Let's continue the thread about recycling and inventiveness that started with yesterday's post by looking at a project on display in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition revolving around the transformation of the Warwick Triangle in Durban, South Africa.
Tired of arresting people just to see them breaking the law over and over again, a former policeman joined architect Andrew Makin and started an NGO that tried to tackle the problem from a different angle and sort things out in the area.
Established in 2008, the Asiye eTafuleni ('bring it to the table' in Zulu) NGO emerged out of the ongoing involvement of officials, urbanists and activists working on the Warwick Junction Project. Durban's primary transport node accomodates on an average day 460,000 commuters and at least 5,000 street traders. This area featured an open air food market underneath an abandoned elevated highway loop with a pedestrian traditional medicine market on top.
Though the place displayed great vitality, it was still unsafe, so Asiye eTafuleni added stairs and pedestrian bridges to the unfinished infrastructure, creating passages where connections had been interrupted.
Connectivity was therefore improved; the traffic was reorganised and specific recycling projects were also launched through a series of schemes and programmes that brought together a mix of architects, social scientists, and informal traders.
Originally it wasn't too obvious which ministry should have funded the redevelopment of the area that was suspended between the white and the black city, the formal and the informal, the traditional and the global.
But the plans and projects launched to improve local conditions were successful and at the moment the market established here remains a powerful experience where visitors can buy food, objects, clothes and accessories in a culturally rich and chaotic environment that also tries to bridge the local world with the Western world.
The NGO continues to launch new projects on a local basis to ensure a more equitable distribution of power, and fairer commercial opportunities, consultation and participation, and a concern to equip traders with the know-how and support they need.
The main point of this project is to show that by connecting rather than isolating and facing problems rather than hiding them, new energies can be created and planners can help dismantling social time bombs.
The project at the Biennale is supported by photographs, plans and a model of the city, but there are also a series of objects directly bought from the market, from a dried calabash used as a domestic utensil for the preparation of food and storage of liquids to the porcupine quills used to prick the skin of patients in order to administer certain medicines, from bottles containing animal fat to bowls of beads.
The latter have actually got an interesting connection with Venice as well: used in art, jewellery and clothing of African peple in KwaZulu-Natal for more than a thousand years, the beads originated in India and were first brought to Africa by Arab traders during the 9th century.
Later on beads from Venice were bartered for ivory by the Portuguese; large scale imports of beads from Bohemia began at the start of the 19th century ad have only recently been replaced by beads from China.
Quite a few accessories and clothes on display have special functions: the umgexo necklaces are worn by traditional healers and izangoma as part of their work wear; the isigalo shell bracelets are also worn by healers or diviners as insignia of their spiritual vocation to the arts of healing; while white, green and blue garments created by specialist tailors are used by members of the Zion Christian Church, known as amaZiyoni (each church has a very distinctive type of robe, made from easily recognisable colours).
Among the most interesting products there are two pairs of izimbadada sandals: hand-crafted from the tread of used car tyres, they are usually made to order for individual customers.
Like many other items at the Warwick Junction market, the shoes are an example of a service that represents important elements of Zulu history and key issues in modern urban life.
The design of the sandals is based on the tough ox-hide footwear with a horizontal strap that originated in the rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal.
This style of footwear was brought to urban areas by migrant workers who were forced to leave their homes and seek work during the colonial era as a result of harsh taxation policies.
During the 20th century, when discarded car tyre became available, Zulu sandal makers in the communal dormitory hostels turned them into izimbadada. By carving away the white surface of the tyres and explosing the black rubber underneath sandal makers incorporated symbolic patterns into the traps of the sandals.
Therefore the sandals came to represent both the customs of urban hostels reserved for male Zulu migrant workers as well as the rural life they left behind.
The sandals have become icons of African culture embraced by Zionist religious groups, izangoma (raditional diviners) and fashionable young people alike (check out the Nike logo carved on one pair of sandals).
Recycling is relatively new as a concept in Western cuture, but finding new uses for discarded material out of necessity is common in African culture as proved by these sandals that may provide us with a few lessons about recovering and reusing waste materials along the "against scarcity, inventiveness" line we examined in yesterday's post.
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