norms we will need to incorporate while performing our research there. We also met with Arie, a Dutch student architect, who went to some slums bordering Accra to research current building practices. He and his research partners stayed with families in the slums, despite dire warnings and living standards very different from what they were used to.

The city of Rotterdam, bombed out during the war, is full of unexpected modern architecture and public art installations. Very cool to visit a city with such interesting and innovative architecture, when that's precisely what our thesis is about!

The project is gaining a clearer structure all the time – we have been so fortunate as to build a Steering Committee of experts from relevant business and academic backgrounds. Göran Carstedt, Sustainability Consultant and Chairman of the Natural Step, Dr. Noah Karley, African housing and affordability Researcher and Lecturer at Heriot-Watt University, and Geoffrey Stack, Sustainability and Design Consultant, have all agreed to review our work once a month to offer feedback and suggestions for improvement. In addition, they have provided excellent comments during the visioning phase which have helped us to shape the direction of our project.

On the way home from Rotterdam, we spent a few hours wandering around Amsterdam. Architecturally it's a whole different universe - the buildings are older and the canals far more prevalent.