By: Ryan Millward
Central Press Newspaper caught up with the WABER 2011 conference this year to see how the research and production of the built environment in Africa is developing.
The WABER conference took place on the 19-21st July this year, with a total of 160 delegates coming together to discuss, evaluate and offer insight toward improving the built environment in Africa so that the quality of production and research into building can be increased as to benefit society as a whole. The built environment is defined as any structure or area that is not of the natural environment; in such the list would include buildings, structures, roads and architecture that exist within the realms of Africa.
Currently, there are many problems with the processes existing between research of the built environment and the actually production that takes place in the building companies; at the conference it was stressed that the organisations and Universities in Africa need to use western countries as a guide to development - particularly in the building sector. As mentioned, the conference stressed that the main issue facing the built environment was the lack of co-operation between Universities and building companies toward working together - it was recognised by Professor Will Hughes that there must be a 'two-way working relationship' between the two sectors.
Professor Hughes, a lecturer at the University of Reading, said: "Whichever way you look at it, there is a big disconnection between research and practice in the built environment, and that cannot be good for either of us." "In the light of this, I think that there is a problem in deciding what universities can do for industry. If all we are doing is teaching students to be good practitioners, just like the practitioners already out there, then we are destined to destroy the built environment professions by recycling old ideas and preserving outdated practices." The Professor went on to add: "In a fast-changing world, we need new ideas from our research that will constantly inform, refresh and change what we teach."
After documenting what Professor Hughes wanted the building companies to take from Universities, he moved on to discuss what the Universities should be taking from the building practices and companies. The Professor said: "There must be more meaningful and robust contributions from practice to research. Industry contributes by providing access to data for research, by funding research projects and taking part in informing the practical questions to which the research is addressed." As stated before, it is evident from this WABER conference, that a 'two-way working relationship' must be implemented between practice and research in the built environment as for society and communities to benefit as a whole. All in all, the conference this year showed a variety of problems hitting the built environment at this moment in time with perhaps the biggest being the lack of partnership between research and practice. It is hoped that these conferences and discussions will open the room for better building quality in Africa in the future as to benefit the continent's populace as a whole. We will wait to see if this year sees any dramatic improvements.
The WABER conference took place on the 19-21st July this year, with a total of 160 delegates coming together to discuss, evaluate and offer insight toward improving the built environment in Africa so that the quality of production and research into building can be increased as to benefit society as a whole. The built environment is defined as any structure or area that is not of the natural environment; in such the list would include buildings, structures, roads and architecture that exist within the realms of Africa.
Currently, there are many problems with the processes existing between research of the built environment and the actually production that takes place in the building companies; at the conference it was stressed that the organisations and Universities in Africa need to use western countries as a guide to development - particularly in the building sector. As mentioned, the conference stressed that the main issue facing the built environment was the lack of co-operation between Universities and building companies toward working together - it was recognised by Professor Will Hughes that there must be a 'two-way working relationship' between the two sectors.
Professor Hughes, a lecturer at the University of Reading, said: "Whichever way you look at it, there is a big disconnection between research and practice in the built environment, and that cannot be good for either of us." "In the light of this, I think that there is a problem in deciding what universities can do for industry. If all we are doing is teaching students to be good practitioners, just like the practitioners already out there, then we are destined to destroy the built environment professions by recycling old ideas and preserving outdated practices." The Professor went on to add: "In a fast-changing world, we need new ideas from our research that will constantly inform, refresh and change what we teach."
After documenting what Professor Hughes wanted the building companies to take from Universities, he moved on to discuss what the Universities should be taking from the building practices and companies. The Professor said: "There must be more meaningful and robust contributions from practice to research. Industry contributes by providing access to data for research, by funding research projects and taking part in informing the practical questions to which the research is addressed." As stated before, it is evident from this WABER conference, that a 'two-way working relationship' must be implemented between practice and research in the built environment as for society and communities to benefit as a whole. All in all, the conference this year showed a variety of problems hitting the built environment at this moment in time with perhaps the biggest being the lack of partnership between research and practice. It is hoped that these conferences and discussions will open the room for better building quality in Africa in the future as to benefit the continent's populace as a whole. We will wait to see if this year sees any dramatic improvements.
The WABER conference this year hammered home the amount of room for improvement that could be done in helping shape the building environment of Africa; as the continent develops, the structures and buildings that line it's streets and towns must also develop as to sustain it's development. However, over the three days of the conference, more issues arose between the speakers and delegates into the problems that currently face the built environment.
Ajayi Adebola’s presentation “Gender issues in land: Implications for housing development in Nigeria” sought to define the linkage between tradition gender roles on land inheritance constraints for women in the Nigerian cities of Calabar, Owerri, Akure and Benin City, and determined that the skew towards male inheritance directly impacts female housing ownership.
Samuel Laryea, co-organiser of the conference introduced a paper entitled “Built environment education and research in West Africa” on the current status of built environment education and research in West Africa. His study, which focused on built environment programmes in West Africa and the research contributions produced by these institutions, highlighted key issues for participants to ponder: First, the high lecturer-student ratio in West African programmes, which averaged at 1:25. Second, the active research engagement of academics based at West African universities. Third, the challenges of getting published, with only 23 articles authored by West Africa-based researchers out of more than 5000 since the establishment of six key journals that Laryea ranked as the most established in the field.
Overall the conference this year shown that there is much work to do in improving the practice and research surrounding the built environment in Africa; as mentioned, the biggest problem that faces the continent is the lack of partnership between Universities and production companies. With the ideas and issues explored in this year's conference, we will wait till next year to see what improvement, if any, the built environment can achieve.
The WABER 2012 Conference is scheduled to take place in Abuja, Nigeria on 24-26 July 2012.
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