“Poor urban residents identified water supply and better sanitation facilities as problems for which they require assistance (...) Housing and constructions, however, were not identified by the poor urban resident as problems for which they needed assistance.”

Considering this -what is our role as architects in such a context?

ALLAN CAIN, Head of Deveolopment Workshop, Luanda

AT STAKE

WATER

Luanda is strongly affected by its clanging seasons.

With a variation from months without any rain, the city is not prepared for the amounts of water coming in only short time in the wet season. The sudden rain leads to huge problems within the city core of Luanda

Rainfall in Luanda (323 mm)

JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER

40

100

20

25 mm

36 mm

76 mm

116 mm

0

80

60

120

13 mm

0 mm3 mm

0 mm

5 mm

0 mm

28 mm

20 mm

mm

Dry Season Wet Season

RAINFALL & SEASONS

Water is everywhere before it is somewhere. It is rain before it is rivers, it soaks before it flows, it spreads

before it gathers, it blurs before it clarifies. Water at these moments in the hydrological cycle is not easy to picture in maps or contain within lines. It is however to these waters that people are increasingly turning to find innovative solutions to the myriad water-related crises that catalyze politics, dynamics, and fears. Is it not time to re-invent our relationship with water — see water as not within, adjoining, serving, or threatening settlement, but the ground of settlement? Could this be the basis of a new vocabulary of place, history and ecology? And can the field of design, by virtue of its ability to articulate and re-visualize, lead in the constructing this new vocabulary?

Water sensitive urban design emphasises the benefit of stormwater and waterways as a resource and an asset, rather than the conventional view of stormwater merely as a nuisance. It provides many opportunities to integrate water features in urban design and to enhance the social and environmental amenity of urban development.

Water Sensitive Urban Design

Erosion causing damage to intrastructure

Open, polluted waters are source of deseases. Luanda is one of the few cities in the world suffering from urban polio. In 2006, the worst African cholera epidemic in a decade devastated the musseques, killing 1600, spread by contaminated drinking water as well as contact with sewage.

Water affected og flooded roads causes huge traffic jams after every rainfall.

Electrically charged water causes many deaths, especially in the informal areas, where electrical solutions are not always adequately secured.

Drainage problems causes mix of different hygienic environments, promoting spread of diseases.

HEAVY RAIN 18.00-20.00

INFILTRATION

ACCUMULATION

EROSION

LUNADA’S CHALLENGES OF INSUFFICIENT DRAINAGE

“5 people died yesterday night due to rain. And it only rained for about two hours. The most common way of dying when there is heavy rain is from electric shock as the are so many open electric conduits that easily come in contact with water when it floods. Some also get washed into drainage canals eighter due to erosion or they fall into the closed canals as the drainage lids sometimes moves due to the pressure from the water underneath.”

JOAO HANDANGA GILAdministration Manager, DOF Subsea Angola

Still waters are comfort zones for mosquitoes, and hereby promote the spread of malaria.

Erosion causing damage to building mass.

The informal settlement close to the edge of the coastal platau are extremely vulnerable to ground erosion.

Concidering Luanda’s extensive need of water, it’s

a contradiction that the big amount of water today

is only seen as a problem. How can the sudden water be turned from a problem to a resource?

“This happens every year when the rains come and it proves the government is not prepared,”

Luisete AraújoPolitical secretary for the Partidos de Oposição Civil (Civil Opposition Parties)

HERMENEGILDO NUNDA

Master of Economy, Connector

Despite regulations, green spaces are disappearing as the private sectors buy land through corruption. This

increases the problem of drainage.

EUROPE196 l/ person/ day

US380 l/ person/ day

SUB-SAHARA4,9 l /person /day

A MORE SUSTAINABLE RELATION TO WATERLimited access to clean water results in more efficient usage of the resource. The mucceque dwellers have a high consciousness related to water consumption, and uses it without hardly any spill. The water is a visible element playing an active role in the urban life, where the resource is carried and kept in containers instead of hidden in tubes. Water is valuable and is treated sophisticatedly.

These are values easily lost in a tubed society.

How to offer access to water, yet maintain the awareness and the sustainable way of using it?

CONSUMPTION

Can sufficient water be captured within the informal structure itself?

Shouldn’t clean water be seen not as a public good -but as a public right?

Luanda, one of the fastest growing cities in the world, is desperately short of clean water. Most of the inhabitants of the musseques (the informal areas that constitute the majority of Luanda’s land area) are dependent on contaminated water brought by trucks from rivers hours north and south of the city. The price of water in the musseques can be very high.

The formal water supply comes mainly from the Kwanzo and Bengo Rivers. The state of Luanda’s water supply system is in very poor condition, with the operating company, Empresa Provincial de Agua de Luanda, unable to carry out normal functions such as maintenance, billing and maintaining accounts. Luanda’s two water production and treatment plants distributes water to about 25% of the residents. The majority of the population, and virtually all low-income communities, depend on private truck-distributed water that is frequently untreated and are also very difficult to afford.

People in the mussiques uses a lot of time, effort and money in order to access (at best) clean water. Releasing this time and effort means to release huge resources!

ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER

Water plays an active urban role in the musseques

25% 75%

1 500 000 liters -500 tank trucks of water driven to Luanda each day

The tank water supplying the poorer population is several times more expensive than the tap water from tubes.

clea

n w

ater

tub

esWater destillation plantsoutside Luanda

LUANDA WATER SUPPLY