Exploring Resilient Streets in Suna, Dar es Salaam

This research investigates the process of creating resilient streets within the wetland settlement that balances the economic, environmental and social needs of the community. The aim is to create spaces that can tolerate disturbance, survive, adapt, and grow without collapsing into a qualitatively different state.

Throughout the year I explored my project by participating in expressive art experiments and telling authentic stories of women from different generations through poetry as a means to share mutual knowledge on one’s human experience in the world and the need to explore alternative spatial processes where decisions are guided by hunch and intuition through the act of making.

I explored prototyping with physical models as a design methodology and video as a means of representation. This design methodology is intended to enhance the functionality of the proposed design (Burry 2017). I used physical models as a thinking and exploring tool to help me understand the spatial relationship of the site and to test my design proposal structurally, aesthetically, technically and to question whether more insight could be gained through the process of failure and resolution.