Futuristic and fluid, Discovery’s new global headquarters bring together 5000 employees who were previously housed in four separate buildings. Efficiency and future growth underpin the new workspace, which is the largest new build to date to receive a 5 Star Green Star rating by the Green Building Council South Africa. In line with Discovery’s holistic approach to health, the building was imagi...
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...
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.
Christian Benimana wants to build a network of architects who can help Africa's booming cities flourish in sustainable, equitable ways -- balancing growth with values that are uniquely African. From Nigeria to Burkina Faso and beyond, he shares examples of architecture bringing communities together. A pan-African movement of architects, designers and engineers on the continent and in diaspora a...
The ecomo home is a compact home designed for modern, simple living in collaboration with nature. The design is based on basic sustainable, green design principles. The ecomo home offers a low-maintenance, modern, well-designed green housing alternative.
The House is situated in one of Pretoria's oldest Golf Estates, which has already been extensively developed. Our client was particularly open-minded in buying one of the last open plots in the estate, an extremely rocky piece of ground not many would see opportunity in.
In the middle of the Atlantic ocean, in the island of Sao Vicente, in a dry windy island where only rain in August. A France trekking guide decides to build his own hotel for the incoming tourists that want to go trekking in the nearest mountain island of Santo Antao.
The pavilion of morocco at the 14th Venice Biennale focused on territorial speculations in the Sahara: “inhabiting the uninhabitable.” The Sahara, with its extreme geography and climatic conditions, remains an unexplored territory for architectural speculation. We proposed an urban structure for this territory, a means of putting down roots, implanting urbanity and civilization.
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...
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.
The Angolan urban patios explore the home as a city and the city as a home. Architecture and a city are different manifestations of the same theme. The city isn’t simply the reunion of buildings or houses; it is a big and complex building.
On Friday, November 3rd 2017 at 9:00pm, MASS premiered a new feature-length documentary film titled Made in Ilima at the Architecture and Design Film Festival (ADFF)in New York City.In the center of Equator Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Ilima community remains one of the most isolated in the world. They have coexisted with endangered wildlife in their surrounding forest ...
Manuel Herz was in Nairobi early last month to open the exhibition based on his book, African Modernism, to over 100 architects and artists who showed up. The organisers, the University of Nairobi and Goethe Institute Nairobi gave the opening remarks before Manuel Herz gave his informative lecture.
In this set of hand drawings, Antonio Esposito reimagines the city of Mengomeyene in a series of Graphic images for the foundation plan of the new city in Equatorial Guinea.
Located in the third most populated city in Burkina Faso, the Lycée Schorge Secondary School not only sets a new standard for educational excellence in the region, it also provides a source of inspiration by showcasing locally-sourced building materials in an innovative and modern way.
David Adjaye explored a returning to the renaissance in African architecture yesterday at the University of Johannesburg Graduate School of Architecture in an engaging heart to heart with Lesley Lokko where he implored upon the need to radically explore architecture from always the new rather than projecting upon them before the actual solution, deeper meaning or discussion of the situation is ...
Anura Vineyards, a breathtaking wine farm situated in the Cape Winelands, has revealed ‘spankingly’ modern interiors for its new events venue. Nestled between the towns of Paarl and Stellenbosch, this venue provides more than just idyllic surroundings and award-winning wines – it offers a contemporary design direction in a landscape usually associated with traditional architecture…
The idea for this tiny studio of about 35 usable square meters was born out of its spectacular setting. The incredibly dense garden is home to everything from porcupines to guinea fowl and slopes down steeply to the dry ravine beyond. The clients’ insistence that no single tree may be cut required an unconventional approach. The only buildable space available was a 3 x 3m storeroom between the ...
The new Sasol corporate office on Katherine Street brings together all 6000 staff members from its eleven satellite offices into one office space. The building leaps the boundary of the commercial edge of Sandton to hover as a floating glass box above an indigenous parkland.
Refilwe nodal transformation forms part of an urban network of upgrades supported by the Neighbourhood Development Partnerships Grant, National Treasury, in the Metsweding area, City of Tshwane. This upgrade albeit a small and humble urban intervention, serves as an example of a local community taking great pride in the renewal of public space.
As a result of an international competition, the group OCP, a global leader in phosphates extraction and transformation, commissioned in 2011 the design of the campus for the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University to RBTA. Extending over approximately 55 hectares, the Campus for Mohammed VI Polytechnic University is the milestone of the ambitious scheme for the Mohammed VI Green City, a sustainable...
Global architectural and design firm Perkins+Will adds to its award-winning healthcare portfolio with the design of the new 465,560 square foot (43,252 square meter) Ghana Ridge Hospital. The Government of Ghana selected the design-build team of Perkins+Will and Americaribe to create a new state-of-the-art hospital that will support the growing needs of the fast developing African country. This...
Joe Noero is no stranger to critical and conscious South African Architecture. A signature definition of his achievements is perhaps that he an International Fellow of The Royal Institute of British Architects and an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects but his accomplishments perhaps lies in building small worlds of order and creating socially purposeful architecture
The Preschool of Aknaibich is only 1 classroom, nevertheless a holistic architectural design, incorporating community dynamics, bioclimatics and a new vernacular style.Aknaibich is a town in transition: the eastern old town is made of earthen constructions, sinusoid roads and narrow alleys, while the western part exists of modern, plot-based concrete houses built by rural-urban emigrants. In ne...
Located on a one-hectare site in the Kayonza district in eastern Rwanda, the Women’s Opportunity Center is energizing one small community’s subsistence-agriculture economy through female empowerment. Traveling to the center’s daytime classes and events on foot, residents—many of them survivors of war—learn income-generating skills, such as animal husbandry and processing techniques that can sus...
The New Kintélé SportsComplex located in Kintélé; 20km from the capital city Brazzaville was built by a Chinese Company. The sports complex replaced former farmlands and covers over 80 hectares.
The British Council is perhaps the biggest export of architectural heritage across the world, comparable only in second place to the Dutch. The latest addition to the portfolio of architecture in Africa is the Freetown British council, a building that has now become synonymous with social and cultural endeavors in Sierra Leone. The building alludes to clean and entrenched values of embassies bu...
Lord Foster has launched proposals for the Droneport project in Africa to support cargo drone routes capable of delivering urgent and precious supplies to remote areas on a massive scale. The project is a collaboration between Redline partners led by Afrotech, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL); the Norman Foster Foundation; and Foster + Partners.
Sama & Kasa (high and low in the Hausa language) is the project we presented for the pavilion, to promote earth architecture, in the national museum Boubou-Hama in Niamey. Logically the project was inspired by the vernacular architecture of Niger. It contains characteristics of traditional materials, techniques and forms to obtain a contemporary architecture in harmony with the local culture.
The design of the Sinthian Cultural Centre is described as a parametric transformation of the traditional pitched roof, which is literary inverted to collect rainwater. The construction of this structure is found in a remote Senegalese village of Sinthian, close to the Mali border. This construction, begun by the New York Studio of Toshiko Mori, is designed in collaboration with two non-profit ...