Enabling a Trading Community: A Re-imagination of Trade in Lusaka, Zambia

Jackman, Nicole

Enabling a Trading Community: A Re-imagination of Trade in Lusaka, Zambia

Thesis / Dissertation

2024

Abstract

Embedded into Lusaka's urban fabric lies a network of informal traders. The everyday life in the Zambian city is tightly woven with permanent and impermanent trading practices. Traders experience challenges such as long-distance daily commutes, seasonal flash flooding and city cleanups which disrupt their livelihoods. These experiences and related research shape the dissertation's intention to explore ways architecture enables trading and living in a city of trade. The existing vibrant life within the informal setting is self-built, showcasing a strong sense of making. Borrowing from the manner of making in the context inspires the exploration of adaptable architecture that ignites social resilience in a trading context. The strategic implementation of adaptable architecture enables the user's sense of agency and aims to support the present and future everyday life of Kamwala. The intention is for the user to tactically assemble their spaces to their needs. -initiating agency which is better fitted to the context than contemporary architecture that is precisive and permanent.

Keywords

Architecture, Planning and Geomatics

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