ELAO MARTIN
UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG
Reimagining Kitintale’s landscape through clay brick making
Martin says, “Clay brick making in Kampala,
Uganda, is one of many activities that have negatively
affected wetlands’ ecosystems. An age old way of
making; the process has created visible scars in the
wetlands landscape through the mining of clay soil as
miners clear large areas of land and vegetation for the
raw materials used to make the bricks, leaving the soil
barren and the wetland unable to work as a carbon
sink and water filter, or provide natural resources used
for subsistence.”
The radical design proposition is for the digging
of clay soil for the brick making process, to create
an edge or buffer between the informal settlement
of Kitintale and the wetland. This dug edge in the
landscape will prevent the informal settlement
from encroaching further into the wetland. As
this protective edge of the wetland will inevitably
transverse many human activities in the wetland
such as farming, the project also explores ways that
the process of clay brick making and its devices, can
be colonised, and appropriated by these activities to
create a sustainable landscape, long after the clay brick
makers have left.
Through seasonal flooding, and after the water has
subsided, the silt left behind will encourage farming
activity to take up the area excavated, and the wetland
can regenerate itself, while maintain the terraced
landscape that acts as a protective edge.
Regeneration
water subsides, leaving silt
behind that farmers can use
to grow crops on the edge
Student Awards
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