Open up architectural spaces

By Muchiri Waititu

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. (Bertrand Russell)

One occupational hazard that an architect lives with is the fact that we often have to dispense free consultancy in social settings. Immediately after exchanging pleasantries, the inevitable next question is about a plot or a building someone has seen and why local architects seem to have ‘no imagination’, not in any given order.

A recurring question of late has been why our public spaces are fast degenerating into urban jungles. Let me do my colleagues a favour and remove this query from the cocktail circuit.

Delicate balance

An early definition of architecture gave a successful building the following attributes; structural integrity, aesthetic value and functional space. This, in simple terms means that a good building must be strong with Naomi Campbell looks and Apple’s IPad ease of use.

Architecture also is a living ever evolving being, which visually expresses the culture and aspirations of the local populace. Quite like art and music, only that we have to live in them. Inevitably, like music, architecture derives its inspiration from context.

Just like how the 1970s music genre, Funk, had heavy beats, architecture from this time had strong concrete features. Think KICC, Re-insurance Plaza and Hilton Hotel.

The buildings listed above were a product of an era that despised adornment. A building’s beauty was inherent and derived from its materials, which inevitably were natural hence, the use of sculptural concrete and glass. The same was in evidence in the fashion of the time, afro hair and figure hugging clothes.

The design of housing estates of the time also received similar treatment. Think Buru Buru estate with its whitewashed walls, clay roofs, timber balconies and picket fences. Inherent in its design was provision for open, well-designed spaces for playgrounds as well as corner shops, social halls and nursery schools. Everything in the estate fitting seamlessly into the other.

The decay in service delivery in the eighties changed all this. Instead of the open public spaces in town being maintained as envisaged, they became places to dump rubbish (the City Council stopped collecting waste) and in time, evolved to breeding grounds for all sorts of vermin, including the human kind, which preyed on unsuspecting passersby.

To prevent this, we all decided to hoard off the open grounds in the name of protecting residents from the vagaries of the urban jungle only to wake up one day to find brand new apartments coming up. Any resident of Nairobi’s South C and Ngumo will attest to this.

Soon, open spaces were being given bad reputations, from Ngong’ Forest, Karura Forest, Uhuru Park, Mombasa Road reserve. You name it. ‘Bad names’ meant that redemption could only be done via redevelopment and redevelopment meant gleaming buildings without that eyesore called the open space.

The casual approach of the custodians of public land also contributed to this situation as a new gold rush for open space was replayed under full public glare. An audit of this whole episode is still in the public domain in the Ndung’u Report. 

Parks and plazas

A United Nations report defines genocide as the deliberate destruction of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, in part or in whole. I hypothesise today that a systematic genocide was carried out on the open space.

In the city centre, there exist a number of plazas and squares such as the KICC Square used for firstly giving visual space to the architectural masterpiece.

Other minor open spaces are in the pedestrian precincts of the Aga Khan Walk, as well as other dedicated parks such as the Jeevanjee Gardens and the Bomb Blast Memorial Park, which are dedicated to people inclined to seek repose in this fast paced city.

Let us see how they are used. The Plaza at the KICC has been fenced in completely and is used as a car park to earn the conference centre some income and is, sometimes, leased out for corporate functions where tents are pitched. Many times, it is used as the backdrop for the flagging off, as well as the finishing ceremony for the Safari Rally. With the KICC silhouette, there is no better advertisement for the country than the sight of a victorious rally crew toasting their champagne in one of the greatest rallies in the world.

Of the plazas / parks I mentioned, this seems to be the only one with some sort of significance within the central business district. The plazas in the Aga Khan Walk have been grabbed right under our noses by well-intentioned mandarins in the City Hall who decided that the best way to enjoy the grass was to fence it with barbed wire (this is a story for another day).

Jeevanjee Gardens, which was meant to be our version of Hyde Park, is a shadow of what it can be. Imagine if it always had a live band in performance (French Cultural Centre but with space) or if it were the setting for the statues of great Kenyans with underground theme museums.

I could go on and on… but I will leave you with the words of the famous British zoologist, Desmond Morris who once said that a “city was not a concrete jungle, it was a human zoo”.

In the only city in the world boasting of a national park, let us not agree to live in this zoo, but run wild and free. Take back the city and give me back my open space.

The writer is a director at Adventis Inhouse Africa and the vice chairman Architectural Association of Kenya, Construction Project Management chapter.