Thickening Social Spaces

Most of the so-called modern building projects in Addis Ababa imitate trends practiced in other parts of the world instead of learning from the cultural trends of the country. As a result, houses and other buildings, even integrated housing system of the government, are now leaving citizens without their "social space". This is because the design approach is only focusing on blocks. The first part of this work presents a methodology for design approach which is the reverse of the current approach. The negative spaces of an urban plot are designed first so that the left over spaces will be the blocks. The second part is an investigation of the interaction between users, different social space and users with the spaces within the built environment studying the existing residential blocks and neighbourhoods. By bringing together specialised knowledge of the physical form of the built environment and its social use and meaning we can create a more complex level of understanding to the working and interaction of physical and social urban space, and thus raising the awareness about the social quality of residential environments.