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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.

Ruhehe School / African Design Centre

In September 2016, MASS Design Group launched the African Design Centre in Kigali to train and empower the creative leaders who will design a more equitable, just and sustainable Africa. The program gives fellows the training and hands-on experience required to execute social impact driven solutions to the continent’s most pressing challenges.

PORET Permaculture Community Kindergarten / Anna Heringer

The permaculture community PORET in Zimbabwe is a client who has inhaled the philosophy of a holistic sustainability. With this project we want to be gentle to the soil, the water, the atmosphere and the people. The lesson from Bangladesh is, that the most successful development strategy is to make the best out of existing potentials and resources. In that way I kept my eyes open for the specia...

The Craft School / University Build Collective

The Craft School is an effort by Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Technical University of Munich, University of Augsburg at sustainable urban living and technological interplay of materials and aesthetics towards achieving a harmonious and intellectually secure school environment. It is often a challenging aspect in developing countries to convincingly pull across a viabl...

Kaedi Regional Hospital / Association Pour Le Développement D'une Architecture Et D'un Urbanisme Africains

The Kaedi hospital comprises of a 120 bed extension to a regional hospital in the frontier town of Kaedi serving the remote population of Gorgol province in Southern Mauritania. The architects were not to replicate the earlier hospital's conventional concrete-frame buildings; their brief was to house the planned facilities by developing new low-cost techniques of construction employing local ma...

Alliance Franco-Senegalaise / Patrick Dujarric

Built to house the Alliance Française, and to provide the provincial town of Kaolack with much needed library space, meeting areas, and classrooms, as well as performance and entertainment areas, the mission of the Franco-Sénégalaise Cultural Centre is to promote knowledge and understanding of the French language and culture. Its architect, Patrick Dujarric, grouped the various functional space...

Konokono Vaccination and Educational Clinic / Selgas Cano and MIT Open Studio Students

Turkana, for anyone who has had the priviledge of travelling there, is a hot and dusty environment, one that among others provides the kind of environment necessary for expansive views, open air movement and natural hard wearing materials. It is with this mindset that Architect José Selgas, of the Spanish firm SelgasCano, worked on the design of a vaccination and educational center for the noma...

The Plight of African Vernacular Architecture

African vernacular architecture experiences very little to none online documentation. This trend is even more pronounced by the rapidly disappearing of the said architecture, abandoned for Western materials, designs and techniques. In an effort to remedy this, architect Jon Sojkowski created a data base displaying images from every African country. His goal is to create a central website showc...

The Assinie-Mafia Catholic Church / Koffi & Diabaté Architectes

The small town of Assinie-Mafia is typified by modesty, low cost structures and a bright hopeful community are synonymous to such African developing towns. Tropical heat is always a concern in such environments and sustainability is a major concern to the architects. Tapping into the zeitgeist of the context, Koffi & Diabaté Architectes designed a magnificent church which transforms a pract...