ARC3015YF (L0105)
Instructor: Anthony Kalimungabo Wako

The contribution of the Indian minority group to Jinja city growth is steadily being silenced by the increasing disappearance of 20th century buildings. The voiceless descendants of the Indians whose grandparents were forced to exit Uganda over 50 years ago, by the then President of Uganda – Idi Amin, have an ancestral past that is intertwined with the founding of Jinja. 

This studio project serves to challenge the role of designers in bringing historical records to bear on source material for practice today. In addition, as the city of Jinja continues to address tourism, the design interventions along a block on Main Street, will seek to highlight the relevance of unpacking hidden histories. Jinja’s historic buildings shall be given an additional voice, grounded in historic narratives with their meaning(s), in a bid to lessen the threats to the built heritage. At an urban planning level, the project shall provide a basis for rethinking the overall city plan, hence creating opportunities for heritage-led regeneration while exploring the concept of ‘everyday heritage’. 

This option studio acknowledges that there is no single disciplinary approach that is sufficient in interpreting Jinja’s historic streetscapes, since the wider city’s-built form was in part influenced by the early 20th century industrial developments and different cultural groups. As such, a historic interpretive method, analysing the historical discourse of minority Ugandan Asian communities, shall be foregrounded in understanding the past in order to appreciate their contribution to the architecture and urbanism in Uganda. This option studio challenges students to think critically about how to read and represent ‘small’ urban places as part of a wider narrative in an attempt at making their urban histories visible.