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.
White Cube/ OMA
Located in the heart of a plantation system, the research centre designed by Rem Koolhas led OMA in Congo aims to become a vector for a social and ecological shift. Designed by the OMA, this White Cube is a central element of the Lusanga International Research Centre for Art and Economic Inequality (LIRCAEI). Located in the heart of the plantation system and at the crossroads of global inequali...
Why Mixed-Income Communities Are Essential for the Future of African Cities
The idea of planned mixed-class neighborhoods was first proposed by Ebenezer Howard in his 1898 book, To-morrow: A peaceful Path to Real Reform, which was later revised and reprinted four years later as Garden Cities of To-morrow. In the book, Howard offered practical solutions to the overcrowding and industrial pollution of growing Victorian cities. He wanted to build new, self-sufficient, ega...
Dicky Hokie Reimagines the Kenyan Shilling With Banknote Designs
Dicky Hokie has just shared with us his interpretation for what a contemporary Kenyan Shilling would like. In a quest to re-examine the portrait less currency envisioned in the new constitution of 2010, where the currency laws prohibit the glorification of one individual. these set of bank notes design explore a highly efficient and expressive set of design that delve deep into what he consider...
Poems from Future Architects
In 2009, the Kigali Institute for Science and Technology in Kigali, Rwanda began the first architecture program in the nation's history. In 2011, as part of a theory seminar, visiting professor Yutaka Sho had students create poems and photographic studies of their country, using the George Ella Lyon poem "Where I am From" as an inspiration. In 2014, these students began to graduate and start th...
The Plantation: A Visual Diary of Charcoal, Oil, and Mixed Media in-Situ Drawings
This book is intended as a tool for the viewer/reader of this exhibition to immerse themselves visually into the more abstract realm of the Nasrec precinct of Johannesburg’s southern mining strip. It is to share, and to form the basis of a discussion between myself and you, the reader. Please take this book to your friends, family, and peers. Tell them to engage with it or throw it away. If the...
Pin Up: The Timelapse Beauty of Nairobi Through The Xi-Xo Collective
A new generation of African artists are emerging, a sort of renaissance within the continent of awareness and character, an awakening that has seen expression at various levels of art. Xixo Collective, a group of Kenyan creatives have just released a time lapse portrait of Nairobi through the magnificent collective of Sigma and Canon lenses with a mission of creating possibilities.
African Design Centre Fellowship Opens To Applications
Mass Design Group's Bauhaus of Africa recently opened its doors in Rwanda to applications. As Africa’s cities experience explosive growth, the continent will need designers to build critical infrastructure in a sustainable way. Otherwise, health and environmental crises will undermine the continent’s potential. MASS is creating the African Design Centre to train the next generation of human-cen...
Ramses Wissa Wassef Arts Centre / Ramses Wissa Wassef
Near the pyramids at Giza, the centre was founded in the early 1950s by the late architect Ramses Wissa Wassef as a weaving school. It has since evolved to comprise workshops and showrooms, a pottery and sculpture museum, houses and farm buildings, constructed entirely of mud brick. For Wissa Wassef, vaulted and domed mud brick structures represented something quintessentially Egyptian as these...
How The Queen of Curves Zaha Hadid Touched Africa
ArchiDATUM particularly focuses on Zaha Hadid’s influence on Architectural landscape in Africa. Albeit concentrated to Egypt and Morocco and all of thes projects only proposals, Zaha Hadid’s buildings perhaps show her courage and beauty under any circumstance. The Pritzker Prize-winning architect carried with her the same tenacity and magnanimous altruism in all her projects regardless of geogr...
Icons of a Modern Era: Five Premier African Artists
This week we look at the souls behind a unique kind of expression within African art, a look into the five artists within the continent whose art and inspirational works have transcended the continent and gone beyond expressionism into icons of a modern era.
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.
Soweto Theatre / Afritects
You rarely see the impact that social projects ground upon their environment until you hit the ground running. The Soweto theatre is one such project. Setting foot on it is an absolute marvel. It is an art piece in itself and a canvas for art, a duality that theatres have been known for. The theatre is the culmination of both national and global best practices in theatre design. Various local a...
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair
A reference to fifty-four countries that constitute the African continent, the title of 1:54 establishes the parameters of the fair’s ethos: as a platform that strives to represent multiplicity and showcase the diversity of contemporary African art and cultural production on an international stage.
Making Africa A Continent of Contemporary Design
From March 2015, a major exhibition by the Vitra Design Museum sheds new light on contemporary African design. Showcasing the work of over 120 artists and designers, »Making Africa – A Continent of Contemporary Design« illustrates how design accompanies and fuels economic and political changes on the continent. Africa is presented as a hub of experimentation generating new approaches and soluti...
Calabar International Conference Center/ Henning Larsen Architects
Calabar, the capital of the Cross River State situated by the scenic river delta at the outfall of the Calabar River Channel, is already hosting numerous conferences and, with the completion of the new Conference Center, the city hopes to attract even more international meetings and tourists.
Circa Gallery on Jellicoe / studioMAS
The new free standing gallery annex is a functional extension of the existing gallery, located in Rosebank. The building consists of a single flexible gallery space, storage, business lounge, offices and patio roof. It is designed to display modes of art such as video installations and large scale sculptures and can host global art auctions. In addition the building may be made available as a m...
Crafting Kenya: A Photographic Journey Of Kenya’s Crafts
Flashback to September 2014. We’re sitting at the Swahili Cultural Center in Mombasa listening to the history of the world-famous Swahili doors, told by a narrator with a characteristic Swahili lilt. We’re then treated to a practical demonstration of the geometric “Bajun” and flowery “Bengal” wooden motifs that found a home at the East African coast during the Indian Ocean trade.
Johannesburg: The City of Gold
A city of various urban dimensions and distinguished as one of the largest urban clusters in the world. Jozi is undoubtedly the economic powerhouse of Sub-Saharan Africa with its origins made on the gold deposits lying in the Witswatersrand range of hills. The provincial capital of Gauteng has had its fair share of history from dusty miners’ town to aristocrat colonial society wrangling with ap...
ArchiDATUM Dates: Joe Gitau on the Psychedelic Battle with Paint
Meet Joe Gitau Kamau, an artist and art collector who believes in art as a hobby, a business, and a community service. A man with hearty laughter and high spirits, his greatest contentment so far comes from the tremendous collection of Joe Ashley’s psychedelic paintings, 52 in total. He has collected art from other artists both from local and international artists and has sold over 112 major pa...
Archi Porn: The Soulless Playback That is Architecture Today
We are daily blitzed by pictures of beautiful manner, images from highly professional architectural photographers and 3D visual artists of designs and concepts from architects and urban designers.
Hamilton Fountain/ Judiciary Service Commission
The world over is chock-full of child study statues of various natures to commemorate various events. The naked boy is no different. It is a life-size statue of a young boy donning a wig and clutching a fish at arm to depict the face of justice as naked, blind and slippery like the fish at arm. Commissioned in the honor of lawyer Alexander George Hamilton who died in 1937, the statue is propped...
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