Urban Think Tank Empower articles and publications
Urban Think Tank Empower (UTTE) has been featured in many articles and publications for their ground-breaking public housing model.
June 2025
Following Urban Think Tank Empower’s award-winning ‘Empower Upgrade Model’, the team turned what was once a dense informal settlement into a resilient urban ecosystem, housed within a 520 m² community facility.
By formalising homes for residents using efficient rowhouse typologies, significant space was freed up for shared infrastructure: a community centre, a public playground, and critical social amenities. This strategic densification enhances the liveability of the space through education, recreation, economic opportunity, and community-led care, which co-exist in a single, integrated precinct.
February 2025
Non-profit company Urban-Think Tank Empower has completed a development in the South African township of Khayelitsha, creating a triangle of terraced housing that it says provides a model for how to build in the country’s informal settlements.
Completed on a site called BT-Soweto in Site C of Khayelitsha, just outside of Cape Town, the development is the company’s first using their Empower Upgrade model and includes a public open space, community centre and playground as well as 72 homes for 428 residents.
November 2024
An informal settlement with no access to electricity, water and toilets in a Cape Town township has been transformed into brightly-coloured rows of double-storey flats with its own community centre.
Soweto informal settlement in Site C, Khayelitsha was established around 2008 and had 72 shacks with about 500 people living there. The community was approached by a Khayelitsha-based organisation, Ikhayalami, in collaboration with design studio Urban Think Tank Empower (UTTE), years ago to start the project. UTTE is based at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich.
INTERVIEW | On the couch: New Khayelitsha community centre brings residents together
November 2024
Amy speaks to Delana Finlayson, the Managing Director of UTTE, which has opened a new community centre in Khayelitsha. The Soweto-Caracas Community Centre has an indoor soccer and netball court, co-working offices, event spaces, community kitchens. The standout feature is a rooftop urban farm.
PRESS RELEASE | An Architecture of Equity
September 2024
Urban Think Tank Empower (UTTE) is confronting South Africa’s housing crisis head-on with the ambitious goal of constructing 1000 homes by 2030. Their innovative Empower Upgrade Model offers a comprehensive solution, viewing housing as an integral part of a broader ecosystem that addresses interconnected urban challenges like energy access, food security, and economic opportunity. By leveraging under utilised land within existing informal settlements, UTTE aims to create sustainable, community-led developments that preserve social networks while providing reliable energy, social infrastructure, and income-generating opportunities.
PRESS RELEASE | South African Non-Profit Showcases Transformative Approach to Global Housing Crisis at the Clinton Global Initiative 2024
September 2024
Urban Think Tank Empower (UTTE), a South African non-profit dedicated to addressing the
country’s affordable housing challenges, made a groundbreaking presentation at the Clinton
Global Initiative (CGI) 2024, held in New York City on 23 and 24 September. UTTE’s inclusion at this prestigious global event highlights the international recognition of its innovative Empower Upgrade Model, which takes a holistic approach to housing by integrating infrastructure, energy access, food security, social amenities, and economic opportunities into the communities it serves.
PRESS RELEASE | The UTTE Approach for Climate Resilience
Urban Think Tank Empower (UTTE) is addressing South Africa’s housing crisis with the Empower Upgrade Model, which not only provides safe and dignified housing but also enhances climate resilience. By incorporating renewable energy, water management systems, and resilient green infrastructure, Empower’s housing developments ensure that vulnerable communities can withstand the increasing impacts of climate change while creating sustainable livelihoods.
PRESS RELEASE | The UTTE Approach for Economic Inclusion
September 2024
Urban Think Tank Empower (UTTE) is building housing that catalyses economic inclusion. By integrating commercial facilities, job creation and skills development, as well as opportunities for financial security through secure land tenure and homeownership, the Empower Upgrade Model helps break the cycle of poverty. With the scaling of its model, UTTE aims to transform lives by building economically resilient communities and empowering residents across South Africa.
PRESS RELEASE | The UTTE Humanitarian Response
Urban Think Tank Empower (UTTE) presents a proactive and community-driven solution to South Africa’s housing crisis, addressing the vulnerabilities of millions living in unsafe conditions.
Through its Empower Upgrade Model, UTTE integrates fire- and flood-resistant housing with access to essential services like water and sanitation, renewable energy, and public spaces. By focusing on building resilient communities, not just individual homes, Empower is transforming lives, ensuring safe and sustainable futures.
PODCAST | Dismantling SA’s complex housing crisis
Host Mudiwa Gavaza is joined by Ben Kollenberg, architect and director at Urban Think Tank Empower
Business Live | Mudiwa Gavaza | 6 November 2023
Housing challenges in SA are the focus of this edition of the Business Day Spotlight.
Almost 30 years after the dawn of the RDP era, UTTE says SA’s “chronic housing crisis is spiralling towards a tipping point.” While the causes underlying the crisis are multiple and complex, it is essential to address the symptoms as a matter of extreme urgency.
Radical housing model teaches powerful lessons for solving South Africa’s housing crisis
Construction World | 18 September 2023
Earlier this year, Mmamoloko Kubayi, Minister for Human Settlements shared an alarming insight into the severity of South Africa’s chromic housing crisis. Answering a question to Parliament, she stated that that 1.9 million South African households, or 11.4% of the population, live in informal dwellings. According to the latest statistics, around 17% of Western Cape households live in informal settlements while Cape Town’s housing backlog is over 325 000 households and rising.
Without radical, decisive action combined with the necessary political backing, the national housing crisis threatens to escalate beyond control.
Cape Town NPO aims to end national housing crisis with new design
cape{town}etc |
A Cape Town-based non-profit organisation is gearing up to start work on the second phase of a radical design model that aims to address the national housing crisis.
Urban Think Tank Empower’s (UTTE) Empower Initiative has already provided more than 350 Khayelitsha residents with 72 homes that were designed with their needs, aspirations and cultural values in mind.
Delana Finlayson, managing director at UTTE, says the RDP housing programme does not always meet the needs of the people living in the units.
Building up Adaptable modular homes present a solution to South Africa’s housing crisis.
Design Indaba | 22 September 2023
‘No one can challenge the admirable intentions behind RDP housing,’ said Delana Finlayson, managing director of Urban Think Tank Empower (UTTE). ‘However, the programme’s focus on quantity over quality has produced houses that do not always meet the needs of the people living in them.’
The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was a South African socioeconomic policy framework, one sector of which was the creation of government-subsidised housing for the 1,9 million households living in informal settlements. However, many RDP houses fell short in terms of quality, safety and practicality.
Hope for South Africa’s Housing Crisis looks a lot like this ‘Empower Homes’ initiative!
Goodthingsguy | |
Khayelitsha, South Africa (19 September 2023) — Earlier this year, Mmamoloko Kubayi, Minister for Human Settlements shared change-spurring insight into the severity of South Africa’s housing crisis.
Answering a question to Parliament, she stated that 1.9 million South African households, or 11.4% of the population, live in informal dwellings. According to the latest statistics, around 17% of Western Cape households live in informal settlements while Cape Town’s housing backlog is over 325,000 households and rising.
Seven cleverly designed emergency homes around the world
BBC | Clare Dowdy | 20 June 2023
On World Refugee Day we look at some of the ingenious dwellings around the world created for displaced people, from Ukraine to Cape Town and California.
When workers at a vending machine factory in Ukraine had their homes bombed, the owner Alex Stepura repurposed the facility to build them new ones. From that, Terra Monada was born, a company set up to produce good-quality, relatively affordable modular homes to replace the bomb damage. “The ambition was to create something that was strong, elegant, simple, and quick to assemble,” says UK-based partner Chris Baxter.
Reinventing Urban Housing: Cape Town’s Empower Initiative
Cape Town Today | Hannah Kriel | 19 September 2023
The housing crisis in South Africa has been a long-standing issue where traditional methods have fallen short in providing adequate solutions. However, Cape Town-based non-profit organisation, Urban Think Tank Empower (UTTE), has taken a bold approach by embracing innovative design models to address this crisis through their Empower Initiative.
UTTE’s Approach
Delana Finlayson, managing director at UTTE, believes that the government’s RDP housing programme often fails to meet the residents’ needs. UTTE’s vision extends beyond merely providing housing; they seek to fulfil the 1955 Freedom Charter’s promise of “housing security and comfort” for all South Africans.
Innovative double-storey housing project in Khayelitsha providing new homes for former shack dwellers
Daily Maverick | Marecia Damons | 21 November 2022
Amos Lephaila and Nolusanda Booi from Site C, Khayelitsha in Cape Town have lived in a shack since 2015 with their four daughters. They are among 20 families who will soon move into newly built homes in Site C in the last phase of an alternative affordable housing project.
A project like this hasn’t been done before. Built in part as a research project by a university team, the houses use architectural ideas not previously used in government housing.
The homes were designed and built by the Khayelitsha-based organisation, Ikhayalami, in collaboration with design studio Urban Think Tank (UTT) based at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, and the Site C community.
Cape Town slum project could boost land rights for the world's urban poor
LONDON, March 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – An innovative makeover for shacks in a Cape Town slum could improve access to property rights for the world’s poor and allow them to enjoy ownership of the land they live on, the developers behind the project said.
The “Empower Shack” scheme will rebuild 72 homes in Khayelitsha township on city-owned land. The city has said that, at some future date, it will rezone the land and hand those property rights to the families.
With that assurance, residents could invest in their homes without waiting for official rezoning or in fear of eviction, said Alfredo Brillembourg, a partner at Urban-Think Tank, a design collective, and a lead on the project.
Empower Shack in Khayelitsha near Cape Town, South Africa by Urban-Think Tank and ETH Zurich
The Architectural Review | Iain Low | 14 May 2018
The Empower Shack prototypes in the township of Khayelitsha, near Cape Town, upgrades extended-family housing with built-in flexibility.
The African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party in South Africa since the advent of ‘democracy’ in 1994, came to power on the back of a policy document entitled the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). An interpretation of the struggle declaration, the Freedom Charter of South Africa, 1955, formed the basis for this programme. ‘There shall be housing security and comfort’, represents its fourth declaration and the State has already provided some four million houses in the first two decades of its post-apartheid independence. The majority of these are RDP houses, meaning that they replicate the National Building Research Institute’s (NBRI) limitations of the four-roomed bungalows delivered during the forced removals in the apartheid days of the Group Areas Act (1950).
Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums
Dezeen.com | Amy Frearson |
Design strategy collective Urban-Think Tank has designed and built a prototypical house as part of an initiative to improve housing conditions for slum dwellers in some of the 2700 informal settlements across South Africa (+ movie).
Urban-Think Tank, which was involved in the Golden Lion-winning research into the Torre David vertical slum in Caracas, has this time teamed up with ETH Zürich university to search for ways that architects can help improve the environment and security of these slums that house approximately 15 percent of the country’s entire population.
Urban Think Tank introduces the Empower shack to the slums of western cape
international studio urban think tank led by alfredo brillembourg and hubert klumpner are currently exhibiting the ‘empower shack‘ at the galerie eva presenhuber in zurich.
the project is developed as an adapting response to urban informality, offering not only improved housing but a strategy that allows the citizens of self-built urban communities to dynamically structure their urban environment as an instant response to their needs.
the empower shack was a largely collaborative project between U-TT, south african NGO Ikhayalami (‘my home’), swisspearl ag, transsolar, brillembourg ochoa foundation, meyer burger, the BLOCK ETH ITA research group, and videocompany. over the course of extensive research and close communication with community leader phumezo tsibanto, a prototype was developed featuring a two story metal-clad modular wood frame structure that is economical for the residents and can be self-built.
Urban Think Tank Takes on Housing in South Africa's Townships
Archdaily | Rory Stott |
Despite 20 years of government promises to improve the quality of housing following the end of apartheid, for many in South Africa‘s townships there has been little noticeable change. This is not to say that the South African government has not been working to meet these goals; however, the scale of the problem is so large, and with population growth and migration, the challenge is only getting greater.
That’s why Urban Think Tank, in collaboration with ETH Zurich and South African NGO Ikhayalami, have worked together on a design for a more immediate, incremental solution called “Empower Shack.“
The first step to creating a more realistic prototype for rapidly improving South African housing was to re-think the material being used, brick, which is far more expensive than the timber frame and metal sheets that are commonly used for the informal housing in the townships: “quite frequently products going to low income areas of the world tend to be designed in a way the West thinks something for poor people should look.”
Empower Shack by Urban Think Tank: Transformative Design for Social Impact
Rethinking the Future
Empower Shack by Urban Think Tank – Examples of Low cost housing.
In the realm of cost-efficient and socially impactful housing solutions, Empower Shack by Urban Think Tank stands as a testament to innovative design, community empowerment, and the potential of architecture to address pressing social issues.
Architectural Visionaries: Urban Think Tank
Urban Think Tank, a collaborative design practice known for its community-centric approach, has spearheaded the Empower Shack project. With a commitment to social change through design, they have redefined the concept of affordable housing, particularly in informal settlements.
Empower Shack on Architizer.com
Cape Town | South Africa
Empower Shack is an interdisciplinary post apartheid housing development directed by the Urban Think Tank (ETHZ) and NGO Ikhayalami, in collaboration with the BT-Section (Site C) community of Khayelitsha, Cape Town and associated local and international partners.
Through innovative design and organisational models the project aims to upgrade informal settlements through the development, implementation and evaluation of four core components: a two-story housing prototype, a participatory spatial planning process, integrated urban systems and economic solutions.
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