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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Discovery Place / Boogertman and Partners

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...

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.

The Ecomo Home / Pietro Russo

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.

House Gauché / Earthworld Architects and Interiors

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.

Right-Side Down / Oualalou+Choi

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.

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.

African Modernism Exhibition at Shifteye Gallery Studios Nairobi by Manuel Herz

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.

Anura Vineyard New Events Venue / Inhouse Brand Architects

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…

A Studio - A Tree House / Phillip Lühl + Nina Maritz Architects

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 ...

Sasol Place / Paragon Architects

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.

One Airport Square / Mario Cucinella Architects

One Airport Square is a world-class multi-functional building minutes’ walk from the most important venues in the city. It was designed by the award-winning sustainability architect, Mario Cucinella Architects.It hosts 2,000 sqm of commercial spaces on the ground floor and ten-floor office block on the southwest of the lot, due to the specific form and orographic features of the site.

Roman Ridge / Alfredo Resende Architects

In the growing city of Accra, Ghana,a new twelve-building complex captures the artistic play of facades and elegant block design. It is a development that tackles the housing menace with cost-controlled construction that targets the emerging middle class with the ground floor projected for small-scale commerce. This propels it as an exceptional residential development into an iconic project.

Maputo Modernism: A Rachel Jenkins' Photo Essay

Originally published by What's On Africa, Rachel Jenkins a London based Urbanist focussing on African modernism, gives gives her input on African Modernism Icons in response to the architecture of Lusophone African countries and the imaginaries of modernization especially within these countries.

Meroe Royal Baths Protective Shelter / Kere Architecture

Kere Architecture has been chosen to develop the Meroe Royal Baths Protective Shelter in Sudan and they are doing it in clay and stone. Reminiscent of what the firm has come to be known of, the structure is an understated quiet edifice that uses local materials such as clay and stone to construct a long term structure. This is a culminated effort of a competition that needed to portray both sen...

Lokko House / Lesley Lokko

When Lesley Lokko isn't travelling between cities and continents, she likes to say she thinks about architecture. I have had a chance to sit down with her and in a social conversation over wine (way too much wine) in a quaint suburb in Hyde Park Johannesburg and speak to her on her thoughts about architecture (apparently nowadays she has too few thoughts on it unless you can interest her in the...

Great Mosque of Touba / Tashiko Mori

Religion has the instrinsic ability to influence a creed, and so does architecture. At the heart of the Mouride holy city lies a well crafted piece of architectural realm in The Great Mosque of Touba. It is a riveting piece of qarchitecture, solemn in materiality but robust in versing and space making. The mosque rises up from the African soil with such confidence it can be seen from almost all...

Office of The Auditor General/ Wasserfall Munting Architects

Architecturally speaking, the biggest challenge was to design a building with a language and overall expression befitting the image and status of the office of an auditor general: an uncompromising and distinguished presence, yet restrained, timeless, inclusive and neutral. Other important design considerations were the contribution of the new building to public urban space within the city, and...

Blair Atholl House / Nico Van Der Meulen Architects

Free from high boundary walls and electric fencing, this is a design with a difference. With unrestricted views of the countryside, the expansiveness of this home is certain to catch your attention as you approach the house. The brief called for a contemporary, practical home that makes provision for outdoor living with an emphasis on entertaining. Due to the form-follow-function approach of th...

The Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo Presidential Library and Museum / Page Think Architects

The Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo Presidential Library and Museum is the first public facility in the country of Equatorial Guinea designed to showcase and preserve presidential documents, photographs, videos and artifacts. Located in the city of Mongomo, the complex includes the 81,000-square-foot Library and a 19,500-square-foot headquarters building for the Obiang Nguema Mbasogo Foundation f...

The Epping Road Long House/ Studio MAS

The Epping Road Long House is a contemporary urban home situated in Forest Town, Johannesburg which carefully takes into account factors that complete a luxury living space such as safety, comfort and privacy. One striking feature of the building is how the Architect was able to use one of the walls as the boundary wall and still not compromise on the privacy required.

Butaro Doctor’s Housing/ MASS Design Group

Mass Design Group’s zeal to offer architectural solutions that impact beyond the basic concepts of a building can sequentially be observed through their works. The group’s specific devotion towards the health sector is immense and invaluable.

OVD 919/ SAOTA

The Brief was to create a spectacular home which encapsulated the expansive 360 degree mountain and sea views. Though views out were paramount this needed to be carefully balanced with the required privacy from within. The living areas were to be open plan – enhancing everyday life. “The architecture needed focus on creating a contemporary, uncluttered and sculptural building,” said Tamaryn ...

US Embassy Maputo/ Allied Works Architecture

Realizing a design that incorporates security while ensuring transparency can be a hard nut to crack. However, the new US Embassy design embraces a concept that comprises an intricate interlacing of weaving, screening and revealing. The perceptual sense of safety granted to embassy habitats is surreptitiously provided through the choice of walling materials (a series of site-cast concrete walls...

University Campus Denis Sassou Nguesso/ IAD

There is a boom in the construction Industry in the Republic of Congo due to the interest given by international investors and the prospects of economic development: the country looks to the future and plans for a full industrialization by 2025. One such Development is a modern polytechnic Universitylocated in Kintele, on the northern edge of Brazzaville along the river Congo, which will includ...

Casa Port Railway Station/ AREP

Casablanca is a modern city in Morocco with a concentration of Art Deco and international style and modernist buildings which tries to draw a lot from the vernacular Moorish architecture of the area. It is a modern city which has undergone change in a short time from experimental lifestyle of the residents. The city urban planning is also undergoing reorganization hence the Casa Port Station fi...

Mohammed VI Football Academy/ Groupe 3 Architectes

The Mohammed VI Football Academy located in Salé, on the right bank of Bouregreg River, opposite the capital Rabat is a private academy that offers education, schooling and Football. The Academy was initiated and partially financed by personal funding from the King of Morocco in 2006, with an aim to raise the ranking of national football to the top of the Africa charts and compete at internatio...

Taroudant University / Saad El Kabbaj, Driss Kettani, Mohamed Amine Siana

Saad El Kabbaj, Driss Kettani and Mohamed Amine Siana tried to avoid the clichés of the context alone by adopting a very modern development which also adopts the massiveness, strength, relief and the poetic nature of the forms of developments in the South.

Vaal Studio / Elphick Proome Architects

When your client is a highly successful and innovative businessman and patron of South African arts, and his brief is that you come up with a ‘signature piece’ that is an annex to an existing weekend retreat on the Vaal river, then your solution can never be far from Elphick Proome Architects’ Vaal studio. This is even more so when there is a desire to use steel and the need to preserve the exi...

Grand Mosque of Algiers / KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten Gmbh

Algeria boasts the third largest mosque in the world in the Grand Mosque, a magnificent edifice that towers above the city of Algiers erected at the present bay of the city. The mosque is a conglomeration of various religious and cultural midpoints and on common ground aligned from west to east in the direction of Mecca in tandem with Islamic tenets. The programme is split into two with the wes...