Usually representing spirits, ancestors or the primordial couple, these figures were placed in shrines and treated with great respect. Through a wide range of style, scale, belief and function the couples depicted share a timeless, serene equality necessary to the continuity of their societies.

White Cube/ OMA

Architects: OMA
Location: Lusanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Project Team: Design team: David Gianotten, Max Scherer, Adrian Subagyo Executive Architects: Bureau d’étude Ijambo, Arsène Ijambo Kambaza Construction: Copirec, John Kayamba Mafunkolo
Interior Décor: OMA
Project Year: 2017
Photographer: OMA
Website: www.oma.com

- 26 August 2018
- Datum Editorial
Art , Art Galleries , Research Centres , Contemporary , Contemporary African Directory , Selected Works ,

From the Architects;
Located in the heart of a plantation system, the research centre designed by Rem Koolhas led OMA in Congo aims to become a vector for a social and ecological shift.

White Cube/ Office for Metropolitan Architecture

Designed by the OMA, this White Cube is a central element of the Lusanga International Research Centre for Art and Economic Inequality (LIRCAEI). Located in the heart of the plantation system and at the crossroads of global inequality and climatological change, the research center aims to become a vector for a social and ecological shift. The festive and solemn inauguration of the White Cube marked the launch of the five-year research program of LIRCAEI. In Lusanga, the White Cube will attract both the capital and the visibility needed for plantations workers to buy back land and develop a new economic and ecological model on-site: the post-plantation.

White Cube/ Office for Metropolitan Architecture

The White Cube will include an internet platform that connects its research to plantations and museums worldwide. Plugged into these international networks, the White Cube will transform the former palm oil plantation of Lusanga into a legitimization machine, investigating and relaying the strategies of resistance alongside visions for the future of plantation workers globally. Within five years, LIRCAEI seeks to have designed the blueprint for a new economic model in which art serves as an engine to start inclusive and ecological post-plantations throughout the Congo.

- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...

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SELECTED WORKS

- Yves Saint Laurent Museum / Studio KO
- 09 Apr 2018
While studying the couturier’s archives, Studio KO became intrigued by the duality between curved and straight lines, and between loose a...
- Aquiles Eco Hotel / Ramos Castellano Arquitectos
- 05 Dec 2017
Located in the main square of a small fishermen village, Aquiles Eco Hotel aims to be integrated in the architecture and in the social st...
- Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Research / DHK Architects
- 31 Jul 2015
The Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Research, commonly referred to as Ahmed Baba Institute, is a library and research ...

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DIRECTORY

- Great Mosque of Touba / Tashiko Mori
- 31 Jul 2015
Religion has the instrinsic ability to influence a creed, and so does architecture. At the heart of the Mouride holy city lies a well cra...
- The Midden Garden Pavilion / Metropolis Design
- 22 Nov 2017
The project forms part of a larger renovation to a freestanding villa located high up on the slopes of the Vlakkenberg. The clients requi...
- Sinthian Thread Arts Cultural Centre / Toshiko Mori Architect TMA
- 29 Sep 2015
The design of the Sinthian Cultural Centre is described as a parametric transformation of the traditional pitched roof, which is literary...