This September, Urban Savannah Design Studio (USDS) will offer a glimpse of Nairobi in a new light. Using billboards and the art of architecture, the project will showcase possible solutions to congestion and other urban challenges in Nairobi.

“The idea was born while I was sitting in traffic one day. It was not very difficult to stop and think, what if there was an elevated highway, bus lanes or trains? Here the ‘WHAT IF?’ project was born,” says Karuga Koinange from USDS. And as it turned out, the dense traffic wasn’t just one of the problems they wanted to tackle; it also became a catalyst for capturing an audience. “Nairobians increasingly spend a considerable amount of time in traffic jams gazing [up] at billboards. This presents the ideal opportunity to pitch an idea to the viewer and hopefully get some feedback,” Karuga adds.

USDS is a young, budding, Nairobi-based design studio with a lot of other exciting projects in the pipeline. Currently they are designing an aircraft facility in Dar es Salaam, a teppanyaki restaurant on Zanzibar and a winery in Naivasha, just to name a few. Even with this large variety of projects underway they are still determined to tackle the challenges of urban Nairobi.

WHAT IF? is a self-initiated project that aims to push the boundaries of architecture and urban spaces to design solutions that can deal with critical urban challenges like water, energy and transport. Each project will focus on a particular aspect of Nairobi’s structural environment, ranging from cultural spaces and retail centres to parks and bridges.

“The key to all this is maintaining the original concept of the projects, but [also] having people see it as a whole new design, different from what they are used to,” explains Reuben Kogie, who is spearheading the WHAT IF? initiative. The series of aristic impressions will be exhibited through a variety of media, including web, exhibition space and a handbook plus, most importantly, via a series of advertising billboards spread across Nairobi. The exhibition will run during the month of September 2012. For more information, visit www.whatif.co.ke