Project by Johan Mottelson, Jørgen Eskemose and third year students from Institute of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape.
Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world. Its capital, Maputo, is characterized by social inequality, which is reflected in in the urban structure of the city. The formal city center has a planned urban layout, well-functioning infrastructure and high-rise buildings; while the surrounding informal settlements develop with limited infrastructure, urban planning, public institutions and single-story houses built by the residents themselves. The community center projects in the informal settlements seek to improve the access to public services, such as health and education, for the residents in the low-income neighborhoods and thereby decrease the social inequality in embedded in the city.
Third-year architecture students of Institute of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape did three weeks of fieldwork in centrally located informal settlements of Maputo, surveying urban and architecture scales. Subsequently, the students programmed and designed individual community centers focusing on the problems and themes relating to the UN Development Goals, including education, job creation, climate change, sustainability and health.
