introduction

With the enormous production of social housing schemes within townships in South Africa in the past ten years, there has been a struggle to establish a home-identity that reflects and supports questions about the climate of cultural influence and expectation - importing the cultural identity rather than grass-roots.
Entire townships have lost or are losing their 'Africanising' potential as planners and architects bow to pressures of international uniformity and budgetary costs. The need to rethink and re-work the approach has become of great interest in architectural discourse.
Existing township typologies do not yet feature strongly in this discussion and while Northern Europe has, on the contrary, been placing more importance on sustainability and moving towards an ecology of recycling/re-using, this very attitude has existed for decennia in the townships - junk architecture and shack-chic, is being undermined and eroded by imposed archaic planning strategies.