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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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.

Villa Opale / Driss Ketani

This house is projected on a north-south oriented plot with a sea view on the first floor at the northwest corner. The footprint of the house is generated by the need to perfectly fit with the adjoining house and by the urban regulations. The pedestrian entrance is on a private allotment street while the parking entrance is on a street on the north side of the plot. The plan is organized to hav...

Alioune Diop University Extension / IDOM

The Government of Senegal, financially assisted by the World Bank, has started an ambitious plan for the extension and improvement of several universities in the country. In the University of Alioune Diop, in Bambey, to the West of the country, 4 new buildings are planned which will house the Training and Research Unit, which in turn will include lecture rooms, a lecture hall for 500 students, ...

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...

Guelmim Airport / Group 3 Architects

The new Guelmim airport is integrated in an existing military infrastructure located 3km north of the city. The stakes of the project were simplicity, efficiency, environmental control and extensibility, which is a prerequisite for the durability of an airport. It is with this objective that the construction of the building was designed in 2 phases, resulting in a linear design parallel to the ...

L’Amandier Hotel / Nick Gowing Architects

Nick Gowing's L’Amandier Hotel emerges from the rich, red earth of the L’Amandier Plateau. So, whilst remaining true to the natural colour palette, he juxtaposed the buildings’ bold and striking geometric lines with the contours of the surrounding hills and mountains.

Wall of Knowledge / Tarik Zoubdi Architects

"Wall of knowledge" is a construction project of a middle school in the city of El Jadida (100 km south of Casablanca). The school was built for the OCP employees' children. The irregular shape of the site and its orientation to the sun suggested a spatial distribution of the project in three main areas. The central area is a building reserved for teaching. It occupies the middle of the plot. T...

Discovery Place / Boogertman and Partners

Futuristic and fluid, Discovery’s new global headquarters bring together 5000 employees who were previously housed in four separate buildings. Efficiency and future growth underpin the new workspace, which is the largest new build to date to receive a 5 Star Green Star rating by the Green Building Council South Africa. In line with Discovery’s holistic approach to health, the building was imagi...

Manuel Herz wins Tambacounda Hospital Project in Senegal

Tambacounda Hospital is the only hospital in a large region of eastern Senegal. It serves the 100,000 inhabitants of the city of Tambacounda - declared the hottest metropolis on the planet - and more than a million people from the surrounding region and Mali, whose border is about an hour and a half away.

Noomdo Orphanage / Kere Architecture

Situated in the rural countryside of the Boulkiemdé province of Burkina Faso, the Noomdo Orphanage lies approximately 2 kilometers outside of the city of Koudougou. Mimicking the nearby residential compounds, the project is layed out in a similar way to a small village clustered around a communal outdoor space. The complex consists of 5 modular courtyard buildings, a shaded open-air dining hall...

Armando Tivane 178 / Promontorio

The project is located in downtown Maputo, capital of Mozambique. Due to both economic growth and speculation in recent years, the urban pressure in the centre of the city has resulted in a series of new buildings being built in its main avenues, some even of disproportionate height.

Embassy of Switzerland in Nairobi / Roeosli Maeder Architects

The Swiss federal office for buildings and logistics recently acquired a piece of land for the construction of a new embassy in the Rosslyn green estate, a residential area just outside the centre of Nairobi

Yves Saint Laurent Museum / Studio KO

While studying the couturier’s archives, Studio KO became intrigued by the duality between curved and straight lines, and between loose and precise approaches to cutting fabric. The facade of the building appears as an intersection of cubes with a lace-like covering of bricks, creating patterns that recall the weft and warp of fabric. As with the lining of a couture jacket, the interior is radi...

Stellenbosch University Faculty of Medicine / MLB Architects

The client for this project was SU's Facilities Management,with the end user being SU’s Faculty of Medicine. The brief called for two 450 seater auditoriums, with break out areas. The budget was tight, the program fast-tracked and siting crucial.

Morvest Headquarters / Anthrop Architects

A campus to serve as the headquarters for the Morvest Business Group is situated adjacent to the Ben Schoeman highway. The client is a rapidly growing holding company requiring a flexible programme to house the various constituent companies and their associated functions. The campus comprises three buildings (two three-storey office buildings and a single-storey training and events centre) orie...

Denis Hurley Centre / Ruben Reddy Architects

Located in the vibrant city centre of Durban, South Africa, a few steps from Warwick Triangle and close to several liberation heritage sites such as the Juma Musjid (Mosque) the Denis Hurley Centre was conceived as a contemporary facility to uplift and serve the community - a welcoming refuge to all, regardless of background, faith or nationality.

Black Rhino Academy / NLE Works

The Black Rhino Academy is a proposed primary and secondary boarding school located in Karatu, Tanzania. The 7 hectare hilly site is situated just outside of the Ngorongoro Crater conservation area, surrounded by rich natural vegetation and abundant wildlife.

Rwanda Cricket Stadium / Light Earth Designs

The RCSF is not only building a future for Cricket in Rwanda, but is facilitating reconciliation, and the rebuilding of communities through the essential values of cricket. Light Earth Designs- an integrated architectural and structural consultancy specialized in sustainable technologies and communities- takes us through the design of the first dedicated international cricket ground in Rwanda. ...

La Lucia House / SAOTA

LA Lucia is a dream transformer house. The view from the street is a closed in house with a veiled approach to it that is both secretive and introverted. A certain sagacity of arrival is created by a serious entrance between two milk-wood trees; the cinematic panorama is only revealed as one enters the double-volume hallway. To highlight that moment of connection, the architects clad the ceilin...

LAP Marina Residence / 5+1AA Alfonso Femia Gianluca Peluffo + Peia Associati

The main target regarding the LAP residential complex is not only to provide a luxury compound of modern villas with all the full residential services, allowing a sophisticate and environmental way to live in the growing town in a peaceful, tranquil and familiar way. The main issue that substantially stays back the idea of this plan is the reinterpretation of the African identity, reinventing t...

House Steyn / Thomas Gouws Architects

The house is situated on a golf course in a residential estate close to Johannesburg in Gauteng, South Africa. The brief called for a contemporary minimalist house that provided security and privacy, while exploiting the golf course views. The site is exposed to extremely windy conditions year-round and protected outdoor living areas were a necessity. A priced collection of antique Cape furnitu...

I-CAT Offices and Warehouse / Earthworld Architects

The Client’s brief was to create a flagship building based on ecological sustainable principles which would showcase their philosophy toward the natural environment. Thus, the design response was a building that would be sustainable on all three levels; ecological, socially and economical. Understanding that these three pillars of sustainability influences one another, the objective was to find...

5 Kindergartens / colectivoMEL

We thought of this project watching the environment, the sun, and the marks of the rain, the wind and the children. In Guinea-Bissau our concepts are abstract. There the architecture is made up of two parts, inner space and outer space with transitional space codes.

The Ecomo Home / Pietro Russo

The ecomo home is a compact home designed for modern, simple living in collaboration with nature. The design is based on basic sustainable, green design principles. The ecomo home offers a low-maintenance, modern, well-designed green housing alternative.

House in Camps Bay / Luis Mira Architects

The house is used as a holiday home by a single person, who often invites guest to stay. It needed to be a space that could be used as a controlled studio with the feeling of being open, as well as to be able to morph into private and individual spaces when the house is full of visitors.

Old Mutual Central Campus / Perry + Anderson Architecture

This project was to create a new business school for the Old Mutual Investment Group. Careful consideration of the existing campus of buildings at the head office of Old Mutual in Cape Town saw the positioning of the new training facility in an underutilized courtyard and existing ground floor office space.

Aquiles Eco Hotel / Ramos Castellano Arquitectos

Located in the main square of a small fishermen village, Aquiles Eco Hotel aims to be integrated in the architecture and in the social structure of the surroundings. The architecture is simple, raw and flexible, and it talks with the other houses and the small buildings all around. The structure is composed by 13 wooden container sized rooms, set in a beton brut structure and painted with lime ...

House Gauché / Earthworld Architects and Interiors

The House is situated in one of Pretoria's oldest Golf Estates, which has already been extensively developed. Our client was particularly open-minded in buying one of the last open plots in the estate, an extremely rocky piece of ground not many would see opportunity in.

Nettleton 195 / SAOTA

Our client purchased the site, after we had completed an initial Design Concept for the previous property owner. Our client loved the design, and the visual direction the home was going, and accordingly shaped his brief around the design he saw.

Terra Lodge Hotel / Ramos Castellano Arquitectos

In the middle of the Atlantic ocean, in the island of Sao Vicente, in a dry windy island where only rain in August. A France trekking guide decides to build his own hotel for the incoming tourists that want to go trekking in the nearest mountain island of Santo Antao.