The Arts of Survival

Living in a slum - as Mike Davis says so - is fundamentally unpleasant. Slums are overcrowded, lacking basic needs such as clean water, sewage systems or waste facilities, generating dirt and disease. Infant morality is high, life expectancy is low and no real medical care is provided. Slums dwellers also have to contend with high crime rates, drugs and the fear of gang violence, the police do not offer their services and inhabitants are left to pay local groups for protection; this is predominantly the case for slums in Brazil known as favelas.

Some slum dwellers make a living by selling services to each other, from dressmaking and sex to taxis and drugs, they lack resources but somehow make do with what little they have. For example slum dwellers in Senegal, Africa, make toys out of fizzy drink cans found on rubbish heaps by their homes, selling them on to tourists. They create objects from other peoples waste displaying ingenuity and innovation, making a living off our rubbish. We can learn from their means of survival and incorporate our waste back to slum communities, supplying them with materials to earn living.
















It seems that the main concern of Governments is to prevent the slum population from spreading. In parts of Cape Town, electrical fences have replaced guards creating new forms of apartheid-like exclusion, making it harder for slum dwellers to become part of the mainstream. Governments have tried in the past to alleviate the slum problem by bulldozing them away, however the poor need to survive and slums keep on re-remerging. It was never taken in to consideration that the inhabitants are part of a community and some slums are more than 100 years old where many generations have lived.

Argentine born architect, Jorge Mario Jauregui was the mastermind behind a project that transformed Rio de Janeiro’s slums into functioning neighbourhoods, it won him several international awards including the prestigious “Habitat Award” from the United Nations. Rather than eradicating the favelas, Jauregui decided to integrate slums into the city by transforming them into real neighbourhoods. Jauregui and his team replaced dirt paths with paved walkways, creating streets to accommodate vehicles, building sewage systems and cleaning up polluted rivers. However he did not stop there, Jauregui also provided the residence with social centres, clinics, daycare centres and athletic complexes. This allowed the inhabitants of the favelas to integrate themselves into mainstream society, by simply providing them with their basic needs and creating centres for opportunities and employment.

Therefore designers should not limit themselves to creating tangible outcomes, design may also involve the creation of new systems and societies as Jauregui did. Design is finding solutions to a problem and it is not just left up to governments and politicians. The possibilities of design are endless.

‘The only limits are, as always, those of vision.’ (James Broughton)


Bibliography

Davis, M., (2006), Planet of Slums, London, Verso
Colors, (2005) 1000 Extra/Ordinary Objects, Germany, Taschen

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/12.14/08-gsdprize.html
http://www.macalester.ed u/courses/GEOG61/espencer/slums.html
http://www.roadjunky.com/brazil/favelas.shtml