SPACE May 2025 (No. 690)
Empower Community 1. The first Empower Community was implemented in the BT Section of Site C, Khayelitsha, Cape Town. ©UTT
Informal settlements, often referred to as ‘slums’, exist within cities yet remain structurally excluded from infrastructure and legal rights. Urban-Think Tank (UTT), a collective of architectural practitioners, has long focused on living conditions that sit outside institutional frameworks. Drawing on over 30 years of experience building urban infrastructure in impoverished areas of Latin America, UTT now introduces the Empower Model, a social housing initiative for informal settlements in South Africa. Moving beyond housing provision to integrate infrastructure, institutional transitions, and financial models, Empower’s first implementation serves as the basis for this conversation with UTT founder Alfredo Brillembourg, exploring how architecture can meaningfully engage with realities beyond formal systems.
Vertical Gym Chacao—Caracas, Venezuela (2006) ©Ana Luisa Figueredo
Lee Sowoon (Lee): The UTT has been active in impoverished areas around the world making interventions through architecture and design that aim to bring about tangible improvements to the urban environment. As an architect, how do you understand the issue of poverty today?
Alfredo Brillembourg (Brillembourg): I’ve been lucky. Growing up in a middle-class family in Venezuela in the 1980s, I had access to opportunity. I was able to study architecture at Columbia University—those were different times. Once I graduated and returned to Caracas, my country was in chaos. I dedicated myself to social entrepreneurship through my studio and began asking how architecture could improve life in the barrios—the poor neighbourhoods. Here’s a sobering reality: the number of people living below the poverty line worldwide has barely changed since 1990, largely because of population growth. We’ve all grown up being taught that economic growth will solve poverty, unemployment, and other social ills. But clearly, it hasn’t worked for the poor. Poverty cannot be fixed without a holistic approach—and that includes serious investment by central governments in social infrastructure, meaning housing, public spaces, schools, clinics, sports gyms, and even urban farms. These are facilities that are all too often missing in informal settlements. That should tell us something profound about our profession. In healthy democracies, laws are debated before they’re passed. That process seems to be breaking down. But the absence of architects’ voices in these debates is particularly alarming.
Lee: Is there a guiding principle unique to UTT that shapes your approach to architecture?
Brillembourg: Just as Louis Sullivan once said, ‘Form follows function,’ we say: ‘Social infrastructure follows objective.’ This belief is grounded in social responsibility. In the 1960s and 1970s, that idea was central to the profession. Modernist architects like Le Corbusier, Moisei Ginzburg, and the Russian Constructivists believed in architecture as a tool to shape a new society. We carry that belief forward. We believe in using architecture to minimise – and when possible, eliminate – the barriers between the haves and the have-nots. Architecture can’t be purely top-down or bottom-up. Imposed plans ignore what people really need. When we receive funding or a grant to improve urban infrastructure, the first question we ask is: who decides what infrastructure is needed? Most of our architectural work begins with observation and engagement. It moves through analysis, then strategy, from which concept and implementation emerge. We spend time on the ground. Working with local resident builders – whether in Caracas or Cape Town – opened our eyes to their ad-hoc goals, their processes, their evolving patterns of development. We learned to recognise not just problems but regional intelligence. Their ingenuity has taught us invaluable lessons.
Overall view of Empower Community 1 ©1000Things Production
Phumezo’s shack, built as the first activist prototype experiment of the Empower Model ©UTT
Phumezo’s shack, built as the first activist prototype experiment of the Empower Model ©UTT
Lee: Could you explain UTT’s multi-disciplinary organisational structure and its collaboration-driven mode of practice?
Brillembourg: At UTT, we work with urban planners, engineers, sociologists, environmental consultants, filmmakers, economists, and community organisers. It’s a truly multi-disciplinary team, designed to address the social, ecological, and economic complexities of urban inequality. As an activist architect, working in the public realm, my commitment is to conceive and realise projects that serve neglected communities. That means collaborating with a very diverse range of people—from city governments and engineers to youth groups and NGOs. From the beginning, our mission has been to challenge the dominant culture of architecture—especially the idea of the solitary genius, the single-author paradigm. Unlike iconic figures like Frank Gehry, or Herzog & de Meuron – whose work is often more formal and less socially embedded – the UTT’s projects incorporate ethnographic research, local languages, and community knowledge. The notion that one person holds all the responsibility, and all the credit, doesn’t hold up in the kinds of places and conditions where we work. From the first day in our office, every team member knows: this is not about design egos, this is about collective authorship.
Lee: UTT’s early work focused on impoverished areas in Caracas, Venezuela. To provide community facilities including gyms, you developed the GIMNASIO VERTICAL™, a prefabricated kit of parts designed for universal application. Is the development of such prototypes, intended for replication, a central design strategy of UTT?
Brillembourg: Our mission is to transform unequal communities through sustainable, scalable prototypes—not just in housing, but also in energy systems and social infrastructure like gyms, schools, and clinics. The Vertical Gym is a modular component kit—a flexible system that can be assembled and reassembled, adapted to different sites, climates, and communities. It’s designed to be replicable anywhere. We implemented this approach in five different locations in Venezuela. We also designed the Escuela Distrital de Arte (EDA) in Barranquilla, Colombia, an art school, using the same logic of modularity and flexibility. So yes, the development of reproducible prototypes is a core strategy at UTT. We’ve identified more than 100 potential sites for vertical gyms across informal settlements. Research showed there were over 70 hectares of unused land in the barrios of Caracas—plenty of space for sports fields and public buildings. We redesigned the original gym to create a universal model that could even be used in Europe. The patent we registered in Venezuela was offered through a Creative Commons license to allow anyone to adapt or prefabricate the structure elsewhere. We’ve run around, presenting the Vertical Gym concept to governments and mayors, offering the system for free. And now we’re seeing the results. Petare’s gym rises eight floors and includes a market and parking below. Los Teques includes a 50m pool and seats for 500 spectators.
Interior view of previous shack (left), Interior view of empower shack,(right) ©Daniel Schwartz
Interior view of the first floor of the base unit ©Daniel Schwartz
Interior view of the second floor of the base unit ©Jan Ras
Lee: How has the Vertical Gym prototype evolved in cities other than Caracas?
Brillembourg: Caracas was just the beginning. Over time, we’ve developed new iterations of the prototype in response to different social, cultural, and environmental needs. In Amman, Jordan, we reimagined the structure as a cultural facility for women. In Utrecht, the Netherlands, it became a rowing club on the canal. In Cape Town, as part of the Empower project, we built a gym with a rooftop farm—the first of its kind. Each version builds on the original, pushing the idea further. With the help of environmental consultants, we’ve re-engineered the Vertical Gym to incorporate sustainable technologies, making it eligible for international carbon credits. The latest design includes innovations such as recyclable materials, passive wind and solar cooling systems, and rainwater harvesting. It’s a step toward what we call anticipatory infrastructure—design that’s not only resilient but regenerative.
Lee: Where are UTT’s main areas of activity today? What specific themes or issues does each of their offices around the world focus on?
Brillembourg: While our early architectural works were mostly located in Caracas, Venezuela, UTT has grown into a decentralised network with offices across the globe. Each of these offices focuses on very specific areas of interest,▼1 responding to local needs while contributing to a broader, shared mission. UTT Global has two main operational branches, structured along time zones. One is based in New York, which oversees activities in Caracas and São Paulo. The other is in Oslo, which coordinates efforts with our offices in Geneva and South Africa. This structure allows us to maintain a diverse and plural practice, which I believe is essential to the success of our work. We actively prioritise diversity, both in our team composition and in the communities we serve. We know that true innovation and sustainable solutions come from inclusive, collaborative processes.
Rear view of first group of Empower shack houses finished ©Daniel Schwartz
Axonometric diagram of Core and Shell model; Core: structural and service elements; Shell: envelope and cladding components
Lee: UTT has been involved in addressing the housing crisis in South Africa since 2012. Could you describe the background to the development of the Empower Model, and explain how UTT Empower (UTTE) came to be established as a non-profit organisation?
Brillembourg: Our work in South Africa began gradually—not with a blueprint or masterplan, but with a desire to listen and learn. In fact, we started simply by getting to know the neighbourhood. We worked on individual houses, we ‘re-blocked’ informal shack layouts, we created prototype iterations of houses, and only over time, the designs evolved into what is now the Empower Project—a completed neighbourhood of 80 housing units, a public plaza, solar energy, rooftop farms, internal roads, and essential social infrastructure. Too often, place making in the developing world yields to the narrow demands of market forces. That’s why we founded UTTE, a nonprofit design studio. We wanted to bridge architecture and financial resilience. We strategically curated the organisational framework to support this. Artists, researchers, planners, urbanists, rebels—they’ve all come to Cape Town to participate. UTTE non-profit, formalised our long-term commitment to participatory urban development and allowed us to build stronger local partnerships and more sustainable funding channels.
Lee: The Empower Model was conceived as a response to the limitations of South Africa’s post-apartheid state-led Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). What do you see as the major shortcomings of the RDP policy?
Brillembourg: The RDP had noble and historic ambitions: nation-building, democratisation, and the guarantee of basic human rights—all anchored in Nelson Mandela’s vision for the Rainbow Nation and a transformative constitution. One of RDP’s critical promises was ‘housing for all’—a powerful and necessary objective. But the way that goal was implemented created deep systemic challenges. The RDP housing prototype was modeled after low-cost, single-family homes—a suburban vision influenced by American planning models like Levittown. But that model, even in the U.S., has proven to be unsustainable and socially isolating. The days of sprawling, low-density development are over. Because the cost of relocating people to the urban periphery is enormous. It means extending roads, sewage systems, electricity grids, and transportation networks—all to greenfield sites far from job centres. It’s ecologically destructive and economically wasteful. We should never urbanise farmland. Instead, we must focus on reworking and reimagining the existing footprint of the city. What’s needed now is a shift in strategy: we need to go vertical, densify the townships, and re-block existing informal settlements. This is where the Empower Model comes in.
Land reallocation process using wooden blocks ©Daniel Schwartz
Design process based on residents’ ability to pay and their spatial needs. Public space was created by redistributing individually squatted land through a homeowners association. The association approved the idea of redistribution in new dense 2-storey clusters of houses which frees up land for public use.
Lee: The Empower Model builds upon the participatory urban planning method known as ‘Blocking-Out’, in which residents of informal settlements voluntarily reorganise and plan their living spaces. How does Empower model distinguish itself from the conventional Blocking-Out approach?
Brillembourg: One of the most influential approaches we encountered in South Africa was called Blocking-Out. Originally developed by Slum Dwellers International (SDI), Blocking-Out was meant to organise informal settlements—to re-block shacks into more rational layouts and enable temporary improvements. But we didn’t want to stop at the temporary. For many years, it was illegal to build permanent structures in the townships—the government still imagined these settlements as temporary, to be eventually bulldozed and cleared. But we said, no. These communities have existed for 40 years; they have built lives, networks, and dignity here. They are here to stay. So, we re-blocked with permanence in mind. This new prototype – The Growing House – UTT provides the structural core (including kitchens, bathrooms, stairs, and key services), and the community finishes the interior over time, based on personal preference, financial means, and incremental growth. This approach evolved into what we now call Advanced Blocking-Out, or the Empower Model.
Lee: How does the core-and-shell principle relate to affordability, adaptability, and legal compliance in informal settlements like Khayelitsha?
Brillembourg: The ‘core’ refers to the permanent infrastructure—the essential systems of the home and its spatial logic. That means the layout, the structure, the wet services (kitchen, bathroom), water lines, sewage, electricity—all the foundational elements that ensure safety, stability, and legality. Think of it the way we think of the Manhattan grid—an organising framework that can host infinite variations over time. Or, in another sense, the core is like the zoning plan of a city or cadastre—the part that endures and enables safety, ownership and resilience. The ‘shell’, on the other hand, is the exterior—the customisable outer layer that provides form, finish, and flexibility. While it must meet basic regulations (such as fire safety and non-combustibility), it can evolve. Crucially, most residents of informal settlements cannot access loans. Therefore, housing must be conceived as an incremental investment, not a one-time purchase. This is where design informed by financial micro loans comes in—the idea that homes can be built, inhabited, and improved gradually, according to what each household can afford. To make this work, we developed an approach called ‘Incremental to Compliance’. It sets a clear path for residents to transition from informal to formal housing—not by erasing the informal, but by upgrading it step by step. The idea proposed is a new kind of ‘fit-for-purpose’ occupancy city certificate—a document that acknowledges a home is structurally sound and designed for long-term habitation, even if it hasn’t yet met every conventional building code requirement. South Africa’s building codes are rigid and expensive, completely out of sync with the reality of informal settlements. The market can’t absorb this demand because it doesn’t know how to address it, but the City of Cape Town recognises this gap, and we’re working with them to create pathways to legal ownership.
Exterior view of Empower shack with semi-private courtyards (left), Spaces left for individual expansion of the house ©UTT (right)
Exterior view of Empower shack with semi-private courtyards ©Daniel Schwartz
Interior view of gym
Lee: At the core of the Empower Model is the creation of a pathway through which the decisions of those who physically occupy urban space can be translated into architectural realisation. In the process of reallocating blocks and adjusting the size and placement of individual homes, how were you able to respond immediately to the needs of residents?
Brillembourg: We understood that one size does not fit all. The scheme had to allow each household to make decisions: Should they reduce their footprint to fit the block reconfiguration?; Should they remain on the same floor they previously occupied?; Should they expand upward, to two, three, or even four stories? These questions guided the design process. Residents helped determine the layout, whether or not to include courtyards, and how to assemble clusters of homes into coherent blocks. Construction materials are subsidised and include enough to cover basic structures of 25m2. Typical Empower units are 45m2 and families make their own contributions and planning decisions with UTTE. Adjusting the layout of each house was enormously complex—especially in relation to existing land rights, footprint size, and infrastructure access. However, we embraced that complexity using what we call ‘neighbourhood play’. Residents moved blocks on a model to explore how their homes could be reconfigured while maintaining neighbourhood ties. The reallocation process became not only a spatial strategy, but a social one. We discovered vast inequalities in how land and income were distributed: a few older residents held large plots but limited income, while younger, working residents had less space but higher earning potential. The planning model allowed the community to trade space for access, creating a more equitable urban fabric. This led to a digital land reallocation and planning tool—a live, adaptive software developed during my time teaching. It begins with satellite imagery (like Google Maps), vectoring roof structures, and allows users to drag and reorganise homes, insert roads, and adjust clusters in real-time. It also includes an Excel-linked database to capture household information and preferences — an approach we call ‘preferential city-making’. This digital tool allows us to model income levels, household sizes, and spatial desires, enabling true customisation while still using standardised housing units.
Lee: The first implementation of the Empower Model took place in the BT Section of Site C in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. Could you describe what the final realised community looks like?
Brillembourg: We’ve built 4,263m2 of covered space including the community centre, including: 2,500m2 of housing and 1,500m2 of open public space—created where none existed before because of the shack density. By reconfiguring existing shacks into tightly packed, multi-story row houses, we’ve improved thermal performance and natural ventilation; created clear public-private boundaries; increased passive security; and generated a collective neighbourhood identity. All of this was done with and through the community—their input shaped everything, from location to layout. Each home’s location reflected resident preferences—a family with a car chose a unit with street access, while an aspiring shopkeeper chose a unit on the main arterial road. The result? Rapid elevation of living standards across the community. What once was a chaotic sprawl of isolated shacks turned into a vibrant collective of homes where privacy, safety, identity, and economic opportunity have all improved. We’ve also developed a solar initiative, rooftop farms for food security and local agriculture, a vertical gymnasium, community schools and learning centres, crèches and childcare facilities, and welfare and training spaces focused on urban farming and sustainable livelihoods. All of this culminates in the first completed Empower Model Community, now home to approximately 450 people. The community includes 80 housing units, each with different sizes, costs, and tenure arrangements—from owner-occupied to rental. This diversity supports social balance and fosters a healthy, functional society.
Interior view of urban farm
View of Empower Community’s housing and public space
Vertically integrated community facility combining a gymnasium and a farm
Lee: How did you structure a financing model suited to the incremental development process led by the community?
Brillembourg: Financing was – and remains – one of the greatest challenges to scaling the Empower Model. On the external side, the South African government provided critical parallel financing for sanitation, electrical infrastructure, and other urban systems. The government also subsidised 30% of the building cost, offering what we called empower starter package and housing subsidies. At the same time, we explored charitable grants to cover the remaining costs, non-commercial loans, and solar partnerships also provde some income. Through Empower Solar, we turned rooftops into micro solar generators. These helped offset home costs by creating energy that could be used or eventually sold back to the grid. Meanwhile, internally, we support community savings systems and micro-loan programs. Residents save toward a 20% contribution, which becomes their equity stake. This buy-in is crucial. It gives residents a sense of ownership, ensures investment in the process, and balances the financial model.
Lee: From the perspective of affordability, how do you assess the potential of the Empower Model as a housing delivery framework in South Africa?
Brillembourg: Our data-driven analysis of the Empower Model brought us to a key insight: the most popular and viable unit size falls at 45m2. At that size, in the first Empower Model we calculated a hard construction cost of around 170,000 ZAR per unit (8,700 EUR). With this as our benchmark, we designed a financing model for phase 1 that could accommodate both qualifying and non-qualifying residents through micro-loans and long-term repayment options. We projected monthly payments of around 1,000 ZAR (47 EUR), with loans extended over 20 to 25 years and adjusted for an average inflation rate of 5.5% annually. This figure is within reach for many BT Section residents in Khayelitsha, especially when tied to a stable rental or ownership structure.
Views of exterior communal space
Lee: In impoverished regions with a colonial history, such as South Africa, what do you see as the potential advantages or challenges of the involvement of foreign architects or architectural practices?
Brillembourg: This is an important and complex question. We must start with a fundamental truth: architecture is a global practice. It always has been. Throughout the twentieth century, architects moved across country borders and were often criticised for doing so. Le Corbusier is the most prominent example. Yet his work and influence spanned continents. Latin America, in particular, have saw rich exchange between international architects and local cultures. In Caracas, for instance, Wallace Harrison, a foreign architect, made remarkable contributions. So, the notion of foreign intervention is not new, nor is it automatically problematic—if approached responsibly. In the twenty-first century, however, context matters more than ever. That’s why it’s crucial to build local offices, collaborate with local teams, and ensure that initiatives are community-driven. Our nonprofit in South Africa, UTTE, is 100% South African-run. We don’t ‘parachute in’ from abroad—we build long-term structures of cooperation and support. Sometimes, what we encounter is a kind of knee-jerk liberalism, especially in academic circles, that’s so afraid of repeating historical wrongs that it precludes truly creative engagement. This attitude, while well-intentioned, can limit possibilities for transformation. We understand the anxieties around post-colonial paternalism—they are valid. But I believe that external perspectives can be productive, especially when they are collaborative, respectful, and aware of power dynamics. That said, strategies for addressing housing and infrastructure must never be imposed by outside experts. They must be co-created through partnerships and participation. The days of top-down planning are over, but language is tricky. Even words like community, village, local, informal, can inadvertently reinforce an ‘us and them’ binary, when what we need is integration, feedback, and shared authorship. There are two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two and those who don’t. I don’t. I believe in feedback loops, in fluid roles, and in the kind of transformation that can only emerge through intervention, reflection, and exchange. UTT is committed to playing that role—carefully, ethically, and in dialogue with the people we serve.
Lee: How will the Empower Model be repeated and expanded in the future? What is your vision for scaling this approach?
Brillembourg: Over the next few years, the UTTE team is poised to take the Empower Model to the next level, beginning with the Vukani site, located just adjacent to the Empower-1 community in Khayelitsha. Simultaneously, we are preparing a new urban layout for Izamu Yetu (IY)—an informal settlement in the Hout Bay Valley area of Cape Town. The IY settlement sits between Cape Town’s extreme wealth and deep poverty, bordering neighbourhoods like the exclusive Constantia. This geography makes the Empower approach here not just a housing solution, but a model of cross-class collaboration. Our intention is to design this project as a capacity-building, bridge-building effort—one that addresses South Africa’s historical divides and imagines new social contracts. We believe deeply that this model – born in Caracas, tested in Cape Town, and shaped by dozens of collaborators across the globe – can have impact far beyond its current geography. The goal is clear: to set a precedent for equitable, inclusive, and democratic urban development, supported by a mix of commercial loans, government subsidies, and philanthropic grants. We hope it will resonate in Korea, too—not just as a development strategy, but as a philosophy of inclusive urbanism, one that reflects a future in which cities are just, adaptable, and rooted in the dignity of every resident.
1 Each office has a distinct focus:
• In New York, our work is centred on inner-city challenges—particularly in Harlem, the Bronx, and Queens.
• In Caracas, we continue our focus on the barrios, the informal settlements on the hillsides surrounding the city.
• In São Paulo, we concentrate on the inner favelas around the city and its peripheries—as well as around Rio de Janeiro.
• Our Oslo office is exploring new models for social impact, especially around community living, housing, and the potential for Vertical Gyms in Northern Europe.
• In Geneva, our work is largely focused on fundraising and building partnerships.
• In South Africa, we are working directly in the townships – particularly in and around Cape Town – and we’re now expanding our presence into other African countries like Uganda, where we’re collaborating with an artist, and Zambia, where we are currently building a school.
Empower Community 1 (above, built) and Empower Community 2 (below, proposed)
