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.

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Pin Up: Portraits of a Landscape on the Johannesburg's Circa Gallery

This set is new images by Edwin Seda, explores how portraits, (and here portraits being people and the building itself as a portrait canvas on the urban landscape) interacts and engages with light through offering itself as both opaque and transparent artefacts in architectural photography.

White Cube/ OMA

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. 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 inequali...

Guelmim Airport / Group 3 Architects

The new Guelmim airport is integrated in an existing military infrastructure located 3km north of the city. The stakes of the project were simplicity, efficiency, environmental control and extensibility, which is a prerequisite for the durability of an airport. It is with this objective that the construction of the building was designed in 2 phases, resulting in a linear design parallel to the ...

L’Amandier Hotel / Nick Gowing Architects

Nick Gowing's L’Amandier Hotel emerges from the rich, red earth of the L’Amandier Plateau. So, whilst remaining true to the natural colour palette, he juxtaposed the buildings’ bold and striking geometric lines with the contours of the surrounding hills and mountains.

Wall of Knowledge / Tarik Zoubdi Architects

"Wall of knowledge" is a construction project of a middle school in the city of El Jadida (100 km south of Casablanca). The school was built for the OCP employees' children. The irregular shape of the site and its orientation to the sun suggested a spatial distribution of the project in three main areas. The central area is a building reserved for teaching. It occupies the middle of the plot. T...

Architecture in Africa as Science First and Art Second

The idea that architecture is increasingly becoming a catalyst for innovation and integral scientific change is evident and prevalent now more than any other time in the history of architecture. Here I propose a new way of looking at contemporary architecture in Africa, one that is driven purely by innovation and scientific breakthroughs rather than the existing pursuit of oversimplified totems...

Manuel Herz wins Tambacounda Hospital Project in Senegal

Tambacounda Hospital is the only hospital in a large region of eastern Senegal. It serves the 100,000 inhabitants of the city of Tambacounda - declared the hottest metropolis on the planet - and more than a million people from the surrounding region and Mali, whose border is about an hour and a half away.

Noomdo Orphanage / Kere Architecture

Situated in the rural countryside of the Boulkiemdé province of Burkina Faso, the Noomdo Orphanage lies approximately 2 kilometers outside of the city of Koudougou. Mimicking the nearby residential compounds, the project is layed out in a similar way to a small village clustered around a communal outdoor space. The complex consists of 5 modular courtyard buildings, a shaded open-air dining hall...

Armando Tivane 178 / Promontorio

The project is located in downtown Maputo, capital of Mozambique. Due to both economic growth and speculation in recent years, the urban pressure in the centre of the city has resulted in a series of new buildings being built in its main avenues, some even of disproportionate height.

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

Edwin Seda's Photographic Images Show Rwanda's New Kigali Architecture School In Dynamic Light

New images have been released by Edwin Seda in a recent partnership with the French Architects Patrick Schweitzer et Associés Architectes whose Kigali Architecture School architecture is inspired by the territory and by colors and shapes found in Nature. The four natural elements are represented in the conception of the building: Fire: orange color, Water: inner garden, Air: circulations, and E...

Yves Saint Laurent Museum / Studio KO

While studying the couturier’s archives, Studio KO became intrigued by the duality between curved and straight lines, and between loose and precise approaches to cutting fabric. The facade of the building appears as an intersection of cubes with a lace-like covering of bricks, creating patterns that recall the weft and warp of fabric. As with the lining of a couture jacket, the interior is radi...

Making a Case for the Renaissance of Traditional African Architecture

Last September, Nigerian Afrobeat musician Wizkid played to a sold-out house at the Royal Albert Hall in London, joining a growing list of illustrious African musicians, such as Selif Kaita, Youssou Ndour, Miriam Makeba and others, that have performed at that prestigious venue. This event affirmed the unfolding cultural renaissance across the continent, but it also signified the rising global i...

Stellenbosch University Faculty of Medicine / MLB Architects

The client for this project was SU's Facilities Management,with the end user being SU’s Faculty of Medicine. The brief called for two 450 seater auditoriums, with break out areas. The budget was tight, the program fast-tracked and siting crucial.

Morvest Headquarters / Anthrop Architects

A campus to serve as the headquarters for the Morvest Business Group is situated adjacent to the Ben Schoeman highway. The client is a rapidly growing holding company requiring a flexible programme to house the various constituent companies and their associated functions. The campus comprises three buildings (two three-storey office buildings and a single-storey training and events centre) orie...

Denis Hurley Centre / Ruben Reddy Architects

Located in the vibrant city centre of Durban, South Africa, a few steps from Warwick Triangle and close to several liberation heritage sites such as the Juma Musjid (Mosque) the Denis Hurley Centre was conceived as a contemporary facility to uplift and serve the community - a welcoming refuge to all, regardless of background, faith or nationality.

Rwanda Cricket Stadium / Light Earth Designs

The RCSF is not only building a future for Cricket in Rwanda, but is facilitating reconciliation, and the rebuilding of communities through the essential values of cricket. Light Earth Designs- an integrated architectural and structural consultancy specialized in sustainable technologies and communities- takes us through the design of the first dedicated international cricket ground in Rwanda. ...

La Lucia House / SAOTA

LA Lucia is a dream transformer house. The view from the street is a closed in house with a veiled approach to it that is both secretive and introverted. A certain sagacity of arrival is created by a serious entrance between two milk-wood trees; the cinematic panorama is only revealed as one enters the double-volume hallway. To highlight that moment of connection, the architects clad the ceilin...

Why Mixed-Income Communities Are Essential for the Future of African Cities

The idea of planned mixed-class neighborhoods was first proposed by Ebenezer Howard in his 1898 book, To-morrow: A peaceful Path to Real Reform, which was later revised and reprinted four years later as Garden Cities of To-morrow. In the book, Howard offered practical solutions to the overcrowding and industrial pollution of growing Victorian cities. He wanted to build new, self-sufficient, ega...

Dicky Hokie Reimagines the Kenyan Shilling With Banknote Designs

Dicky Hokie has just shared with us his interpretation for what a contemporary Kenyan Shilling would like. In a quest to re-examine the portrait less currency envisioned in the new constitution of 2010, where the currency laws prohibit the glorification of one individual. these set of bank notes design explore a highly efficient and expressive set of design that delve deep into what he consider...

5 Kindergartens / colectivoMEL

We thought of this project watching the environment, the sun, and the marks of the rain, the wind and the children. In Guinea-Bissau our concepts are abstract. There the architecture is made up of two parts, inner space and outer space with transitional space codes.

Old Mutual Central Campus / Perry + Anderson Architecture

This project was to create a new business school for the Old Mutual Investment Group. Careful consideration of the existing campus of buildings at the head office of Old Mutual in Cape Town saw the positioning of the new training facility in an underutilized courtyard and existing ground floor office space.

Aquiles Eco Hotel / Ramos Castellano Arquitectos

Located in the main square of a small fishermen village, Aquiles Eco Hotel aims to be integrated in the architecture and in the social structure of the surroundings. The architecture is simple, raw and flexible, and it talks with the other houses and the small buildings all around. The structure is composed by 13 wooden container sized rooms, set in a beton brut structure and painted with lime ...

Ebrah Pavillion / Koffi & Diabaté Architectes

More than a pavilion, here we have a residence that is structured around individual yet interconnected building spaces (common living areas and private bedroom spaces)… Functionality, here, was key, as every part of the residence is designed to serve a specific purpose all the while transpiring openness and well‐being.

Villa Amina / Pascal De Souza

Benin-based architect Pascal De Souza recently completed this beautiful eco-villa situated in Cape Coast, Ghana. The villa, a combination of a traditional technique of palm concrete, isolation in ceilings with grass and brickwork, explores the breezy coast with open facades and indoor outdoor spaces that connect the specific rooms of the house into one seamless spatially inclusive space.

The Midden Garden Pavilion / Metropolis Design

The project forms part of a larger renovation to a freestanding villa located high up on the slopes of the Vlakkenberg. The clients required a pavilion within their extensive and beautiful garden, from which to appreciate the natural landscape around them.

Casa C / Ramos Castellano

Sao Vicente, Cape Verde archipelago, is a volcanic island, dry and arid, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where the elements of nature are extreme and dominant, technology and hand labor are basic and not very specialized, life is simple and flows slowly, following the cycles of nature. A foreign customer, adventurous and without budget constraints, decided to build a home that contains his...

Dar / Atelier FL

DAR is a family house on the Northern coast of Tunisia, overlooking the sea. The project consists in two separate volumes strongly connected to the garden, the pool and the sea view, set on top of a massive "platform".

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...

Tree House / Van Der Merwe Miszewski Architects

Trees are precious in Africa. They provide shelter for the elders at meeting time, for school children in the midday heat, for all to shield against the unrelenting elements. In a sense the tree has become iconic, almost mythical.