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...
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- © 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

- Rosebank Lofts / 26’10 South Architects
- 18 Nov 2015
"At an initial briefing we were told to create the “loft from hell”. Hell being a place of total decadence and indulgence. Our job can th...
- Oasis Kindergarten Kibera / Maisha Trust
- 08 May 2016
At the heart of Kibera slums located in Nairobi Kenya sits a small beautiful, well laid out kindergarten school. Kibera, the largest slum...
- The Winners Of Bibliotheca Alexandrina Science City Cairo International Competition in Egypt Announced
- 31 Aug 2016
The London based architecture studio Weston Williamson + Partners have triumphed in an international design competition to create a Scien...

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DIRECTORY

- The Reserve House / Metropole Architects
- 14 Jan 2017
The reserve house is a piece of architecture that plays duality in its design. Propped up in Forestwood on the Dolphin coast, the house r...
- The Why Not Academy / Gaetano Berni, Ivan Cosentino and Giulia Celentano
- 01 Sep 2017
The Why Not Academy is a school but above all a multifusion center for the Mabatini community, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Ma...
- Ubuntu Centre / Field Architecture
- 30 Jun 2016
The Ubuntu Center provides pediatric HIV testing and treatment, counseling, education, and community empowerment. The design is focused o...