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.
Embassy of Switzerland in Nairobi / Roeosli Maeder Architects
The Swiss federal office for buildings and logistics recently acquired a piece of land for the construction of a new embassy in the Rosslyn green estate, a residential area just outside the centre of Nairobi
Rehabilitation Of Four Caravansérail Of Fès Medina / Oualalou+Choi
The Medina of Fez constitutes an outstanding example of a medieval town created during the very first centuries of Islamisation of Morocco and presenting an original type of human settlement and traditional occupation of the land representative of Moroccan urban culture over a long historical period. The Medina of Fez bears a living witness to a nourishing city of the eastern Mediterranean havi...
146 Waterkant / L+L Architects
The 146 Waterkant building by Michael Lumby and Werner Lotz from L+L Architects is the archetype of silence in architecture that speaks volumes. It is a family house in Capetown that strives to embrace te culture of contemporary conservation with tenets of varying vernacular approaches to sustainable construction and cost control.
Volubilis / Kilo Architectures
Set within the most visited archaeological site in the Kingdom of Morocco, this project seeks to enhance the historical and symbolic significance of this unique UNESCO World Heritage site. The site is an exceptionally well-preserved example of an ancient Roman colonial town and one of several antique sites in Morocco. Due to the lack of urban development in the immediate surroundings, the site...
House Djerba / Samia Ben Abdallah
The House Djerba is a white house in a green environment. It is a combination of intricately considered yet unassuming design that seeks to simplify the house typology into a series of weather elements that simply define space. You can be forgiven for passing it by, because this is not the kind of house that ostentatiously waves its tail for attention, it is not the kind of contemporary archite...
Re-Tour – Casablanca / Kilo Architectures
The Re Tour project marks a marked emphasis on the maintenance of 20th century heritage and offers new ways to ever changing dynamic of investment and seeks to solve the ever troublesome matter of preserving architectural heritage vis a vis commercial investment.
Cultural facilities, Housing and Offices / BOM Architecture
BOM Architecture is the winner of the competition for the construction of the 1st Museum of Architecture in Africa and in the Arab World in Tangier, Morocco. The proposal envisions a development which consists of three different sections: The Museum of Architecture ‘’Maison de l’architecture, 133 housing units, and retail shops and office spaces.
Cohabitation / Kilo Architectures
This project, consisting of five experimental houses within a communal farm, proposes alternative modes of domesticity and co-habitation, both within the home and between homes. A line is not inherently a domestic form; it does not shelter or enclose. However, when faced with the challenge of placing two houses on the site in such as way as to maximize privacy while democratizing access to the ...
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa MOCAA / Heatherwick Studios
Thomas Heatherwick's new MOCAA establishment in Capetown is almost nearing completion, and the building takes over from what was once one of the tallest building on the Capetown Skyline. Poised to hold one of the most analytic and comprehensive African art collections in the world, the project seeks to give Africa one of its major institutions of African art. Heatherwick tries to mimic the ches...
Koudougou Central Market / Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation + Laurent Séchaud
Designed as an urban community project, the mission and end goal of the design was to improve the human spirit by responding to the growing need for clean water, power, shelter, healthcare and education. Being an Aga Khan Award-winning design, the Central market in Koudougou involved not just the construction of a physical urban infrastructure, but also the elaboration and implementation of a p...
Primary School Tanouan Ibi / LEVS Architecten
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 that is innovative, sustainable, functional, practical while still remaining authentic to its context. The school has a single-block typology consisting of three classrooms measuring 7 x 9 meters that can hold a total 180 pupils, a principal’s office, a depot...
The Amphitheatre of El Jem/ The Roman Empire
The structure measure 149 meters long, 124 meters wide and 36 meters high, and has three stories. The outside circumference is around 427m which is 100m shorter than the Colosseum. The stories consist of a series of arches formed from composite engaged columns which was a Roman development combining elements of Corinthian and Ionic columns. An internal stairway leads to a covered walkway that r...
Halawa House / Abdel Wahed El-Wakil
The Halawa House presupposes the notion of a contemporary idea within a setting that is way past its own time. Wahed El Wakil says the house is conspicuously different, both in design and materials, from what is normal in Agami. And that is no Sin. This house is an idea whose sole discretion laid with Abdel Wahed El-Wakil, perhaps one of the most famous architects (besides Hassan Fathy) to come...
Upeo Camp, Lake Jipe / Urko Sanchez Architects
Most man made features are placed in nature, additions so to speak, but few individuals have developed high levels of empathy to it that they touch nature so lightly. Upeo Camp doesn’t only touch it lightly but rather enhances the existing by imitating and developing it. With two types of units one resembling the existing boulders and the other almost tucked inside the earth one will not even n...
AACCSA Headquarters / BC Architects
Urbanism, in common perception, comes before architecture: urbanism creates potential by generating conditions to orchestrate the city’s latter architectural objects. Urbanism is a very generous way of thinking, since a lot is left open, whereas architecture is a more selfish discipline, which uses up the potential generated by others. In some rapidly changing cities of the global south though,...
Of Cities & Urban Themes: A case of Zanzibar Stone Town
The first mention of Zanzibar was in 1499 by Vasco da Gama, who wrote “came close a large island called Jangibar which is peopled by moors”. Originally ‘bar of Zangh’, a name which has Arab origins meaning ‘the coast of the black people’ became ‘Zinjbar’ and later ‘Zanjibar’.
Protect African Heritage: Who Really Cares?
Alan Donovan is a man under siege, a man who has built an architectural and cultural empire in a place previously dry and prairie.
Great City or Terrible Place: Experiencing Lamu
While the history and origin of the Waswahili people remains a contentious issue, scholars of culture and house form have in the past acknowledged that there is an obvious difficulty in attempting to transfer ideas and concepts from one culture to another. Swahili culture has been seen to display a myriad of influences from the wider Indian Ocean, producing an integrated mix that is different f...
Lalibela /BC Architects
The Ben Abeba 'rock hewn hotel rooms' project was aimed at creating a contemporary and ecologically sensitive architecture inspired by the power of expression of the historical rock hewn churches in the town of Lalibela. It’s a project that was intended to sprout out of the rocks as an extension rather than an addition.
Rebel Architecture: On activism in Architecture and away with Starchitecture
This week ArchiDATUM, through Joy Sapieka, seeks to draw your attention to a series on ALJAZEERA about REBEL ARCHITECTURE which was broadcasted from the 8th of August . The series profiled the architects around the world who use design as a form of activism and resistance, turning away from elite “starchitecture” to design for the majority.
Naomba, Naomba/ Nadir Tharani
In this article, originally posted on Dar Guide, August 2004 as Naomba, Naomba, Architect Nadir Tharani demonstrates how our spaces are bereft of human interaction and how as architects, designers, government and the common man, we have all failed towards human enrichment in our public spaces . When we sit down at the end of the day and look at our African Cities through a thin scope, don’t we ...
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