Student: Ethan Walker
Advisor: Scott Shall
Content Experts: Joongsub Kim, Edward Orlowski
In the rural northeast of Uganda, the ethnic Karamojong are experiencing unprecedented pressures to change their ways of life (Knighton, 2017). As semi-nomadic pastoralists, these peoples are dependent on the health of their herds which is contingent on the health of their ancestral lands. Studies show that land health has deteriorated due to climate change, overgrazing and lack of mobility producing a vulnerability context which has attracted international attention. Interventions by foreign actors and the national government have attempted to improve public health while making recurring calls to transform Karamojong culture away from pastoralism towards sedentism and farming (Dbins, 2013). While appropriate in particular cases, the overwhelming call to cultural transformation undermines pastoral ways of life and could be at odds with the capabilities of the land, potentially undermining the pastoral ways of life. These globalizing influences extend beyond policy-making and have fundamentally altered the process of architectural production and construction in the region.
In response, this thesis proposes an iterative, heritage-based approach to design and construction, crafted to mitigate the increasingly harmful effects of globalization upon the traditionally semi-nomadic societies of northern Uganda. In this approach, alternative futures are imagined by reconsidering the role of the architect in relation to the pre-colonial keepers of the built environment; the Matriarchs. When working within this alternative arrangement, architects would work responsively with Matriarchs, lengthening the process of interaction in favor of a responsive design methodology that strengthens the Matriarchs power of architectural self-determination. Strategies to equip pastoralist architecture with greater autonomy are imagined, proposed and filtered through a Matriarch-led process to determine what is appropriated, effective and ultimately in the best interest of their desired way of life.
