Dezeen Magazine

Stars to design housing for shack-dwellers

Design Indaba update: international architects and designers including Thomas Heatherwick, Will Alsop, Shigeru Ban and David Adjaye are to design low-cost housing for families living in the shack districts (above) surrounding Cape Town, South Africa.

The project, called 10x10, will pair ten well-known architects and designers with ten local practices to develop new housing typologies for developing countries.

Each team will build one house by Christmas 2007. The plans will subsequently be compiled into a manual to be donated to African governments, who will be able to use them royalty-free under an initiative described as "architectural open source".

The 10x10 project is the brainchild of Ravi Naidoo, founder of the Design Indaba conference that takes place in Cape Town each February.

"Let’s build 10 houses for 10 families currently living in a squatter camp outside Cape Town," said Naidoo. "Lets give dignity and empathy to the poorest of the poor, by designing a house that pushes the envelope in terms of ingenuity, creativity and sustainability."

Naidoo has secured the services of ten designers and architects who have spoken at the Design Indaba conference in the past.

They are: Thomas Heatherwick; Christophe Egret (Studio Egret West); Will Alsop; Shigeru Ban; David Adjaye; Cameron Sinclair (Architecture for Humanity); Lindy Roy; Eva Jiricna; Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham Architecture) and Sir Terence Conran.

10X10 will be project managed by Arup engineer Mike Edmonds, who has been seconded to Design Indaba under a scholarship from UK funding agency NESTA.

South African architects working on the project are: Luyanda Mpahlwa; Andrew Makin & Janina Masojada; Don Albert; Jo Noero; Silvio Rech & Lesley Carstens; Martin Kruger; Stefan Antoni; Ruben Reddy; Henning Rassmuss and Vanessa September.