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.
Christian Benimana on The Next Generation Of African Architects And Designers
Christian Benimana wants to build a network of architects who can help Africa's booming cities flourish in sustainable, equitable ways -- balancing growth with values that are uniquely African. From Nigeria to Burkina Faso and beyond, he shares examples of architecture bringing communities together. A pan-African movement of architects, designers and engineers on the continent and in diaspora a...
Mass Design Group's Documentary Made In Ilima Premieres at Architecture and Design Film Festival
On Friday, November 3rd 2017 at 9:00pm, MASS premiered a new feature-length documentary film titled Made in Ilima at the Architecture and Design Film Festival (ADFF)in New York City.In the center of Equator Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Ilima community remains one of the most isolated in the world. They have coexisted with endangered wildlife in their surrounding forest ...
The Plantation: A film By Jaco Jonker For the People of the Forest
Jaco Jonker smiles when I ask him how his thesis should be read, almost as if it is an obvious allusion to further clarify that it simply evokes the element of reason, the idea that maybe you might read it wrong. And then he hands me the film, and says "This is For the People of the forest". Together with his final year thesis, there is an element of somewhat hidden conclusions, transitioning i...
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.
Oasis Kindergarten Kibera / Maisha Trust
At the heart of Kibera slums located in Nairobi Kenya sits a small beautiful, well laid out kindergarten school. Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, and one of the biggest in the world, is home to over 250,000 impecunious dwellers. The make-up of Kibera comprises some of the most modest dwelling spaces for any urban set-up, not to mention the capital city of one of the fastest growing economies...
Film: Torill Kove's 'Me and My Moulton' Has 5 Signs That Your Parents Were Architects
This short animation by Oscar®-winner Torill Kove (The Danish Poet) follows a seven-year-old girl and her sisters, who ask their parents to get them a bicycle. Our young protagonist struggles with her sense that her family is somehow unconventional, and her loving yet hopelessly out-of-touch parents prove to be a source of quiet embarrassment and anxiety. With a bright palette, this film views ...
Hassan Fathy and The Architecture for the Poor: The Controversy of Success
In this article originally published by The Cairo Observer as Hassan Fathy Architecture For The Rich, there is a critical re-look and rework of the principles and philosophies of Hassan Fathy's work in New Gourna and his deliberates vis a vis personal ideologies. The article tries to delve into the idea of why Hassan Fathy perhaps emerged as a solitary force in sustainable architecture for the ...
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...
How Alehandro Aravena Beat Them All in 2016 : The Sample Works Coverage
Alehandro Aravena is a man on a mission, one whose ecclectic ideas and immaculate sense of form, space and social engagement in his buildings and spaces has won him the 2016 Pritzker Architecture Prize. He is one of the five members of ELEMENTAL (Alejandro Aravena, Gonzalo Arteaga, Juan Cerda, Victor Oddó, Diego Torres), a Do Tank founded in 2001, focusing on projects of public interest and soc...
The Elemental Alehandro Aravena Scoops 2016 Pritzker Prize for Architecture
Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, just 48 years of age has been named as the 2016 recipient of the Pritzker, architecture's equivalent to the Nobel prize, ahead of curating this year's Venice Architecture Biennale. Alejandro Aravena is leading a new generation of architects that has a holistic understanding of the built environment and has clearly demonstrated the ability to connect social r...
St Jerome’s Children's Centre / Orkid Studio
Built with a diverse group from a small Kikuyu community in the rapidly developing agricultural outskirts of Nakuru, Kenya, we have recently completed a new home which will house local disadvantaged and abandoned children. Challenging the typology of the typical African orphanage where children sleep en mass in large dormitories, the new home limits each room to just four children providing amp...
Africa Design Center: Training New Generation of Creative Leaders
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 Center to train the next generation of human-centered designers. Watch Christian Benimana, MASS' Rwanda Programs director present his visio...
Abdel Wahed El-Wakil / The Benefits of Traditional Construction in Contemporary Architecture
One of the foremost students of Hassan Fathy, Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil is an Egyptian architect, who is the recipient of two Aga Khan Awards for Architecture as well as the prestigious 2009 Driehaus Prize. He is considered the foremost practitioner of masonry construction in Islamic architecture today. His commitment to the traditions of construction as an integral component of contemporary archite...
Film + Architecture: What it Holds for Africa
Did you notice the impossible Penrose steps in Inception? Or the Guggenheim Museum by Frank Lloyd Wright and Phaeno Science Center by Zaha Hadid in The International? Cinemas have always found a way to reward groundbreaking architectural thoughts with engrossing scenes and sometimes 3D visual immersion into new worlds. All this is possible technologically by manipulating physical spaces and rel...
Joe Osae Addo on the Connecting Tissues of Resilience
Joe Osae Addo, a societal extrovert, is a Ghanaian architect that reinterprets and engages his design senses in a pseudo modern yet traditional palette. He tries to see Africa beyond its problems and tries to look at the architecture based on African architecture that has come to be defined from great pedigree and resilience rather than the problems facing it. In this video via DITV, he speak...
Diébédo Francis Kéré: Architecture is a Wake-Up Call
"Architecture is much more than art. And it is by far more than just building buildings". Meet award-winning architect Diébédo Francis Kéré from Burkina Faso in this interview about his architectural philosophy.
Working on Water: Al Jazeera
Architect Kunle Adeyemi sets out to solve the issues of flooding and overcrowding in Nigeria's waterside slums.
H.E. Amb. Martin Kimani on Architecture in Africa
The inaugural article of archiDATUM Audio focuses on H.E. Ambassador Martin Kimani, Kenya's Permanent Representative to the United Nations where he talks about the state of architecture in Kenya and the larger African region and a retrospective look at the Western cities towards learning and adaptation of our own cities in newer fresher ways.
Diébédo Francis Kéré: How To Build With Clay... and Community
Diébédo Francis Kéré knew exactly what he wanted to do when he got his degree in architecture... He wanted to go home to Gando in Burkina Faso, to help his neighbors reap the benefit of his education. In this charming talk, Kéré shows off some of the beautiful structures he's helped to build in his small village in the years since then, including an award-winning primary school made from clay b...
Biennale Architettura 2014 - Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014
In 2014 the National Museum in Norway was in charge of curating and organizing the Nordic Pavilion at la Biennale di Venezia, in collaboration with the Museum of Finnish Architecture and the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design in Stockholm. The Nordic Pavilion at the “Biennale Architettura 2014” was co-owned by Sweden, Finland, and Norway. La Biennale di Venezia, regarded as the world’s ...
House 12 Magnolia Hills / Mehraz Ehsani
In the quiet suburbs of Kitisuru, away from the bustling streets of Nairobi, a magnificent mansion has captured the essence of contemporary modern living with picturesque views all round. Like a dream house, it is a result of genius and keen attention to detail. With playful exploration of pools, fountains and jacuzzis, light and space, green and hard landscape… the house is a breath of fresh a...
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