Com(Pact): Reframing High-Density Housing As A Framework For Dignity And Social Cohesion | Architecture Thesis

Site Context

The project is located in Imizamo Yethu, a dense informal settlement in Hout Bay, Cape Town, characterized by steep topography, limited infrastructure, and strong social networks. Housing is tightly packed, public space is scarce, and movement occurs through narrow roads and pedestrian paths shaped by necessity rather than planning. Despite these challenges, the settlement is rich in social life, informal trade, and community resilience. The site itself slopes approximately nine meters and is divided by a partially built road, making access and connectivity critical design considerations.

The program responds directly to this context and includes cooperative housing clusters, shared courtyards, vegetable gardens, laundry spaces, and a central community centre. The community centre houses an ECD, a café, meeting spaces, and a cable car system that connects Imizamo Yethu to greater Hout Bay, while also serving waste management and emergency services. Informal trading, play spaces, and public gathering areas are embedded along a central spine, ensuring the project supports both daily life and long-term opportunity.

Design Process

The design process began with on-site research, walking the settlement, and engaging with residents to understand daily patterns of movement, play, trade, and social interaction. Observations of density, informal building methods, and collective life informed the core concept of com(pact). Early conceptual work focused on key questions of who the project serves, how it should function, and why flexibility is essential.

Responding to the steep site, the project evolved through iterative testing of terracing strategies, eventually forming three terraces that organize circulation and housing. The central terrace became a pedestrian spine, while housing was arranged on either side. Unit design followed a modular 4×8m grid, allowing units to be combined into clusters and clusters into co-operatives. Throughout the process, five guiding principles — interface, open network, intensity, life cycle, and flexibility — were used to test decisions at every scale, from site organization to material choice, ensuring coherence between concept, form, and use.

Final Outcome

The final outcome is a cooperative housing framework that accommodates high density while prioritizing social life, adaptability, and identity. Eighteen housing clusters are organized into eight co-operatives, each with shared amenities that encourage collective ownership and support.

A central spine runs through the site, acting as the social and spatial backbone — a place for movement, play, informal trade, and gathering. Its varying width and programming create shifts in intensity, balancing public activity with moments of privacy.

The community center forms the heart of the scheme, anchoring social, economic, and infrastructural functions, including the cable car connection. Material choices reference the self-built language of Imizamo Yethu, reinforcing familiarity and resilience.

Conclusion: Ultimately, the project proposes not a fixed solution but a living urban framework—one that can grow, adapt, and extend beyond the site, offering a model for dignified, community-driven density in informal urban contexts.

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