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

- The Plantation: A film By Jaco Jonker For the People of the Forest
- 06 Jun 2016
Jaco Jonker smiles when I ask him how his thesis should be read, almost as if it is an obvious allusion to further clarify that it simply...
- Rwanda Cricket Stadium / Light Earth Designs
- 02 Feb 2018
The RCSF is not only building a future for Cricket in Rwanda, but is facilitating reconciliation, and the rebuilding of communities throu...
- Datum Antique: Jean Francois Lamoureux and Jean-Louis Marin's Dakar International Fair Grounds
- 30 Oct 2015
The Dakar Exhibition centre is a psychedelic 70s baby, a building that perhaps represented a provoking, almost tickling and sparkling ide...

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DIRECTORY

- Glover 57 Apartments / Domaine Public Architects
- 21 Apr 2015
Located in the suburbs of Lagos, Glover 57 Apartments are a superb manifestation of contemporary residential living. Domaine Public Archi...
- Diébédo Francis Kéré: Architecture is a Wake-Up Call
- 05 Apr 2015
"Architecture is much more than art. And it is by far more than just building buildings". Meet award-winning architect Diébédo Francis Ké...
- Primary School Tanouan Ibi / LEVS Architecten
- 31 Jul 2015
Situated in a remote village in the vast plains of the Dogon country in Mali, Tanouan Ibi Primary School is a perfect example of a design...