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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Urbanization, the African Child, and the Dying Culture of Play

Some of my fondest childhood memories—growing up in different cities in Nigeria, in the eighties and nineties—involve time spent playing outdoors. We had ample spaces for play. Our schools also encouraged and emphasized it. Beyond school, every neighbourhood had generous open spaces, and children turned them into makeshift soccer pitches, basketball courts and theatrical stages (depending on th...

Africa’s Urban War on Street Vendors and the Missed Opportunity for Social Unity

In most great cities, street vendors are an essential part of urban life. They give a place its texture, its bustle and buzz, even its soul. With the dawn of each new day, on streets and piazzas all over the world, vendors take their places, roasting walnuts, making waffles, grilling hotdogs, setting up makeshift stages for performance or the creation of art. Most of us can’t imagine city life ...

Antonio Esposito Reimagines the New City Of Mengomeyene In Equatorial Guinea With A Series Of Elaborate Graphics

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.

Lubango Centre / Promontorio

With 9-storey, the building includes residential, offices and shops served by a common access and underground parking. On the ground floor, a sheltered and cross-ventilated open gallery generates a shaded and fresh space, allowing direct access to the shop fronts, to the residential and offices lobbies, and to a small backyard coffee-shop terrace.

Refilwe Business Node Upgrades / Holm Jordaan Architects and Urban Designers

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.

15 Alice Lane Annex / Paragon Architects

The context of this project had a profound impact on its design. This is the sixth building on the Alice Lane Precinct and sits in the southern corner. An early decision was made to rehabilitate the structure rather than demolish it. There were compelling reasons for doing so, including cost and time benefits.

Lideta Mercato Market / Vilalta Architects

The Lideta Mercato was supposed to be a shopping mall like many in the city of Addis Ababa. After analyzing the existing ones we realized that they have 3 weak points: they are empty because the shops are too big, their glass facades create heating and bring too much light in the inside and their image does not reflect Africa, neither Ethiopia’s character. On the other hand, the Old Mercato of ...

Dyeji Building / Costalopes

The Dyeji Building is part of the Bay of Luanda Parcel 3 development scheme located at the narrowest part of the Ilha do Cabo promontory. The scheme consists of a total of 57 plots (its limits being marked by the Hotel da Marinha in the north-east and the Clube Náutico in the south-west).

Francis Kéré Unveils Burkina Faso's New National Assembly in Ouagadougou

At the 2016 Venice Biennale, Francis Kere unveiled, as part of the exhibition “in search of a new Ouagadougou” the schemes for the design of the Burkina Faso National Assembly. In the transformative time for Burkina Faso, the scheme can be summed as tackling the fundamental question of “How do we move forward”. It consequently not only seeks to address the democratic values of transparency, ope...

Empower Shack / Urban Think Tank

While South Africa is usually seen as a source of stability and prosperity in its region, approximately 7.5 million people live in informal settlements and the country faces an overall housing shortage of 2.5 million units. Arising from this context, Empower Shack is an interdisciplinary development project directed by U-TT and the local NGO Ikhayalami Development Services, in collaboration wit...

Sudanese Students Are Protesting to Save Khartoum’s Historic Architecture

Sudan student protests show how much city planning and design matter. In this article originally published in The Conversation, Amira Osman and Mariam Mohd Abdallah focus on how city planning or lack of thereof in Sudan's main capital is casuign havoc across the city's old historic neighbourhoods.

Datum Antique: Sasaki Associates’ Green Lung of Cairo

In 1984, His Highness the Aga Khan announced his decision to finance the creation of a park for the citizens of the Egyptian capital. The only central location that was of suitable scale was the derelict Darassa site, a 30-hectare (74-acre) mound of rubble that had been a debris dump for 500 years. Al-Azhar Park, undertaken by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, has since proven to be both a popula...

Freedom Park Museum / GAPP + Mashabane Rose Architects + MMA

Situated on a prominent "koppie" (hill) overlooking Tshwane, Freedom Park’s vision is to become “a leading national and international icon of humanity and freedom.” Its Mission is “to provide a pioneering and empowering heritage destination that challenges visitors to reflect upon our past, improve our present and build on our future as a united nation.”(1) At the core of this mission is reconc...

Finding Stories :: The Role of Immaterial Culture in City Planning

On 30 January 2016, AAmatters together with its partners City of Amsterdam, Government of Zanzibar and Stadsherstel Amsterdam, organises the symposium ‘Finding Stories :: the role of immaterial culture in city planning’

Freedom Park, Phase 1 / GAPP + Mashabane Rose Architects + MMA

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...

The Cities of Cogo & Corisco Master Plans / Page Think Architects

The influence of high modernism and revolutionary schemes to complement growing economies and cities remains a contested issue. Being particularly of concern to fast developing countries and the impact of modernism to societies with rich local traditions and norms, designers cannot shy away from making their contributions to these debate. Drawing master plans and re-envisioning their cities now...

Brixton Studio House / 26'10 South Architects

Thorsten Deckler from the Johannesburg based Architectural studio 26'10 South calls the Brixton House a compact live-work compound for an architect couple and their young children. It represents a well served spatial arrangement that has undergone several changes over its lifetime into a meaningful mixture of retail and residential components is meaningful and well deserved and their ability t...

Taxi Rank No. 2 / 26'10 South Architects

Diepsloot is the kind of environment that requires input from the best, most courageous and inspired architects. It is not every architect who would have the patience and willingness to learn from this environment, or the humility necessary to create opportunities and bring human dignity to it, where it is most needed. The reality is that most people on earth live within conditions of informali...

Malabo New St. Isabel International Airport / Independent Architectural Diplomacy IAD

The MSI New International Airport is the first and last place of exchange between the traveler and his land host; in essence, a large door and approach. From this point of view, the building needs to be prestigious and express the culture and identity of the city or the country it represents, just as a monument, a public place or an official building. At the same time, it is a symbol of technol...

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...

102 Rivonia Deloitte Head Office / Boogertman + Partners

It’s a project that Boogertman calls pulsating, and rightfully so. Debatably eclectic and somewhat ostentatious in its standing especially in a small city scape that is coming up in the Sandton area, the 102 Rivonia project does well to stand in its bustle opulence and maintain a steady poise. It is a building that taken away from its clichéd context would be too much to the eye, but Sandton is...

Hilton Hotel Windhoek/ Wasserfall Munting Architects

The new Hilton (Eliakim Namundjebo Plaza) Hotel in Windhoek, Namibia, forms the first phase of the proposed Freedom Square development, an 80,000m² mixed-use precinct in the heart of the capital set to transform the urban face and dynamics of the CBD.

Designing City Resilience

A city’s resilience impacts on the quality of life of its citizens and the health of its economy. Stability and certainty encourage the entrepreneurship, investment and international trade essential to a city’s long-term prosperity and growth.

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...

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...

Lagos State Considers ‘Makoko Floating School’ Into Development Plan

The Lagos State Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban development announced its consideration for incorporating the internationally acclaimed prototype floating structure ‘Makoko Floating School’ in a regeneration plan for Makoko Waterfront community. Makoko Floating school is designed by NLÉ Work – an architecture, design and urbanism practice focused on developing cities and communities. T...

National Park of Mali / Kere Architecture

Amidst the senseless construction of commercial urban projects in Bamako, a welcoming vision of nature and beauty stands at the entrance of the National Park. The renowned architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, Aga Khan Award for Architecture recipient in 2004, was commissioned to redevelop 8 existing structures and design a primary and secondary gate, an entry building, a youth and sports centre, a ...

Rabat-Salé Urban Infrastructure Project, Hassan II Bridge / Marc Mimram Architecture

The Rabat-Salé Infrastructure Project is part of a 6,000 hectares development of the Bouregreg Valley which aims to rehabilitate and promote the banks of the Bouregreg River to offer a pleasant place to live for the people of Rabat and Salé.

Mayotte Airport / REC Architecture

A combination of the modern, the vernacular and environmental consciousness is the conspicuous image that the edgy Mayotte Airport portrays. The earthy palette makes it merge comfortable with the natural landscape. Its floating roofs are not only generated by the will to offer thermal comfort by shading the extensive glazed facades but give the airport its character. The airport is double code...