In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair – An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi’s Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture

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In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair – An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi’s Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture

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  • Project Name: In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair
  • Student Name: Sarina Patel
  • Softwares/Plugins: Rhinoceros 3D , Enscape , Adobe Photoshop , Adobe Illustrator , Procreate
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Excerpt: ‘In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair’ is a Masters Design Project by Sarina Patel from the ‘Bartlett School of Architecture – UCL.’ The project aims to transform Nairobi’s Dandora dumpsite by repurposing textile waste into a circular, community-driven economy. The project promotes ecological, infrastructural, and socioeconomic repair, fostering collaboration and local knowledge. It challenges modernist and capitalist top-down planning by promoting collective labor and circular economies.

Introduction: Nairobi’s urban poor communities have a way of imagining their own futures; what would happen if we engaged architectural tools to give form to those imaginations or be in conversation with them?

In/Formal Imaginaries envisions a transformative approach to Nairobi’s Dandora dumpsite by engaging with the imaginations and agency of the informal sector. Rather than discarding textile waste, the project positions it as a resource within the city’s repair economies: waste pickers sort textiles, while Jua Kali artisans repurpose them into building systems, creating a circular, community-driven economy.

This initiative aims to redefine slum upgrading by positioning residents as active participants in the making of their own neighborhoods. Small, localized interventions are seen as catalysts for large-scale impact—introducing a model of ecological, infrastructural, and socioeconomic repair. This ‘repair’ is not just physical but cultural: a long-term practice where materials, skills, and knowledge circulate within the community over time. By working with, not for, the community, the project promotes an architecture of collaboration—an ‘architecture with architects’—rooted in local knowledge, informal systems, and site-specific responses. It challenges dominant urban paradigms by foregrounding collective labor, infrastructures of care, and circular economies of waste over modernist and capitalist top-down planning.

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Site Context

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Project Outline
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Nairobi: The Green City Under The Sun

Dandora, one of Nairobi’s informal settlements, hosts the city’s largest dumpsite. For many on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, waste picking provides a consistent livelihood through selling sorted materials to recycling companies. Waste pickers are a crucial informal workforce, yet they represent some of society’s most marginalised populations. Despite their extensive sorting efforts, clothing in particular remains unsorted, resulting in towering mountains of textile waste.

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Dandora is an Estate in Kenya’s capital and largest city, Nairobi. Dandora hosts the largest dumpsite in the city, which sprawls over 30 acres of mountainous garbage heaps.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
The site of the proposal is located on the edge of the dumpsite, neighbouring existing informal settlements.

The proposed building reimagines this waste as a resource, serving as both a model and innovation lab for future community construction. At the heart of the proposal is a craftivist centre, a communal infrastructure that houses workshops, studios, and residencies for artisans and their families. The ground floor supports waste processing and design experimentation, while upper-level residential units rethink vertical living to sustain the sociality and infrastructures of care embedded in informal settlements. Urban wetlands are integrated as shared ecological spaces, supporting rewilding and community gathering.

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
The Waste Pickers of Dandora: although the work is harmful to their health, it is their livelihood and a vital economic lifeline.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Contextually, the project involves various sectors of the informal workforce, both on-site and in the surrounding urban and waste environment.

Ultimately, the project provides a basic toolkit to envision a utopia where the Dandora dumpsite becomes a thriving, self-sustaining neighborhood—showcasing how small-scale, community-led design interventions can shape more inclusive, resilient urban futures.

Design Process

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Repurposing textile waste on a human scale, designing functional elements such as shading, hammocks, or furniture for public use to invite more colour, vibrancy and community interaction to public spheres of the building.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Construction System: Through making physical models of the fab-bricks, these bricks were tested to be used in construction of both interior and exterior walls, facilitating both insulation and noise absorption across the building. | Construction Detail: Woven, foldable windows internally partition the building, allowing for spaces to be adaptable and openable and bringing life to internal spaces through colour.

The design process reimagines waste and care as central to architecture. On the ground floor, the craftivist centre integrates waste sorting and workshops, transforming textile waste into building materials. Techniques explored include textile-ceramic “fab-bricks” for walls, rewoven foldable windows, fabric-laminated glass mosaics, and fabric-cast roofing with clerestory ventilation.

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Construction Detail: Individual fabric laminated glass blocks are combined to create a mosaic-type wall, where each block is unique to the fabric and patterns interwoven into the glass, allowing for the play of refractive light into internal spaces. | Construction Detail: Fabric-casting formwork was tested for the construction of the roofs, where the forms are organic and designed such that the edges extend upwards and overhang to provide shading on all sides.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Design Detail: Flooring types, Through both tiling and paving, draw on common patterns used in the traditional textiles, known as the Kanga.

These material systems enhance insulation, adaptability, and vibrancy while embedding colour and light into spaces. Textile waste is sorted, shredded, and repurposed into construction elements or repaired for resale, reflecting existing repair practices in Nairobi’s informal settlements and proposing an alternative to throwaway culture.

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
The Building’s Structural Form: The concept for the upper residential floors envisions smaller scale communal areas on each level, with the rotation allowing for the roof of one level to become a terrace for the next.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
The upper floors were designed based on a structural system of an octagonal primary structure, with curved beams that rotate upwards at each level.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Design Detail: The design of upper-level partition walls looks at weaving as both a social practice and construction technique, with woven foldable membrane walls, which act like curtains to allow for space-use transformation. | Design Detail: In other partitions, simple mesh wiring is provided, allowing for residents to weave onto the mesh and personalise residential spaces.

The upper floors host artisan residences designed around embedded care and community. An octagonal structural system with bespoke steelwork by local jua kali metalworkers enables rotating terraces and communal areas on each level. Partition walls use weaving as both a technique and a social practice, through foldable membranes, mesh wiring for customisation, and textile façades for shading, ventilation, and comfort. These adaptive systems echo the everyday flexibility of informal housing while fostering cooperative interaction.

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Adaptive Textile Facades: The double layer façade skin acts as a dynamic shading system, where triangulated rotating fabric fins on the east and west of the building allow for optional shading to the domestic wings in the mornings and evenings when the equatorial sun is at its lowest.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Physical model of the triangulated fin rotating façade.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Adaptive Textile Facades: This façade system is a series of fabric bricks rotating on a vertical pole, allowing users to determine the extent to which the façade opens or closes for optional insulation or ventilation and views to the exterior.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Adaptive Textile Facades: The last façade designed is a fabric woven façade, where textiles wrap around a simple structure, allowing for basic shading.

The overall building design draws inspiration from Kenyan Kanga textiles, with vibrant floral motifs and patterns informing façades and flooring, embedding cultural identity into a model of sustainable, community-led architecture.

Final Outcome

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
At the heart of the proposal is a craftivist centre, housing workshops, studios, and residencies for the informal artisans and their families; in service to the wider community, the project aims to provide spaces for these artisans to experiment and invent new building systems from repurposed textile waste, initiating a new form of slum upgrading where residents become active participants in reshaping the city from its margins.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
The building’s ground floor, serving as the craftivist centre, supports Jua Kali artisan collectives in their social labour, forming part of a broader network of repair and manual labour throughout the surrounding settlement.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
The textile quality of the building, particularly in the façade design of the residential floors, prioritises passive design principles of shading and ventilation, which are contextual to Nairobi’s climatic and weather conditions.

The final outcome envisions an alternative model of slum upgrading rooted in collaboration with local communities. Drawing from everyday practices in Nairobi’s informal settlements, the project foregrounds circular economies of waste, infrastructures of care, and collective labour over modernist, top-down planning. At its core, the craftivist centre provides space for Jua Kali artisans to reclaim and repurpose textile waste into innovative construction systems, embedding repair and experimentation within the building itself.

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
The ground floor offers spaces for this sorting and reclamation process, as well as adaptable studio and workshop spaces for invited informal artisans to innovate in repurposing textile waste for future community construction, illustrating the circular economies embedded in the building and rewilding process.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
The residencies of the craft centre serve as a model for reintroducing the sociality of slums back into vertical living; each residential wing host bedrooms on the two wings, connected at the centre by communal cooking, dining, living and childcare areas.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Integrated wetlands surround the building to support rewilding efforts, while repurposed textile elements invite more colour, vibrancy and community interaction to public spheres of the building.

The ground floor hosts sorting areas, workshops, and circular gathering spaces that facilitate innovation and community engagement, drawing inspiration from Jua Kali traditions of knowledge sharing and collective labour. Above, the residential floors integrate living and working, with domestic wings organised around communal kitchens, dining areas, daycare hubs, and textile playgrounds. 

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
The craftivist centre accounts for the knowledge sharing that underpins the jua kali sector through circular configurations of workshops, drawing from the indigenous practices of storytelling in circles.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Contrary to Nairobi’s current tenement phenomenon, where residential towers have no spaces for children to play, areas like the central textile playground enable children to safely play while parents work.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Extended balconies and roof terraces on each level, foster a flow of social life from interior spaces to the outdoors, while adaptive textile façades enable thermal comfort to the living areas.

These spaces prioritise neighbourly childcare, shared domestic practices, and vibrant social life—countering the privatisation seen in Nairobi’s current tenement phenomenon. Extended balconies, terraces, and adaptive textile façades ensure ventilation, shading, and outdoor interaction, while façades and layouts respond directly to the local climate and cultural context. 

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Drawing from existing modes of living in Nairobi’s slums as fragments of a post-capitalist society, the project valorises manual labour, circular economies of waste, and communal infrastructures of care.
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
Grounded on the Swahili proverb ‘Kidogo sio Kidogo’: ‘a little goes a long way’, the project highlights how small, localized interventions are seen as catalysts for large-scale impact – introducing a model of ecological, infrastructural, and socio-economic repair.

Conclusion: Ultimately, by situating formalised spaces within informal practices, the project resists universal replication, instead proposing a site-specific, anti-modernist architecture where formality enables informality, contesting current understandings of an in/formal binary.

[This Academic Project has been published with text and images submitted by the student]

Site Context

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture

Design Process

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture

Final Outcome

In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture
In/Formal Imaginaries: Textiling Futures of Repair - An Architecture of Collaborative Repair for Nairobi's Dandora | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture

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