Tools for Engineering Design 2

Masterplanning Project 2025

Weeks 2-5

This Masterplanning Project is a challenging conceptual design problem that further develops your understanding of conceptual design and the skills that this requires. This project involves:

•     A non-engineering Client who is seeking your help to solve a problem, but whose brief does not contain all the information that you might want.

•     Coping with competing demands upon the design solution.

•     Producing design solutions where there is uncertainty and contradiction.

•     Presenting clear and distinct options to different stakeholders.

•     Deciding how much information is required to produce a conceptual design within the available time.

This project will also be split into three distinct parts:

1.    Week 2 - initial designs to brief (Divergent design)

2.    Week 3 – guided peer to peer design reviews (Judge/Test)

3.    Weeks 4&5 – consolidation of design concepts (Convergent design)

Week 2

This week you will need to come up with your initial design ideas in response to the brief (on the next page). These are not your final ideas, but ideas to have discussions over and to allow you to research into what information you might    need to get.

Next week you will sit with another group (fellow designers) and discuss your ideas, and their ideas, to dig deeper into what is being proposed and how it will be created.

This week you need to produce three different initial design ideas that meet the brief. You have a maximum of 6 A3 sheets to communicate your three initial masterplan ideas. Each page needs to have a title block in the bottom right of the page, communicating as a minimum the page title, page number, and group number (see example below).

Drawings will be reviewed by fellow designers in week 3, and these drawings should be understandable from the drawings alone (note that these will not need to be neat final drawings, but legible to others).

When considering your designs, you will need to answer the questions such as:

•     What is your idea,

•     Who is it going to affect (both at the end and during construction),

•     Why you are developing this idea,

•     Where are resources coming from, where are you putting things, and

•     How are you going to create this masterplan.

This week, it is a good idea to focus on the “What” of your ideas, but to keep in mind the other aspects as you discuss them this week and next, as they will impact (sometimes significantly) the development of your ideas.

At the end of your Friday session (either 10.50, or 1pm), you will submit three hand-drawn masterplans, and we will scan and share these with the groups on learn ready for Week 3. These initial plans are not marked but will be foundational to the development of your final submission in Week 5.

Overview

Your design team has been commissioned by the City of Cape Town in South Africa to develop a UN Sustainable Development Goals focussed masterplan strategy for an informal settlement area called Masiphumelele. The Client has asked you to develop a range of three masterplans for this area.

The City of Cape Town (CoCT) does not currently have funds for this development, but intends seeking governmental funding, international grant aid from the World Health Organisation (WHO), and other NGOs (non-governmental organisations), and funding from the residents themselves. The Client envisages this to be a 45%, 45%, 10% distribution of supporting funding, (WHO, NGOs, residents respectively). Before they can seek funding, the Client requires masterplan concepts that demonstrate the range of strategies that might be followed in the area, the timescales over which they would be developed, and their relative costs and benefits (e.g. really cheap to very expensive). The Client has therefore engaged your team to develop these initial conceptual masterplans. The World Health Organisation, the City of Cape Town and residents all want more sustainable living condition and service provisions within Masiphumelele.

You are required at the end of the project (Week 5) to produce two sets of drawings:

1.    annotated drawings that explain your proposals to the City of Cape Town; and

2.    pictorial posters that can be used as the basis of discussion with the local community noting that these

need to be interpretable to a wide range of people with different languages/backgrounds.

These drawings must give a clear exploration of the relative merits and disadvantages of the different masterplans and must include a clear recommendation of which masterplan should be taken forward.

Masiphumelele informal settlements

The targeted communities are situated in the informal settlement areas of Masiphumelele, where housing is densely packed. Figure 1 shows the location of these areas in Masiphumelele from the City of Cape Town Census in 2011, whilst Figure 2 shows the google earth image of the same area in 2018 showing the change and growth of the settlement since 2011. The settlement has densified over time as it cannot readily expand northwards due to the   marsh that boarders it, although people do settle there. More recent images are available and should inform. your plans.

According to the 2011 census, there are 22,000 people living in the Masiphumelele area, however separate analysis has put this figure as high as 38,000. Amenities are scarce, with an overcrowded school, no police station, and an understaffed day clinic. It's estimated that 30-40% of the community are infected with HIV and/or TB.

A 2022 digital census showed changes to living conditions in the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape, however data are not yet available at municipality or community level as yet.

Physical hazards in Masiphumelele are flooding (e.g.https://www.groundup.org.za/article/informal-settlements-flooded-heavy-rains/), fire (e.g.https://ewn.co.za/2015/12/01/Masiphumelele-shacks-rebuild-structure-needs-to- change), and poor sanitation (see figure 3).

A recent 2021 assessment of how the City of Cape Town is doing against the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals can be found here and is a useful resource to help guide plans -

https://resource.capetown.gov.za/documentcentre/Documents/City%20research%20reports%20and%20review/CCT_Voluntary_Local_Review_2021.pdf

Figure 1: 2011 census areas of Masiphumelele

Figure 2: Google earth image of Masiphumelele including overlay of 2011 informal settlement census areas (red), 2018 identified informal settlement areas (blue), and 2023 identified areas (yellow)

Figure 3: (Left) - open storm drains clogged with rubbish; (Right) toilet blocks being cleaned by residents of informal settlement

•     Key results for 2011 Census Suburb Masiphumelele:

o  The population is predominantly Black African (91%).

o  35% of those aged 20 years and older have completed Grade 12 or higher.

o  69% of the labour force (aged 15 to 64) is employed.

o  82% of households have a monthly income of R 3,200 or less (approximately £170/mnth). 53% have monthly incomes of less than R 1,600.

o  27% of households live in formal dwellings.

o  73% of households have access to piped water in their dwelling or inside their yard.

o  91% of households have access to a flush toilet connected to the public sewer system.

o  99% of households have their refuse removed at least once a week.

o  95% of households use electricity for lighting in their dwelling.

o  57% speak isiXhosa (only 7% speak English)

Problem Construction

Before attempting to produce any design solutions, it is very important to properly define the problem that you are trying to solve. Spend the first half hour discussing and researching the following within your group.

•     Who is the Client, what resources do they have, and what do they need from you?

•     What does the Client need from the masterplans?

•     Many new building interventions end up being under-used or used for other purposes, why do you think this might be? What implications will this have for your design?

•     What criteria will you need to consider in your health & wellbeing masterplan for the area, and what order of priority would you place on these criteria?

•     How are you going to assess which of the different masterplans has the most potential?

•     What features of the health & wellbeing system need to be determined at the conceptual design stage (and what features do not need to be determined now)?

•     Who will build / implement the masterplan? What materials, products and equipment do you think might be best to use? What implications might this have on your design?

•    Are there previous examples or inspiration that you can draw upon for your design? Be critical about

previous examples; are they really the best solution to the current problem; how could they be improved?

Useful links:

• https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/104061468037564451/pdf/840360v10WP0Bo0on0practice0 sept2010.pdf

o  General overview of what Master planning is and how it is used.

• http://www.mbccc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/MCCC-Conceptual-Development-Plan.compressed.pdf

o  An example of a masterplan - more floor plans than we are expecting from you.

• http://www.camerontoll.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2021-12-01_Cameron-Toll_ALL-7-BOARDS- lowres.pdf

o  Pretty images, that show connection to surroundings but lacks phasing and is too text heavy.

For Weeks 4&5 - Conceptual Design: UN’s SDG Masterplans

A group submission is required at the end of Week 5 that contains two sets of drawings in different styles, for different viewers:

1. Annotated drawings that communicate the three health & wellbeing masterplans to the City of Cape Town,  their relative merits, and your recommendation of which to pursue, on no more than four sides of A3 paper.

2. Posters that will be used to present the three masterplans and your recommendation to the local residents, so as to prompt discussion. The local residents are, in general, not literate in English, and speak a variety of

languages. These posters must communicate the schemes and their key features without requiring an interpreter for any resident. The posters must not exceed four sides of A3 paper.

Some hints for preparing your drawings:

•    Think carefully about how you present your drawings so that the viewer (whether from the City of Cape   Town or the local community) can understand your three distinct design concepts, their merits, and your recommendation. Think about consistency across the drawings, even if they are drawn by different people.

•    There should be two distinct sets of drawings for the different stakeholders, and it must be possible to understand each set of drawings without reference to the other drawing set.

•    Think carefully about what is required for a health & wellbeing masterplan, and avoid spending time on details that are not required at this stage.

•     Long tracts of text are not appropriate on annotated drawings. Annotations should only require a few

carefully chosen words, and it should be possible to understand your design ideas by looking at the drawings at a glance.

Assessment

A group mark will be awarded for this work; however, all group members should complete an online peer assessment of contribution form. after submitting.

The Masterplanning Project will be assessed upon:

•     Quality of the masterplan solutions, as described by the drawings for the Client  (25% weighting).

•     Clarity of communication through the drawings for the Client (25% weighting).

•     Quality of the masterplan solutions, as described through the posters (25% weighting).

•     Clarity of communication through the posters (25% weighting).

A more detailed marking rubric will be given out in Week 4

The deadline for the final submission is 2pm (UK time) Friday week 5 (14th  of February 2025). Physical copies to the ETO desk.