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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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...

Pietri Plaza / Kilo Architectures

Situated in the heart of Morocco’s capital city of Rabat, the plaza creates a dynamic new public gathering space which encourages both planned and spontaneous urban and cultural events. Previously, the plaza consisted of the residual space between four vehicular roads. By sinking the core of the plaza and re-attaching two sides of the plaza to pedestrian thoroughfares, we created an urban ‘livi...

Bosjes Chapel / Steyn Studio

The new chapel, set within a vineyard in South Africa, is designed by South-African born Coetzee Steyn of London-based Steyn Studio. Its serene sculptural form emulates the silhouette of surrounding mountain ranges, paying tribute to the historic Cape Dutch gables dotting the rural landscapes of the Western Cape. Constructed from a slim concrete cast shell, the roof supports itself as each undu...

Karoo Wilderness Center / Field Architecture

The architecture of the Karoo Wilderness Center is a result of a thorough process of investigation into the origins and character of the Karoo landscape and the flora and fauna that result from its particular qualities. The tectonic events that produced the specific topography of the site, trajectories of water runoff, wind movement, soil composition, and effects of plant and animal species on...

Currency Museum / Costalopes

The new Currency Museum is located on the bay waterfront of Luanda, in the heart of the city downtown, at the Major Saidy Mingas Square, nearby the charismatic headquarters of the National Bank of Angola. The program was pretext for two major interventions. On one hand, it disposes the museum spaces below ground, becoming more reserved and quiet. On the other, its roof establishes a new urban s...

Leopards Leap Vineyards / Makeka Design Lab

How does a utilitarian wine shed become the new home for a young wine, and become a gateway for new audiences to wine and unique food? How does one engage with a Dionysian culture whilst creating a calm Apollonian and cerebral spatial experience? We had to create a fresh and lightweight architectural response to the existing shed and environs, employing what we call "cascading space", where spa...

Al Alfy House / Shahira Fahmy Architects

Located on the coast, the 25-year-old main house is within a gated community that faces the ocean waters of Egypt's Al ‘Alamayn. It is alaboured effort towards rejuvenating an existing house and giving it permanence and relevance in contemporary architecture, something that has been at the forefront of guiding the styles of the day. While architecture cannot be solely spoken of as emphasis on s...

146 Waterkant / L+L Architects

The 146 Waterkant building by Michael Lumby and Werner Lotz from L+L Architects is the archetype of silence in architecture that speaks volumes. It is a family house in Capetown that strives to embrace te culture of contemporary conservation with tenets of varying vernacular approaches to sustainable construction and cost control.

Volubilis / Kilo Architectures

Set within the most visited archaeological site in the Kingdom of Morocco, this project seeks to enhance the historical and symbolic significance of this unique UNESCO World Heritage site. The site is an exceptionally well-preserved example of an ancient Roman colonial town and one of several antique sites in Morocco. Due to the lack of urban development in the immediate surroundings, the site...

House Djerba / Samia Ben Abdallah

The House Djerba is a white house in a green environment. It is a combination of intricately considered yet unassuming design that seeks to simplify the house typology into a series of weather elements that simply define space. You can be forgiven for passing it by, because this is not the kind of house that ostentatiously waves its tail for attention, it is not the kind of contemporary archite...

Re-Tour – Casablanca / Kilo Architectures

The Re Tour project marks a marked emphasis on the maintenance of 20th century heritage and offers new ways to ever changing dynamic of investment and seeks to solve the ever troublesome matter of preserving architectural heritage vis a vis commercial investment.

Technology School of Laayoune/ Driss Ketani, Saad El Kabbaj & Mohamed Amine Siana

The project of the School of Laayoune Technology is part of the policy of decentralization of educational centers in different regions of Morocco and responds to a request from local graduates. The program is built around lessons spaces (classrooms, TP, amphitheater), documentation, administrative, educational and services like workshops and staff accommodation

Residence Andalous / Serge Santelli and Cabinet Gerau

Traditional Tunisian domestic architecture consists of one- or two-level houses arranged around courtyards or patios. To achieve a contemporary expression of these indigenous arrangements for this hotel, the architect created an ordered series of symmetrical interior courtyards connected along a main longitudinal axis, from which secondary axes open. The hotel courtyards are paved, and are ente...

Cultural facilities, Housing and Offices / BOM Architecture

BOM Architecture is the winner of the competition for the construction of the 1st Museum of Architecture in Africa and in the Arab World in Tangier, Morocco. The proposal envisions a development which consists of three different sections: The Museum of Architecture ‘’Maison de l’architecture, 133 housing units, and retail shops and office spaces.

Under The Sails / SCEG Architects

With the House of Sails, four primary volumes on two levels house the interior of the residence. It utilizes a primary organization with independent spaces connected by wooden pathways and the central patio, mediating element between the inside and the outside, connects the front to the rear, the sea and the forest. The roof, like a straw tent, covering the volumes to the beach and protects the...

The American University in New Cairo / Sasaki Associates

Continuing on the work of pioneers like Hassan Fathy and Abdel Wahed El Wakil on critical Egyptian regionalism within the North African Country, Sasaki associates in collaboration with a consortium of firms embarked on a fulfilling mission to provide New Cairo with an institution of higher learning. The American University is reminiscent of quaint Arabic architecture, with lattices, natural sto...

Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre / Peter Rich Architects

How do you design for fallen glory? For a people who were once the most sophisticated and dominant force in culture and social system, to modernize their way of living but still maintain a sense of arterial connection to their roots? Peter Rich, the man known for domed brick architecture, carefully maneuvered the intricacies of cultural intonations and sustainable mantra to build the Mapungubwe...

Cohabitation / Kilo Architectures

This project, consisting of five experimental houses within a communal farm, proposes alternative modes of domesticity and co-habitation, both within the home and between homes. A line is not inherently a domestic form; it does not shelter or enclose. However, when faced with the challenge of placing two houses on the site in such as way as to maximize privacy while democratizing access to the ...

House Al Hamra / Atelier KOE

Atelier KOE found the response to both the architectural aesthetic as well as energy autonomy. The spacious residence, built entirely with stabilized earth bricks, totals 400m2 divided into six suites, a large living area, kitchen and dining room. This house was built as a place of open hospitality, welcoming guests with an interior peristyle and quiet fountain. A 12 meter wind tower helps circ...

Datum Antique: Hassan Fathy's New Barris Village

"No other project dominates this mature phase of the architect's work as much as the village of New Baris, in a way that is comparable to the notoriety of New Gourna twenty years before. There are so many contrasting factors between the two projects that it is beneficial to examine the parallels between them. Discovery of a large water well sixty kilometers south of the Kharga Oasis in 1963, wh...

Women’s Opportunity Center / Sharon Davis Design

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...

River House / 26'10 South Architects

Thorsten Deckler and Annie Graupner architecture has always bordered on the commercial and social. It permeates a central theme of critical inquiry and diverse protoypes that touch on the quality and sustainability of human settlements. The River House is no different with a point of departure of a traditional double pitched roof that is manipulated to create additional volume, accommodation an...

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...

Maisha Film Garden / Tamassociati

The new headquarters of “Maisha Film Lab” want to synthesize life in cinema and architecture. Starting with the name Maisha, which means ‘life’ in Kiswahili, we thought about the project as a film sequence inspired by the evolution of life.The walking path, which develops in the garden, begins in childhood and develops through different stations in the evolution of the human being until the fin...

Koudougou Central Market / Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation + Laurent Séchaud

Designed as an urban community project, the mission and end goal of the design was to improve the human spirit by responding to the growing need for clean water, power, shelter, healthcare and education. Being an Aga Khan Award-winning design, the Central market in Koudougou involved not just the construction of a physical urban infrastructure, but also the elaboration and implementation of a p...

Sinthian Thread Arts Cultural Centre / Toshiko Mori Architect TMA

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 ...

Malabo Basilica / Saraiva-Associados

The project for Malabo Basilica conveys values such as strength, serenity, austerity and tranquility. The rectangular shaped building emerges from the ground, forming a semi-arch and rises 40 m height, culminating with a zenith opening above the altar. The Basilica can receive until 1,000 people, includes multipurpose rooms for educational activities and diocese services and a priest residence.

Falatow Jigisayo Orphanage / F8 Architecture + Gérard Violante

A humanitarian project designed by F8 Architecture in collaboration with Gérard Violante on a plot of two acres 50 km south of Bamako, Falatow Jigiyaso Orphanage clearly illustrates how the traditional building codes of the sub-Sahelian region can be adapted to the extreme conditions of a desert climate.This rather modernist orphanage complex offers accommodation for children and staff with to...

Primary School Tanouan Ibi / LEVS Architecten

Situated in a remote village in the vast plains of the Dogon country in Mali, Tanouan Ibi Primary School is a perfect example of a design that is innovative, sustainable, functional, practical while still remaining authentic to its context. The school has a single-block typology consisting of three classrooms measuring 7 x 9 meters that can hold a total 180 pupils, a principal’s office, a depot...

Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Research / DHK Architects

The Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Research, commonly referred to as Ahmed Baba Institute, is a library and research complex located in Timbuktu, Mali. Its location in Timbuktu, is an ancient town with rich history dating back to the Trans-Saharan Trade, required the architects to come up with a design that would respect its unique context. The result was a building construc...