The familiar sight of children playing with a tyre under the African sun was the starting point for the conceptualisation of an approach in response to how artistic expression has taken shape over the last 100 years in automobile design.

This response was undertaken by an interdisciplinary team in order to propose a speculative approach to mobility in the context of Cape Town. The outcome of this speculative process was a mobility unit the U+ which is currently on exhibition in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, Spain.

The concept of the U+ was born out of a rapid design studio made up of students, staff and alumni from UCT. The students, Emma Bracher, Tankiso Hantsi, Divine Masako, Dineo Mogotsi and Paul Richardson, were set up in conversation with a series of provocations made by various specialists in the transport and mobility industry.

The concept of the U+  signals the image of a  moving tyre as a blue-sky conceptual proposition as a symbol of a sight that is familiar on the continent.

“As a child, in most parts of Africa, you play with and push around a tyre. Sometimes with sticks, sometimes with your hands. The idea of the U+ is that as you grow up, you slip into the tyre that you played with as a child and then you can move around,” explains dr phillipa tumubweinee, the project’s co-lead and lecturer in the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics (APG).

Children playing with a tyre under the African sun was the starting point of this design project

The U+ as a conceptual proposition interweaves cutting-edge pragmatics to optimise and enhance an individual’s mobility in and around the city of Cape Town, South Africa. To optimise issues of space, time and energy by proposing a unique form of (public) transport that engages with questions of transport justice; access equity; intermodal and trans-modal mechanisms; commuter-centric design; waiting times; future trends; first and last-mile services; adaptability with public transport; variable terrains; and more recently, post-pandemic era pragmatics and concerns. Through dynamic addition, a range of U+ 's converts to a fleet – US+-– that, collectively, responds to the increased need for public mobility, and in doing so, encourages multi-modal flexibility across differentiated scales.

Professor Edgar Pieterse, Director of the African Centre for Cities, and dr tumubweinee were the project leads and facilitated the process from its inception to fabrication and installation at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Alongside dr heeten bhagat and Daniel Xu, they managed the process of design, fabrication and installation of the U+ prototype as a part of the Futures Gallery in the Motion, Autos, Art and Architecture exhibition by the Norman Foster Foundation that opened on the 08 April 2022 at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

To focus the students’ minds on the project, Pieterse, tumubweinee, bhagat and Xu established an experimental environment in which students were exposed to some of the problems South Africans face with finding dependable and safe modes of public transport. Six experts in the fields of transport, urban planning and design were invited to engage with the students about the historic and current socio-economic and socio-political issues that affect Cape Town’s transport systems. tumubweinee explained these talks were viewed as ‘provocations’ to which the students then had to find design solutions.

“The students had to come up with designs that addressed whatever provocation the experts had put forward. Broadly we wanted to embed the concept within the realities of Africa, but also taking into account the transport challenges in Cape Town specifically,” she explains.

U+ has the ability to extend its flexibility by allowing separate mobility units to join together to travel to destinations along the same route

“So, the broad question, within the context of the Global South, specifically Africa, was what does the future of mobility look like?” says tumubweinee.

The two most prominent provocations cited by the experts were Cape Town city’s gridlock, experienced daily during rush hours, and ongoing taxi violence that impacts the safety and reliability of the taxi services. Particular attention was focused on the safety needs of women commuters when travelling alone, or with children, especially at night.

“Through responding to provocations, firstly you get a better understanding of where the problems lie. Secondly and more importantly, where gaps and opportunities exist. And I think that's how we came up with the U+” she adds.

Enhanced individual mobility is key

The central theme the students identified was that whatever the future of mobility in Africa could look like, it should be based on ideas that promote a form of enhanced individual mobility. This premise takes into account that the vast majority of South Africans, and those on the rest of the continent, who have to walk several kilometres at the beginning and end of every journey – to and from a taxi rank, bus stop or train station.

Tumubweinee reflects that safety is another factor that impacts individual mobility – especially that of women. “How do you deal with the fact that cities are not really designed for women and are relatively unsafe for them?” As an example, she highlighted that within the majority of African cities women have to organise their working and shopping hours around daylight as a safety precaution.

“The proposal is that if you enhance mobility for the individual, they no longer have to walk relatively long distances in, at times, unsafe and unsavoury environments to get a taxi and or public transport.”

The U+ prototype is on display at the “Motion, Autos, Art and Architecture” exhibition by the Norman Foster Foundation at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Standing at 2.5 m high is the centrepiece of an installation that weighs approximately 500 km and stands at 12 m high.

Tumubweinee emphasised that this way of thinking about public transport is what grounds the U+ in its enhancement of individual mobility. The U+ has the ability to extend its flexibility by allowing six separate mobility units to join together to travel to destinations along the same route. As individuals arrive at their destinations on a particular route, they can either detach their whole mobility unit or let another commuter take their place.

Tumubweinee pointed out that this concept is not a replacement for the taxi system or the public transport system in Cape Town. “You're not really threatening the taxi system, because they can exist in parallel. You're actually empowering the community by minimising their reliance on the complexities of the dynamic that sometimes makes these modes of public transport unsuitable,” she said.

In addition to empowering individuals in any community, the U+ as a kit of generic parts that are cost-effective and readily available is conceptualised to be affordable for the majority of Capetonians.

“It’s a very basic functional design. And that was the other thing about the design – the idea is we have to come up with something that someone can build out from a kit of parts, where the more specialised parts like the engine and panels could be sourced from a U+ factory and the rest of the unit can be built by an individual in their time in their home,” added tumubweinee.

Aside from being affordable, the system could be added to in a design sense – allowing for people to use their knowledge of metal work and weaving to embellish upon the basic design and give individual character to individual units.

 “As you get more money, you can then pimp it up,” she said. The concept of the unit as a kit of parts was explored in the fabrication process.

“The idea that it should be easily made by anybody was tested in the reality of making the prototype. This meant that building the prototype was a very informative and interesting process of learning and design, because we had to completely refine and retrofit the concept for us to refine the generic nature of the parts that made up the unit,” explained tumubweinee.

The prototype was made in a workshop in Epping Industria through a process of experimentation with whichever materials were readily available at the time. The team explored working with anything and everything from highly worked aluminium, raw steel sections, pallet timber and even used plastic Coke bottles.

“It was an interesting journey to take an idealised concept and make it into reality. I suspect if we have a second iteration, it would be even more fun to try and bring it closer to the central idea that’s supposed to be affordable and allow everybody to be able to retrofit it.”