The purpose of this research is to clarify how the public housing estate with modern specifications is implemented in African cities and how they have changed over the years. Followed by this, it attempts to evaluate the variety of housing estates, which in many cases are often criticized of its uniformity, and to extract challenges of long-term usages with factors of quality improvements. Therefore, the research focuses on the Baobab estate in Dakar, Senegal, constructed by La Société Immobilière du Cap-Vert (SICAP) in 1950s as a case study and conducted onsite field survey in order to capture the state of today. In the previous paper, the case 1, it summarized the initial architectural planning and the residential environment after 60 years. Adding to this, this paper further elaborates the research by documenting the interior spaces through observing expansion and renovation of the housing units, as well as finding the challenges and quality improvements to meet the changes. Main materials used for the analysis of this paper were taken by looking through drawings, which were kept by the SICAP, onsite documentation of the housing plans and interviews to the residents.
In Chapter 2, it summarized the modifications and usages after 60 years within the surveyed 122 units in eight building blocks.
In Chapter 3, eight unit types, which were classified according to various attributes, were taken as examples of modifications to further describe each modified housing plans and to compare the interior environment. Then, it attempted to find the problems, challenges, methods and quality improvements in the modifications as follows: 1) For compensating the limited space, there were methods using the curtain and the ceiling height. 2) In the case where the expansion space jointed the neighbouring unit, the space that merged was not closed off in consideration for the interior environment of the neigbouring unit. This open space also contributes to the comfortability of the path. 3) In the case where a unit was exchanged with the neighouring unit's room, it was possible to expand without negotiation to the next units and secured a larger space. However, the interior environment was deteriorated and the path was closed off. 4) The expansion and renovation of this area was quite exceptional because the original plan was small and rather unique that any modifications projected had limitations in space. People intended to make expansion and renovation visited some of the already modified units beforehand in order to understand the situation after the modification.
Chapter 4 discusses the factors that affected the modification within this area. Original architectural planning which was not intended for any expansion resulted in restrictions of freedom to modify, which led to the necessity of negotiation and sometimes collaboration with the neighbours. As a consequence of this, any expansions that were made turned out to be relatively well-balanced as a whole that shared common coherent rules within the neighbourhood. Above this, unreinforced CB masonry wall, which made possible to understand the modular used for the housing plan, might have impelled to enable easy demolition and addition to modify the space.
