Reconstructing Dwelling: Social and spatial features of housing practices in Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa is experiencing a high rate of urbanization coupled with a decades-old housing crisis. This study problematizes the current housing problem not only in the frame of housing shortage but also as a ‘housing mismatch’, with the underlying dwelling typologies rooted in modernist design ideals not responding to context. These dwelling solutions, as seen in the recent condominium projects, do not fulfil the social and spatial requirements of dwellers. This problem calls for a thorough inquiry into tracing the roots of the ‘housing mismatch’. Since dweller-initiated housing transformations are a common phenomenon in most housing conditions in Addis Ababa, the study proceeded to analyze these transformations to understand the housing mismatch in its qualitative and spatial aspects. One of the reasons for dweller-initiated transformations is to finetune living habitats to cultural parameters. In line with this, transformations were observed during the test run of the fieldwork conducted on three households in 2020. Furthermore, the fieldwork revealed that dwellers used local conceptions of space such as the gibi, the gwaro and the gwada to explain the socio-spatial phenomena of transformations....