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architectnews · 4 years ago

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Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi

Continuing our collaboration with Dom Publishers, the editors of the Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide select architectural highlights from east Africa.

The Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide contains over 850 buildings in 49 countries in Africa. It aims to be a comprehensive guide to architecture in the African countries that lie south of the Sahara.

Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide is a seven-volume book focused on architecture in Africa

The fifth volume of the seven-volume publication is named Eastern Africa from the Great Lakes to the Indian Ocean and includes chapters on Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Comoros, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar.

"It is not only a guide book in the traditional sense but much more, featuring impressive photographs and essays on various aspects of the continent's building culture," said co-editor Philipp Meuser in an interview with Dezeen.

Read on for picks from each country in the region selected by Meuser and co-editor Adil Dalbai:

Photo by Javier Callejas

Kenya Swahili Gem Apartments, Mombasa, by Urko Sánchez Architects

Arguably one of the most iconic residential buildings in all of Africa, even if it was planned more for the upper middle class, the Swahili Gem Apartments combine features that make the most of the creekfront setting yet still ensure privacy.

The fourteen-home luxury development includes four patio houses that run down to the water and flats above them. It takes its inspiration from the rich traditions of Swahili architecture: the mashrabiyya outer skin shields occupants from view on all facades except the water-facing one.

Wooden lattices carved by local artisans add to the shade and airflow. Rainwater is collected, and water is solar-heated to save energy. In addition to white plaster finishing, the project uses a mtomo finish, a coralstone cladding technique original to Lamu that helps keep thermal capacity thanks to the porosity of the stone.

Photo by Arnold Mugasha

Uganda Baha'i House of Worship, Kampala, by Charles Mason Remey,  Cobb, Powell and Freeman

Called the Mother Temple of Africa, the structure on the outskirts of the city is one of eight Baha'i Houses of Worship in the world, and the only one in Africa.

This sacred building is enthroned on one of Kampala's hills. In the evening sun, the place looks picturesque, while the pulse of the metropolis beats in the valleys between the hills.

Charles Mason Remey initially designed the building, and the architectural firm of Cobb, Powell and Freeman, who also created the Bulange, modified the design to accommodate the existing local conditions and oversaw the construction, which began in 1958.

Measuring over 40 metres in height and with a pointed tip at the very top, the structure is roofed by a dome covered in green mosaic tiles. The dome rests on nine reinforced concrete columns which are filled in with brick walls featuring coloured glass panels. Nine windows are set into the dome and it is painted pale blue inside.

Photo by Adil Dalbai

Rwanda Genocide Memorial  Amphitheatre, Kigali, by John McAslan and Partners

Expressing the national collective memory in architecture is always a great challenge.

The fact that a Scottish architect planned Rwanda's genocide memorial as a theatre with a spectacular backdrop of the city silhouette is evidence of a new openness to the world in one of the smallest African states, which just a generation ago was a non-place with racism and civil war.

Even though it is only one of the numerous physical spaces devoted to the commemoration of those murdered in the 1994 genocide, the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Gisozi, established in 2004, is definitely the most important.

In the mass graves located in its gardens, over 250,000 bodies are buried. The Memorial also houses the Genocide Archive of Rwanda and exhibitions on the history of the Rwandan genocide.

Photo by BC Architects

Burundi Muyinga Library, Muyinga, by BC Architects

The Muyinga Library is part of a future inclusive school for deaf children. It was built in locally sourced compressed earth blocks, according to a participatory approach. The building is organised along a longitudinal covered circulation space.

The building shows that it is possible to design thoroughly modern architecture using local building methods.

It is an exemplary example of how foreign architects, in this case from the former colonial power Belgium, have found an adapted design. However, the typology of the library still remains somewhat alien.

Photo by Vitaly Pozdeyev

Tanzania Michenzani flats, Zanzibar Stone Town, by Hubert Scholz

The rows of houses, more than a kilometre long, lie like a scar in the middle of the huts.

Yet the socialist series buildings were the first to be erected on the newly won land. In the 1970s, the GDR donated architectural know-how along with the complete supply of materials.

The fact that East German housing construction was successful in Africa has unfortunately been forgotten in Germany.

Photo by Nadia Moussa

Comoros Mitsamiouli Stele, Grande Comore Island, by Mahmoud Keldi, Nadia Moussa

Only a few remarkable examples of the architecture of the poor island state in the Indian Ocean have been documented. One of them is this monument in honour of the victims of the Yemenia Airways crash, which was inaugurated on 30 June 2011 in Mitsamiouli, northern Grande Comore.

This monument, a collaboration between local architect Nadia Moussa and Mahmoud Keldi, a Paris-based French-Comoran architect, aims to commemorate the crash's French-Comoran victims.

The memorial is a tall, thin slab of reinforced concrete, shaped like an abstract sail and coated with cut volcanic stone and sheets of stainless steel, on which the names of the 153 victims were to be engraved.

One would like to see more monuments in Africa that have such a high level of abstraction.

Photo by DHK Architects

Seychelles Kempinski Seychelles Resort, Mahé Island, by DHK Architects

This project shows one of the places of longing that one would like to visit once in a lifetime. As long as you remain aware that not all places in Africa radiate this peace, and that even in the Seychelles more than 80 per cent of the population live in poverty, you can enjoy this foreign world.

Designed by the South African office, DHK Architects, the Kempinski Seychelles Resort project required that the former Plantation Club Resort and Casino on the island of Mahé be redeveloped.

Photo by Ulandi van Dyk

Mauritius Mauritius Commercial Bank, Quatre Bornes, by Jean Francois Koenig

The Mauritius Commercial Bank Building, an unusual edifice with a large water basin at its foot, is located in Quatre Bornes. Constructed in 2010, the structure was designed by Jean Francois Koenig Architects as an elliptical shape that rests on four travertine-clad pillars.

The building has open office floor plates that are naturally lit by glass from floor to floor, providing visual connections between levels and facilitating communication. It also features two auditoriums, training facilities, a modern kitchen and canteen, and plantrooms.

It was the first project in the southern hemisphere to obtain a BREEAM good environmental certificate and has become an iconic structure in Mauritius.

Why does the national bank of a tax haven build such a conspicuous building in the countryside? And this, shortly after the global financial crisis of 2008/2009? Some architectural thoughts remain a mystery. For a bank anyway.

Photo by Stefano Carera

Madagascar Under the Sails Residence, Nosy Be Island, by Stefano Carera, Eirini Giannakopoulou

Four simple volumes united under one roof make up this two-storey private residence by the sea. The quartet of separate volumes are linked by wooden decking and a central patio. This central patio, a living space that mediates between inside and out, connects the front of the house to the back, and therefore the sea to the forest.

The choice of local materials and traditional construction techniques embrace the landscape of Nosy Be, an island about eight kilometres off the northwestern coast of Madagascar which is a popular tourist destination.

The thatching, a material often used for roofs on the island, becomes a natural carpet that, with its form and scale, covers the whole house. Viewed from the beach, the roof conceals the concrete columns of the house.

The architectural style may be irritating for Africa. But Madagascar has part of its cultural roots in Southeast Asia. In the local architecture, the similarities to buildings in Indonesia are not accidental but deliberate.

The post Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi appeared first on Dezeen.

#Architecture – Dezeen

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aspiratinganxiety · 6 years ago

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damian for 21? aka the keepsakes one

I am so grateful for the opportunity to fill a request for you! Thank you so much @jayybirds. I hope I don’t let you down.

Surprisingly, Damian is the absolute worst about souvenirs and keepsakes. That’s not to say he’s bad at selecting them or holding onto them. In fact, it’s just the opposite!

During his early life in the League, it was made clear that one was meant to take pride in their belongings and appearance in the same way that one is proud of their skill sets and intelligence. However, emotional connection to items beyond the shallow satisfaction of ownership or proficiency was frowned upon as materialistic and superfluous.

Even still, in the dim memories he possesses of his infancy spent in the plush, vibrant halls of his mother’s quarters in the desert stronghold, he remembers the few items that she cherished above all others: the courting gifts from his father.

An antique book, bound in green leather and embossed with gold work. A copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A joke between them. She’d teased his father about his reluctance to pursue her physically, and prodded the issue by dubbing him the knight of purity from Arthur’s round table. Throughout the story, Sir Gawain steadfastly attempts to deny a fae lady’s bold seductions. She read the tale aloud to Damian in the traditional old English penned with heavy, ink embellishments throughout the tome. He can still remember the dusty, mineral smell of the pages and the warmth of Talia’s lap.

The next was a necklace, less stately than the majority of the jewelry that his mother preferred to wear. A delicate lattice of thin gold-work, woven to embrace the base of a woman’s neck and spill whimsically down over her clavicle in a tapered bib of twinkling filigree. She did not wear this necklace out of her chambers. It was paired with her night clothing and casual garb. Damian’s remembrance of this piece is not as distinct as his notions of the book. He did not see it again after being removed from the nursing wing and placed in his own quarters.

The final item that Talia cherished was a nameless bottle of perfume. It was custom, she explained once, wistful and in only the company of her toddler. Exotic flowers, musk, clean high notes of pine and something sharp and spicy. The smell was very distinct, though Damian’s introduction to it had been but brief and far back in his development. He could not recall the shape or color of the bottle, but he knew the smell thoroughly. Talia wore it only when there was a chance that she would be in the company of his father. Back when Damian only knew Bruce through photos and stories, the smell of that perfume angered and frightened him.

Even in the days before he understood the moral quandary that had alienated his parents or the tint of semi-delusional falsehood that Talia used to glorify what precious little remained of a relationship that had died years before his conception, the fact that he was kept secret from his father had communicated these hard truths to his young, perceptive mind. The scent so cherished by his mother began to announce, not only that she was going to see his father, but that she was being somehow deceitful about him. This negative feedback response grew in Damian quickly, and the smell became a stink that exploited the weakness of his insecurities and fear of inferiority where Bruce was concerned.

Damian learned his keepsakes behavior from Talia more than anyone else, and each thing he deems worthy of his maintenance is treated with the same sacred reverence as Talia extended to the items that served as the paltry links she possessed to her beloved.

Unlike Talia, however, Damian reveres so much more in his life now that it is lived in the open with his father, brothers, and friends. He hordes possessions. Not messily or with absolute abandon, he has a strict standard of orderliness, after all.

Every collar ever worn by Titus as he transitioned through puppyhood.

The ticket stubs from the first state fair that Dick had forced him to attend, and all of the subsequent tickets since.

The batarang he pinched off of his father’s belt during their first meeting.

The tie of his first school uniform.

A gold tooth he knocked out of a drug dealer’s mouth his first solo patrol as Robin.

The awkward, but appreciated birthday gift that Tim bought for him the year he turned 10 in spite of multiple attempts to take Tim’s life in the months proceeding the gift.

A mangled mouse corpse suspended in formaldehyde, preserved by his own hand after Pennyworth the Cat dropped it on his shoe and stared up at him with pride.

A bobby-pin Stephanie used to pick his desk drawer to demonstrate his lack of in-bedroom security.

A 7 month old gumball that Jon cranked out of a vending machine and offered to him. He took it, in spite of internally refusing to put the neon sucrose concoction anywhere near his mouth. It looks exactly as it did the day it came to be in his possession even having been in a fire, subsequently doused by water, and licked a few times by Pennyworth the Cat. As far as Damian is concerned, these facts support his decision not to ingest the confection.

So many things, so many inconsequential bits and pieces tucked into designated spaces within his bedroom. Each maintained with the care and consideration Damian struggles to communicate to the people he esteems in his life.

Damian Wayne is, by far, the worst Wayne kid when it comes to collecting keepsakes. You’d never guess it by the tidy surfaces in his room, but several shelves in his closet and all of his available private drawer spaces are filled with souvenirs.

#damian wayne #damian wayne headcanon #talia al ghul #request #prompt #fandom prompt #batfam headcanons #batfam #keepsakes #jayybirds #jeez #this one went long #i am defs out of practice #let me know what you think!

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lisarichardsonbylines · 4 years ago

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Closing the Gap

THE PROBLEM SOLVERS

» UNICEF: CLOSING THE GAP

UNICEFCLOSING THE GAP

Arc'teryx lends their understanding of insulation and extreme conditions to a global collaborative effort in Mongolia.

Words By: Lisa Richardson

Closing the Gap

Inspired by problem-solvers in our midst and beyond, Arc’teryx designers accept an invitation from UNICEF’s Office of Innovation to head to Mongolia, to the coldest capital city in the world, to lend their understanding of insulation and extreme conditions to a global collaborative effort to make the ger, a type of shelter utilized by half a million urban residents, more thermally efficient. The problem: tackling the child health crisis caused by coal-fired air pollution from a terrific number of heat-leaking gers. The solution? Close the gaps that let good ideas fall by the wayside and let the cold air in.

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the coldest capital city in the world is powered entirely by coal, which means it is now, despite only having a population of 1.5 million people, also the most polluted capital city in the world.

It was just an email, like any other email that comes into the machine shop at Arc’teryx where the tinkering team of Pat, Bill and Chris wizard up solutions, customize tools and make whatever needs to be made for Arc’teryx designers to do their work. Pat Fitzsimmons happened to be sitting in the “Open Emails” chair that day when he fielded a request from senior design developer Nathalie Marchand to help make a door.

The Land of the Blue Sky shifts to charcoal grey at the onset of winter when coal-fired stoves begin to churn out fine particulate matter in toxic quantities.

Fitzsimmons is a hands-on problem-solver. You need a door? He’ll run down to RONA, pick up a door, cut it in half, MacGyver it to the specs you need. And that’s what he thought he was saying yes to when he added “door for Nathalie” to his action list that day. He had no idea he was about to step onto a global team tackling child health 8,186 km away in the most polluted capital city in the world.

Mid-winter in Ulaanbaatar, temperatures plunge to -40°C, and in response, the 1.5 million residents burn coal by the ton to keep warm.

The air in Ulaanbaatar was not always like this. But when Mongolia transitioned from Soviet control to a free market democracy in 1990, massive waves of urban migration began, tripling the size of the city; 8,000 new households are still arriving each year. As the new population pitch their yurts, the traditional round felt tent dwelling the Mongolians call ger, haphazardly up and down the hillsides of the city’s outskirts, their collective cooking and heating with unrefined coal stoves ramps up the city’s air pollution to shocking levels.

Click and hold52% of the pollution in Ulaanbaatar is attributable to coal burning in the ger district.

The amount of carcinogenic fine particulate matter (PM2.5, meaning particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less) has gone off-the-charts, and with it, acute respiratory infections (bronchitis, asthma, and pneumonia), preterm births, and spontaneous abortions. This 2.5 particulate matter in the air is small enough not only to enter the bloodstream but also cross the blood-brain barrier, and has reached concentration levels (millionths of a gram per cubic metre) more than 12 times higher than World Health Organization (WHO) standards.

In short: Breathing toxic air is damaging brain tissue and impairing cognitive development in babies and children. When it’s not killing them.

IN 2015, 435 CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF FIVE IN ULAANBAATAR DIED FROM PNEUMONIA.The mountains surrounding Ulaanbaatar's river valley trap smog like soup in a pan. By January, even the stars disappear.

In February 2018, UNICEF and the National Centre for Public Health sounded the alarm with a report, Mongolia’s Air Pollution Crisis: A Call to Action to Protect Children’s Health. Because, while everyone knew about the pollution, no one had connected the dots to child and maternal health. The issue of the day was suddenly a sleeping time-bomb – the hidden financial costs and lasting health and neurological impacts on children was going to cost Mongolia its future.

A morning prayer offered to the sky, across the sacred Tuul river from the city's power plants.

It’s a massive problem with no easy solution, and that’s just the kind of challenge that Tanya Accone rolls up her sleeves for.

“I’m an almost irrational optimist,” says Tanya Accone, Senior Advisor on Innovation for UNICEF’s Office of Innovation.

She has to be. Her role means confronting, daily, in detail, the world’s most intractable problems.

Trucks and vendors hawk coal from the four-lane main street to families in the ger district. Coal is available by the dump load or by the bag. No other source of heat is available.

The Office of Innovation is a recent branch of the 70 year United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) – an agile collaboration that applies start-up thinking and technology and leverages UNICEF’s deep web of connections and relationships on the ground in 243 countries to generate innovative and scalable solutions for children.

“We need to become disruptive and try things that are radically different,” says Accone, and in Mongolia, that meant trying to literally change the atmosphere.

While Ulaanbattar’s pollution has been attributed to the city’s 4 coal power plants, 3200 low pressure steam boilers, and 505,000 cars and buses, at least half is caused by the inefficient attempts of the continually growing number of households in the ger district to stay warm through the winter.

UNICEF’s plan was to task a global team of experts to “redesign” the ger to make it more thermally efficient – something they could roll out, not just in Ulaanbaatar, but across Mongolia and beyond, to Kazahkstan and Tajikistan - other places where urbanization and air pollution were spreading.

But first, Accone had to pull together a team of problem-solvers.

And that’s how Arc’teryx got a call from UNICEF Canada. “We are beginning a design project involving insulation in a hostile environment. We’re hoping you can help.”

Walls of lattice and felt echo a three thousand year old tradition of self-sufficiency and attunement with the land. How could the design be adapted for 21st century realities?

When Senior Design Developer Nathalie Marchand sat down in the room in Ulaanbaatar in March 2018, alongside colleague Romy Paterson, Material Developer, as the Arc’teryx dream team on the “21stCentury Ger” project, she was so intimidated she could hardly speak.

The global think-tank that the Office of Innovation had pulled together included genius-types from Stanford University, the architecture firm Kieran Timberlake, the Center for Environmental Building and Design at the University of Pennsylvania, GerHub and a host of UNICEF representatives.

Marchand went to fashion design school, before joining the circus at 21, where she worked for ten years as head of wardrobe for Canada’s legendary Cirque de Soleil. At Arc’teryx, she’s a guru. But when she walked into that gathering, she was a long way out of her comfort zone and completely without armour – no sewing machine, no track record, no PhD. “I felt extremely dumb,” says the tri-lingual Marchand. “They were all academics. I was super intimidated.”

She’d had three weeks to do the most basic youtube research before landing in Ulaanbaatar. “I have been camping in a tent before. That’s about as much as I knew about the ger.”

While tiny homes take North America by storm, Mongolians looking to get a toehold in an exploding city real estate market turn to dwelling of their nomadic ancestors, the light-weight and affordable ger.

Marchand’s don’t-know mind is her superpower, though. “My main strength in my job is just to ask the questions: what do you need, what you do want, what’s working, what’s not working. There were a lot of PhDs in that room who knew quite a bit. But what we thought we knew about Mongolia, and the real Mongolia, are quite different. We were sitting in a meeting talking about what is comfortable and suddenly we realized we have no idea what is comfortable in a ger. We think 20 degrees is a comfortable temperature inside in the winter. When I actually visited a ger, I could have been sitting in my bathing suit. It was so hot.”

As she asked questions, it became apparent that her and Paterson’s fabric knowledge wasn’t going to help. Gore-tex is not available or affordable to Mongolians. Felt is. It’s a perfectly adapted insulation for the conditions. As the think-tank members divided up the different aspects of the ger that might be re-engineered according to their expertise, the door remained.

“I went there knowing nothing and I left knowing only that I wanted to work on the project. I wanted to help people who might not have the resources we do. I had the chance to use my knowledge to change someone’s life.”

MARCHAND PUT HER HAND UP TO TAKE HOME THE DOOR.The data bank. Six test gers measure the effectiveness of a host of measures designed to retain heat.

There was no chance Canada Customs was going to let her ship a wood door home. So Marchand spent an extra week in Mongolia, using personal vacation time to journey out onto the steppe with a local guide, staying with families in their gers, playing cards, drinking vodka, and eating more dumplings than she hopes to ever again. She took dozens of photos of the gaps that formed between the doors and the sill plates, the gaps around the edges of the felt tent - all the leaky openings that formed with daily wear and tear that allow the bitterness of winter to finger its way in.

She needed to conceive a way to close the air gap. With the average salary in Mongolia at 966,000 tugruk, roughly $CAD520, it had to be cheap, easy to install, and easy to make.

Humility meets collaboration. Nathalie Marchand and Patrick Fitzsimmons prove the power of approaching a problem with a don't-know-mind and a great partner-in-crime.

Marchand had a flash of insight, remembering her five-year-old self visiting her grandmother in Quebec, where the winter temperatures hover around -20°C. She remembered the “snake” that her grandmother would kick along the door jamb, a long fabric tube filled with sand to block the draft.

After she returned to the Arc’teryx North Vancouver design headquarters, Pat Fitzsimmons answered her call for help, injecting something else to the project, something she hadn’t realized she needed: enthusiasm, a voice to counter the one in her head that said this solution is too simple; this problem is too big; this process is too unwieldy; how can you be sure that the Mongolians will accept this; who do you think you are?

To help, Nathalie Marchand had to first battle her own inner critic: who am I to offer help to Mongolia?

“When you work alone on a project and only have yourself to talk to, you get to a point where you feel like you’ve gone around so many times. When Pat came along, he went from 0 to 100 in a minute, he was so excited. It was amazing.”

Fitzsimmons reassured her that the simplicity of the snake was just right. Then he built her a door that she set between her cutting table and her sewing machine. Fitzsimmons didn’t think of it as a door. “It was a portal. You walk from 2019 into three thousand years ago, into this tiny enclave of beliefs, this building that reflects spiritually who the Mongolians are, as a people and as a nation.”

Marchand then also designed an insulated curtain, made from accordioned cardboard and covered with reflective fabric, that could be pulled across the door at night like a shower curtain, to add an extra layer of insulation.

“It had to be quiet, because everyone sleeps in the same room so if you wake up in middle of the night and have to go outside, you want it to be silent. You want to be able to use it with only one hand.” Every time she moved from her table to her sewing machine, she had to open the door and slide wide the curtain - testing the friction of operating it fifty times a day.

The refined specs of her door insulation package were emailed to UNICEF’s Mongolian office to be reproduced by a team from local materials. Eleven gers were going to be tested through the winter of 2018-19 – six uninhabited gers at a test site out of the city would be outfitted with all the different interventions, so each variable could be measured and monitored. Five family gers in the ger district would also be part of the testing.

On paper, it looked as if Marchand had solved the door insulation gap. Now someone just had to translate it into real life.

8,186 KILOMETRES AWAY IN ULAANBAATAR, IN OCTOBER, MUNKH-ORGIL (“MO”) LKHAGVA WENT LOOKING FOR A SEAMSTRESS.Arc'teryx could generate design solutions, but they had to translate on the ground.

An adaptable and personable 38 year old, Lkhagva had taught himself English from a good dictionary and had been hired by UNICEF’s local partner, Gerhub, to turn piles of drawings into the six test gers, ready for data-collecting to start in November.

It was an ambitious timeline, that didn’t exactly accommodate the realities of life - or the heinous traffic - in Mongolia. “I’ve never sewn anything in my life,” said Lkhagva. “I’m just able to understand English.” He posted ads on the Mongolian equivalent of craigslist, and visited a local sewing school, before the professor, a tiny fierce woman told him pointedly that none of her students would have the skills to do what he needed, but that she could probably help. He visited her tiny studio, a poorly ventilated room with peeling linoleum, bedecked with old fashion magazine cut-outs showcasing Soviet flair, an ancient sewing machine as the centrepiece. He showed her the drawings. She seemed to understand.

Naran Tuul, the Black Market in Ulaanbaatar, provides everything you need to build a ger.Testing the first prototype on the ground, only to discover that some things got lost in translation.

As far as Marchand could tell, it was working. “Mo was fantastic. He took pictures of everything that was available. If we said we needed a hook, next day he would go to their equivalent of Home Depot and take pictures of all the available hooks and say this is what’s out there.”

No one could know that the seamstress had got it wrong, until Marchand and Fitzsimmons arrived back in Ulaanbaatar in January for the second think-tank gathering and to check on the installation of their door insulation package. It seemed less an issue of the designs not having made sense to her, as that there was a Canadian at the other end of it. What could a Canadian possibly know about a Mongolian institution?

They gathered up the useless pieces and went looking for another sewing machine.

The air quality index read 963 parts per million (ppm) in January 2019. It had been 15 ppm in North Vancouver when Fitzsimmons left home. (Anything above 100 ppm is considered dangerous.) “Until you're standing in the middle of it,” Fitzsimmons said of the problem he’d just spent six months obsessing about, “you can’t understand how atrocious it is.”

He wanted to hate it. “Everywhere you go, it smells like burnt stuff. The smoke is terrible. There are so many problems. I wanted to be full of darkness towards the whole pollution thing -- you have to be angry to fix something. But my God! The country! The people! The beautiful sky!” He fell in rhapsodic love.

They’d come up with the best start they could conceive. All they needed now was a workshop to actually build their snakes and curtains. Happily, one of the think-tank invitees, an inventor, yurt-builder and Dutch emigrant, Froit Vanderharst took them under his wing. They ducked out of the formal sessions and raced to the open air market in Ulaanbaatar for supplies, time slipping away.

Sweating and exhilarated at having found such a like-minded fellow problem-solver. Stripped down to shirt sleeves despite sub-zero temperatures, they banged out prototypes, Marchand labouring over the sewing machine. They couldn’t wait for the prototypes to be installed, to show them to locals, hear what people thought.

"Everywhere you go, it smells like burnt stuff. I wanted to be full of darkness towards the pollution, but my God! The people!" Pat Fitzsimmons trades anger for love as his motivating force.

By early June 2019, the University of Pennsylvania had made headway with the thousands of data points they’d collected over the winter.

The comprehensive package of better insulation, including the door’s curtain and snake, resulted in a 55% reduction in energy consumption.

Tanya Accone, UNICEF Mongolia Deputy Representative Speciose Hakizimana and their team, were unequivocal about the results: “That is a game-changer.”

SUDDENLY, CLEAN AIR IS WITHIN GRASP.An air of optimism landed when the project team read the results. Clean air is within grasp.Adapting to massive issues requires a combination of technology, collaboration and respect for traditional ways.

“The magnitude of the problem and its impact on children and pregnant women is huge. But in combination with electric heating and cooking, the data suggests it should be possible to completely phase out the use of coal heating gers,” wrote Hakizimana on behalf of the UNICEF Mongolia team in late June, 2019. Expectations are as high as the stakes, and with more partners coming on board, including the Swiss government, the Dutch government, the Manitoba Council for International Cooperation, and the Mongolian University of Science and Technology, the pressure on everyone involved is immense. But there’s an air of optimism around the expanding office.

"A problem is only a problem if you see it as that. It could be a different pathway, a different route, an opportunity. It's only a problem if you let it be."

This winter, the project relocates to the second-most polluted city in Mongolia, Bayankhongor, 640km east of Ulaanbaatar, where the governor is extremely motivated to make a dent on air pollution in his urbanizing city, and is collaborating with UNICEF to meet a target of clean air by 2022. By rolling out energy-saving prototypes in many of the 7000 ger and brick houses (baishin) of this smaller city of just 9600 households, the team will be able to really prove their case of what works and what doesn’t.

Open the door to possibility. On the other side: history. And hope.

“We brought together industry experts in design, technology, outdoor, architecture, and academics,” reflected Hakizamana. “All the partners contributed immensely in building prototypes, data monitoring, and creating energy and structure solutions. We’re seeing the benefits of this great collaboration already. Now we will combine these with local knowledge and solutions, and help move households from coal to clean energy solutions.”

“Everywhere I look, here at Arc’teryx, I’m building on other people’s work,” mused Fitzsimmons. “We’ve had some incredible people through here that have done amazing things and I get to work with the results of their work, but I don’t know their names. Imagine if the legacy of this project is a population of people who are healthier, free of this thing they’re struggling with, with a real good shot at a fine future, and that comes about through something that my friend Nathalie and I had a part in creating? A chance to make a difference in history for all those people? Holy crap. It just doesn’t get better than that.”

https://arcteryx.com/us/en/explore/problem-solvers/unicef/

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micaramel · 4 years ago

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Artists: Maria Bartuszová, Elaine Cameron-Weir, Lin May Saeed, Trevor Shimizu, Erika Verzutti

Venue: VIN VIN, Vienna as part of curated by, Vienna

Exhibition Title: Crumple

Date: September 8 – 26, 2020

Curated By: Emily Watlington

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of the artists; VIN VIN, Vienna; Alison Jacques, London; Jacky Strenz, Frankfurt, Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles. Photos by Flavio Palasciano.

Press Release:

Crumple brings together art objects concerned with the hybrid space between fragility and permanence. The works mine humble materials, be they fragile, quotidian, or provisional. All exude a certain vulnerability, and even humility, yet nonetheless, all are material objects.

Likening the humbleness of their materials to that of their message, the works make principled points without preaching, or avoid grand statements altogether. Some of the artists—such as Elaine Cameron-Weir (b. 1985, Canadian) and Maria Bartuszová (1936–1996, Slovak)— emphasize their work’s materiality, without endeavoring to transcend it. In her 2019 wall piece, as elsewhere in her work, Cameron-Weir emphasizes the hybrid delicacy and durability of industrial and functional objects: in this case, laboratory lattices and parachute harnesses. Bartuszová sculpts using plaster: she favored the material’s provisional connotations. The stacked sections comprising Untitled (1968–9) exude simultaneous precarity and sturdiness.

On the other end of the spectrum, Lin May Saeed’s (b. 1973, Iraqi-German) sculpture and relief comment on human-animal relations. Bilal (Pyramid) (2014) is based on a visit to Egypt, where the artist saw many stray dogs. Saeed’s chosen material—styrofoam—is prone to crumbling, yet also rather permanent: it does not biodegrade. The twinned pitiful and attractive qualities of Saeed’s styrofoam mimic the way one often perceives stray dogs, for whom the artist seeks to evoke empathy. Her strategy differs starkly from that of wagging fingers at human perpetrators, yet the live plants placed atop the structure gently remind us that all species are part of one ecosystem and are interdependent. Similarly, her styrofoam relief Hammar Marshes (2015) reflects on the dehydration of Iraqi marshlands—likely the site of the Garden of Eden—due to climate change. Even this sacred site is vulnerable. Nature is also found in Erika Verzutti’s (b. 1971, Brazillian) wall relief and Trevor Shimizu’s (b. 1978, American) two paintings. Verzutti deeply reveres natural beauty, and her practice is driven by the question: why does nature make certain things beautiful, even when it serves no obvious evolutionary function? For Dieta (2018), she cast bananas—which are abundant in her native Brazil—using papier-mâché, creating one-to-one copies of nature rather than endeavoring to subsume or outdo it. Similarly, Shimizu paints animals and mushrooms, but eschews the trope of sublime beauty common to landscape painting. He also does not attempt to “master” his medium. In Pigs, Horses, Birds (2016), he leaves the canvas unstretched, while the canvas for Shrooms 1 (2017) is small and most of its surface unpainted.

It is a pleasant coincidence that crumple and humble rhyme imperfectly.

Mária Bartuszová (b. 1936 in Prague, Czechoslovakia – d. 1996 in Košice, Slovakia)

Upcoming solo exhibitions: Tate Modern, London, November 2020. Solo exhibitions include: Alison Jacques Gallery, London, UK, 2016; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, 2014; Slovak National Gallery Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2005; Group exhibitions include, among others: Pinault Collection, Punta della Dogana, Palazzo Grassi, 2020; Museum Susch, Switzerland, 2018; Lévy Gorvy, New York, USA, 2018; Tate St Ives, UK; travelled to Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK, 2018; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK, 2018; Hepworth Wakefield Gallery, West Yorkshire, UK, 2017; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany, 2014; The Goetz Collection, Munich, Germany, 2013; Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy, 2013.

Trevor Shimizu (b. 1978 in Santa Rosa, California, USA)

Trevor Shimizu had solo and two person exhibition at, among others: 47 Canal, New York, 2020; ICA Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2020; Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brazil, 2018; Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich, Germany, 2017; Magenta Plains, New York, NY, 2016; Misako & Rosen, Tokyo, Japan, 2015.

Lin May Saeed (b. 1973 in Würzburg, Germany)

Lin May Saeed had solo exhibitions among others, at: The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, USA (June – October 2020); What Pipeline, Detroit, USA (September 2019); Jacky Strenz Galerie, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (May 2019); Studio Voltaire, London, UK, (June – August 2018). Group exhibitions include, among others: Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art Warsaw, PL (June – October 2020); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR (June – September 2019); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main, DE (November 2018 / February 2019); MUMOK, museum moderner kunst stiftung ludwig, Vienna (June – November 2018); Museo Castello di Rivoli, Turin, IT (March – September 2018). Upcoming: Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, RivoliTorino, IT (October 2021 – February 2022).

Erika Verzutti (b. 1971 in São Paulo, Brazil)

Erika Verzutti had solo exhibitions, among others, at: Aspen Art Museum, 2019; Centre Pompidou, 2019; Misako & Rosen, 2018; Andrew Kreps Gallery, 2018; Sculpture Center, New York, 2015; Alison Jacques Gallery, 2015. Group exhibitions include, among others: Pio Pico, Los Angeles, 2020; Peter Freeman Inc., New York, 2019; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London, 2019. Group exhibitions include, among others: Mendes Wood, 2018; 57th La Biennale di Venezia, 2017; Galerie Neu, 2016; Guggenheim, New York (2014).

Elaine Cameron-Weir (b. in 1985 in Alberta, Canada)

Elaine Cameron-Weir had solo exhibitions among others, at: JTT, New York, 2019; Sadie Coles, London, 2019; Storm King Art Center, New York, NY USA, 2018; Dortmund Kunstverein, Dortmund, Germany, 2018; New Museum, New York, NY USA, 2017; Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles, CA USA, 2017. Group exhibitions include, among others: Gió Marconi, Milan, Italy, 2019; Magenta Plains, New York, NY USA, 2019; Ramiken Crucible, New York, NY, USA, 2018; Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong, China, 2017; Luxembourg & Dayan, New York, USA, 2017; La Biennal de Montreal, Montreal, Canada, 2016.

Emily Watlington is a critic and curator of contemporary art. She is assistant editor at Art in America, and was previously the curatorial research assistant at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. She is a Fulbright Scholar and has taught in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Her work often focuses on video art through the lenses of feminism and disability studies. She holds a SMArchS in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art from MIT, and has given talks at numerous institutions including the University of California, Berkeley; Rhode Island School of Design; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including: Artforum, Mousse, Frieze, Another Gaze, Spike, and Art Review, and has been translated into German, French, and Croatian. Recently, she contributed to the exhibition catalogues Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995, Sheida Soleimani: Medium of Exchange, and An Inventory of Shimmers: Objects of Intimacy in Contemporary Art. She received the Vera List Writing Prize in the Visual Arts (2018) and the Theorist Award from C/O Berlin (2020).

Link: “Crumple” at VIN VIN

The post "Crumple" at VIN VIN first appeared on Contemporary Art Daily.

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/2ZTzJcp

#micaramel

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lesmotsnomades · 7 years ago

Link

The Telegraph: The Louvre Abu Dhabi is a dazzling building – but its approach to art feels shallow

Crowds outside the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the new United Arab Emirates museum which launches its first exhibition today CREDIT: VARTAN KELECHIAN

Alastair Sooke, art critic

21 DECEMBER 2017 • 7:00AM

See humanity in a new light.” This is the marketing mantra of Louvre Abu Dhabi, a spectacular new museum that seems to float upon the Persian Gulf, and which opened in the capital of the United Arab Emirates last month.

As slogans go, it’s ambitious to the point of hubris. A recalibration of our understanding of mankind? That’s some promise.

But bold, blithe self-confidence is in this institution’s DNA. It needs to be, because, since 2007, when the agreement, reportedly worth more than £663 million, was signed between the governments of the UAE and France, Louvre Abu Dhabi has been beset by critics.

At first, there was snobbish dismay that an institution as venerable as the Musée du Louvre had agreed to something so vulgar as leasing out its name, for 30 years. Then, there was outrage about the appalling conditions endured by the South Asian workers employed to construct it.

For now, though, let’s put this controversial history to one side, and salute a newborn museum, revelling in its shiny infancy. Because, above all, there is one reason to visit Louvre Abu Dhabi – and that is the building itself, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel.

From afar, it doesn’t look like much: a low, grey smudge at the western end of Saadiyat Island, or “Island of Happiness”, which is being developed as a “cultural district” by the Emirate’s authorities. Up close, though, Nouvel’s structure is magnificent, a quietly opulent marvel that is the antithesis of bling. As you stand within the embrace of its sensational dome, constructed from a complex lattice of 7,850 steel stars, all is stillness and serenity. Sunlight twinkles through the parasol-like structure. Birdsong provides a pleasant soundtrack. Tranquil pools lead the eye to the turquoise sea beyond.

A striking dome hovers over the whitewashed exterior of the museum CREDIT: ROLAND HALBE

Already, it is conventional to compare this apparently weightless carapace to a flying saucer, because it seems to hover above the museum. This image, though, is misleading, since the architecture is less sci-fi, more old-world.

Palm-tree leaves provided Nouvel with inspiration, and his dome has the thick, interwoven quality of a thatched roof. Beneath it, 55 blocky, whitewashed buildings and pavilions cluster together, higgledy-piggledy, in an artful muddle, like a medina. The whole low-slung ensemble offers a welcome foil to the green-windowed postmodern high-rises that otherwise dominate the city’s skyline. Inside, a meandering suite of galleries host the permanent collection.

Already, this consists of more than 620 objects – a jaw-dropping haul, given that the first piece, an abstract painting by Mondrian once owned by Yves Saint Laurent, was acquired as recently as 2009. Moreover, the collection is still rapidly expanding, and at great expense: last month, the Emirate’s department of culture and tourism spent a record-breaking $450 million (£342 million) to secure Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which will go on display next year. Until then, visitors must “make do” with Leonardo’s Belle Ferronnière, one of hundreds of loans from 13 French partner museums (including the Louvre) which, in accordance with the 2007 deal, will travel to Abu Dhabi over the next decade.

The Diana of Versailles on display at the Louvre Abu Dhabi CREDIT: ANADOLU/GETTY

Both the permanent displays and the inaugural temporary exhibition, From One Louvre to Another – which opens today and which outlines the history of the Paris Louvre’s formation in around 140 artworks, many of which I doubt will set pulses racing – are unerringly on-message.

Repeatedly, we are told that Louvre Abu Dhabi is a “universal museum” for the 21st century – just as its progenitor in Paris, which was inaugurated in 1793 (almost 180 years before the founding of the UAE’s federal monarchy), enshrined Enlightenment values by making great art accessible to all. What this means in practice is that the permanent exhibitions have been organised into 12 “chapters” with titles such as “Civilisations and Empires” and “Universal Religions”. Sundry artefacts from every corner of the world are shown side by side to illustrate common values and ideas that supposedly transcend barriers of nationality and faith.

At first, this ironclad curatorial conceit is innovative and winning. The introductory “vestibule” is a coup, with fancy bronze-framed cases displaying triads of eye-catching objects that differ wildly but nevertheless enjoy thematic and formal correspondences. The first vitrine, devoted to motherhood, displays a 14th-century ivory statuette of the Virgin and Child alongside an ancient Egyptian bronze of the goddess Isis nursing her son Horus and a 19th-century wooden “phemba” maternity figure by a Yombe artist.

The exhibitions brings together triads of artworks from different cultures CREDIT: MARC DOMAGE

Yet this sunny, idealistic approach – “Look! We, humanity, are one big happy family, bound together by the same desires and concerns!” – does not let up. Gradually it dawns that the overarching idea is a sort of twofold geopolitical mission: ostensibly to trumpet globalisation and feelings of fraternity with our fellow man, and, semi-covertly, to provide a soft-power demonstration of Abu Dhabi’s presence on the international stage.

Evidence of the latter is provided by one of the highlights of the new temporary exhibition: an elaborate 18th-century timepiece, known as the Creation of the World clock, on loan from France. Before it travelled to the Arabian Peninsula, restorers swivelled its silver-plated bronze globe so that the gilt-bronze rays of the clock’s prominent sun would strike Abu Dhabi. Money can buy a lot – even a spin of the Earth’s axis.

Of course, it can be instructive to compare works from distant cultures: witness the telling juxtaposition of a life-size marble statue of a Roman “orator” with a schist bodhisattva from ancient Gandhara, in modern-day Pakistan. Both, surprisingly, are infused with the spirit of Greek art.

Too often, though, the connections seem strained. The “chapter” devoted to the “universal religions” of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam is a tour de force of wishful thinking, ignoring centuries of conflict in favour of a hippy-dippy, quasi-pantheistic vision, in which a 16th-century German wooden figure of Christ, say, is presented as equivalent to a 13th-century Malian ancestor figure, since both are “incarnations of the sacred”.

How universal is this “universal museum”, anyway? Aside from ancient sculptures, and a voluptuous modern artwork by Yves Klein, I encountered few female nudes – no surprise, perhaps, given the conservative nature of Emirati society. At Louvre Abu Dhabi, humanity is indeed seen in a new light – devoid of sex.

Moreover, not many works depict violence, since, presumably, they would contravene the museum’s optimistic ideals. It is situated on “Happiness Island”, after all.

Yet thanks to editorialising omissions like these, the prevailing approach feels shallow. Suggesting superficial connections between unrelated masterpieces belongs to the coffee-table-book school of exhibition-making. Indeed, Louvre Abu Dhabi offers exactly the sort of quick, sleek, Instagrammable experience that will appeal to passengers stopping for a night or two between long-haul flights.

Yes, many of the artworks enchant and beguile. But an array of sumptuous morsels does not make a meal. By insistently privileging the “universal” over the specific, Louvre Abu Dhabi tries to say everything – but, simultaneously, risks saying nothing.

From One Louvre to Another opens at Louvre Abu Dhabi today;louvreabudhabi.ae

#art #musée

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dmnsqrl · 7 years ago

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justthegoods · 7 years ago

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Calling all Black and Brown Witches! Looking to reconnect with your ancestry and reclaim knowledge that has been stolen? Ready to start practicing your magic with a community instead of in the hedges? Join us at The Sacred Lattice Collective School, PDX. Online/distance options available. . "In a time when oil robbed from the ground was valued more than the blood robbed from black and native bodies. In a place where the labor of colonized people was used to desecrate our impossibly beautiful, amazingly complex Earth by those who see the world’s subjugation as its proper role. In a time when spirits and bodies were connected by the thinnest strands; and the order of the day was assimilate or die. . A Sacred Lattice was born. A honeycomb of hope. Sparks of electric light in the dark. A micro-shift, a changing tide, of pathways back to the earth. To our roots. Our roots as people victimized under white supremacy and colonialism. As those who are not served by white supremacy and capitalism. Who have had things stolen from us, only to be repackaged and resold back to us in flimsy plastic, purchased cheaply with little regard for the high cost to our mother earth. . Sacred Lattice was born of smoldering embers, deep sighs of frustration and a powerful yearning for all that was denied us. At a few coming together to build something to serve themselves after having to shout once more into the void of white nonsense." . For more info, including how to join, follow: @sacredlattice www.sacredlattice.com [email protected] . #bipoc #poc #black #brown #indigenous #brujxs #brujeria #reclaim #decolonize #witch #magic #herbal #healing #plants #sacred #community #diy #learning #roots #ancestry #knowledge #hope #love #nature #workshop #light #shift #grow #strength #sacredlattice

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joserestrada-blog · 7 years ago

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5 Chinese fiction books

1.Celeste Ng Little Fires Everywhere

With her first two novels, Celeste Ng has established herself as a writer of rare sensitivity and talent. Her debut Everything I Never Told You was picked by the Amazon Editors as the best book of 2014 and went on to be a best seller. Now, Little Fires Everywhere is sure to please her fans and attract many more. The Richardson family lives in the planned community of Shaker Heights, Ohio—a place of wealth, comfort, and stability—and they are a clan that embodies those traits. But when Mia, a single mother, and her fifteen year old daughter, Pearl, rent a house in the area, their very different lives will merge with those of the Richardson family and begin to contort the carefully laid lattice that supports their views. Once again, the plotting and pacing are nearly perfect, the characters believable and real. Ng is a master of family and societal dynamics, shifting perspectives, and the secrets that we try to protect—and readers who loved her debut will recognize the author in this second novel, even as she continues to stretch herself as a writer. We are now eagerly awaiting her next novel. --Chris Schluep, (Amazon.com)

2.Wu Wu He Remains of Life: A Novel (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan)

On October 27, 1930, during a sports meet at Musha Elementary School on an aboriginal reservation in the mountains of Taiwan, a bloody uprising occurred unlike anything Japan had experienced in its colonial history. Before noon, the Atayal tribe had slain one hundred and thirty-four Japanese in a headhunting ritual. The Japanese responded with a militia of three thousand, heavy artillery, airplanes, and internationally banned poisonous gas, bringing the tribe to the brink of genocide. (Amazon.com)

3.Ken Liu Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation

Award-winning translator and author Ken Liu presents a collection of short speculative fiction from China. Some stories have won awards (including Hao Jingfang’s Hugo-winning novella, Folding Beijing); some have been included in various 'Year's Best' anthologies; some have been well reviewed by critics and readers; and some are simply Ken's personal favorites. Many of the authors collected here (with the obvious exception of New York Times bestseller Liu Cixin’s two stories) belong to the younger generation of 'rising stars'. In addition, three essays at the end of the book explore Chinese science fiction. Liu Cixin's essay, The Worst of All Possible Universes and The Best of All Possible Earths, gives a historical overview of SF in China and situates his own rise to prominence as the premier Chinese author within that context. Chen Qiufan's The Torn Generation gives the view of a younger generation of authors trying to come to terms with the tumultuous transformations around them. Finally, Xia Jia, who holds the first Ph.D. issued for the study of Chinese SF, asks What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese?(Amazon.com)

4.Chinese Fables: The Dragon Slayer and Other Timeless Tales of Wisdom by Shiho S. Nunes

For thousands of years, Chinese storytellers have delighted listeners with stories about the value of virtues like honesty, respect, courage and self-reliance. Chinese Fables collects nineteen of these wonderful tales, some of them dating back to the third century BCE, and retells them in contemporary English for a modern audience. (Amazon.com)

5.Luo Guanzhong The Three Kingdoms, Volume 1: The Sacred Oath: The Epic Chinese Tale of Loyalty and War in a Dynamic New Translation (with Footnotes)

Considered the greatest work in classic Chinese literature, The Three Kingdoms is read by millions throughout Asia today. Seen not just as a great work of art, many Chinese view it as a guide to success in life and business as well as a work that offers great moral clarity—while many foreigners read it to gain insights into Chinese society and culture. From the saga of The Three Kingdoms, readers will learn how great warriors motivate their troops and enhance their influence, while disguising their weaknesses and turning the strengths of others against them. (Amazon.com)

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architectnews · 4 years ago

Text

Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi

Continuing our collaboration with Dom Publishers, the editors of the Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide select architectural highlights from east Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide is a seven-volume book focused on architecture in Africa

Read on for picks from each country in the region selected by Meuser and co-editor Adil Dalbai:

Photo by Javier Callejas

Kenya Swahili Gem Apartments, Mombasa, by Urko Sánchez Architects

Photo by Arnold Mugasha

Uganda Baha'i House of Worship, Kampala, by Charles Mason Remey,  Cobb, Powell and Freeman

Called the Mother Temple of Africa, the structure on the outskirts of the city is one of eight Baha'i Houses of Worship in the world, and the only one in Africa.

This sacred building is enthroned on one of Kampala's hills. In the evening sun, the place looks picturesque, while the pulse of the metropolis beats in the valleys between the hills.

Photo by Adil Dalbai

Rwanda Genocide Memorial  Amphitheatre, Kigali, by John McAslan and Partners

Expressing the national collective memory in architecture is always a great challenge.

In the mass graves located in its gardens, over 250,000 bodies are buried. The Memorial also houses the Genocide Archive of Rwanda and exhibitions on the history of the Rwandan genocide.

Photo by BC Architects

Burundi Muyinga Library, Muyinga, by BC Architects

The building shows that it is possible to design thoroughly modern architecture using local building methods.

Photo by Vitaly Pozdeyev

Tanzania Michenzani flats, Zanzibar Stone Town, by Hubert Scholz

The rows of houses, more than a kilometre long, lie like a scar in the middle of the huts.

Yet the socialist series buildings were the first to be erected on the newly won land. In the 1970s, the GDR donated architectural know-how along with the complete supply of materials.

The fact that East German housing construction was successful in Africa has unfortunately been forgotten in Germany.

Photo by Nadia Moussa

Comoros Mitsamiouli Stele, Grande Comore Island, by Mahmoud Keldi, Nadia Moussa

This monument, a collaboration between local architect Nadia Moussa and Mahmoud Keldi, a Paris-based French-Comoran architect, aims to commemorate the crash's French-Comoran victims.

One would like to see more monuments in Africa that have such a high level of abstraction.

Photo by DHK Architects

Seychelles Kempinski Seychelles Resort, Mahé Island, by DHK Architects

Designed by the South African office, DHK Architects, the Kempinski Seychelles Resort project required that the former Plantation Club Resort and Casino on the island of Mahé be redeveloped.

Photo by Ulandi van Dyk

Mauritius Mauritius Commercial Bank, Quatre Bornes, by Jean Francois Koenig

It was the first project in the southern hemisphere to obtain a BREEAM good environmental certificate and has become an iconic structure in Mauritius.

Photo by Stefano Carera

Madagascar Under the Sails Residence, Nosy Be Island, by Stefano Carera, Eirini Giannakopoulou

The post Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi appeared first on Dezeen.

#Architecture – Dezeen

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architectnews · 4 years ago

Text

Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi

Continuing our collaboration with Dom Publishers, the editors of the Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide select architectural highlights from east Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide is a seven-volume book focused on architecture in Africa

Read on for picks from each country in the region selected by Meuser and co-editor Adil Dalbai:

Photo by Javier Callejas

Kenya Swahili Gem Apartments, Mombasa, by Urko Sánchez Architects

Photo by Arnold Mugasha

Uganda Baha'i House of Worship, Kampala, by Charles Mason Remey,  Cobb, Powell and Freeman

Called the Mother Temple of Africa, the structure on the outskirts of the city is one of eight Baha'i Houses of Worship in the world, and the only one in Africa.

This sacred building is enthroned on one of Kampala's hills. In the evening sun, the place looks picturesque, while the pulse of the metropolis beats in the valleys between the hills.

Photo by Adil Dalbai

Rwanda Genocide Memorial  Amphitheatre, Kigali, by John McAslan and Partners

Expressing the national collective memory in architecture is always a great challenge.

In the mass graves located in its gardens, over 250,000 bodies are buried. The Memorial also houses the Genocide Archive of Rwanda and exhibitions on the history of the Rwandan genocide.

Photo by BC Architects

Burundi Muyinga Library, Muyinga, by BC Architects

The building shows that it is possible to design thoroughly modern architecture using local building methods.

Photo by Vitaly Pozdeyev

Tanzania Michenzani flats, Zanzibar Stone Town, by Hubert Scholz

The rows of houses, more than a kilometre long, lie like a scar in the middle of the huts.

Yet the socialist series buildings were the first to be erected on the newly won land. In the 1970s, the GDR donated architectural know-how along with the complete supply of materials.

The fact that East German housing construction was successful in Africa has unfortunately been forgotten in Germany.

Photo by Nadia Moussa

Comoros Mitsamiouli Stele, Grande Comore Island, by Mahmoud Keldi, Nadia Moussa

This monument, a collaboration between local architect Nadia Moussa and Mahmoud Keldi, a Paris-based French-Comoran architect, aims to commemorate the crash's French-Comoran victims.

One would like to see more monuments in Africa that have such a high level of abstraction.

Photo by DHK Architects

Seychelles Kempinski Seychelles Resort, Mahé Island, by DHK Architects

Designed by the South African office, DHK Architects, the Kempinski Seychelles Resort project required that the former Plantation Club Resort and Casino on the island of Mahé be redeveloped.

Photo by Ulandi van Dyk

Mauritius Mauritius Commercial Bank, Quatre Bornes, by Jean Francois Koenig

It was the first project in the southern hemisphere to obtain a BREEAM good environmental certificate and has become an iconic structure in Mauritius.

Photo by Stefano Carera

Madagascar Under the Sails Residence, Nosy Be Island, by Stefano Carera, Eirini Giannakopoulou

The post Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi appeared first on Dezeen.

#Architecture – Dezeen

0 notes

architectnews · 4 years ago

Text

Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi

Continuing our collaboration with Dom Publishers, the editors of the Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide select architectural highlights from east Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide is a seven-volume book focused on architecture in Africa

Read on for picks from each country in the region selected by Meuser and co-editor Adil Dalbai:

Photo by Javier Callejas

Kenya Swahili Gem Apartments, Mombasa, by Urko Sánchez Architects

Photo by Arnold Mugasha

Uganda Baha'i House of Worship, Kampala, by Charles Mason Remey,  Cobb, Powell and Freeman

Called the Mother Temple of Africa, the structure on the outskirts of the city is one of eight Baha'i Houses of Worship in the world, and the only one in Africa.

This sacred building is enthroned on one of Kampala's hills. In the evening sun, the place looks picturesque, while the pulse of the metropolis beats in the valleys between the hills.

Photo by Adil Dalbai

Rwanda Genocide Memorial  Amphitheatre, Kigali, by John McAslan and Partners

Expressing the national collective memory in architecture is always a great challenge.

In the mass graves located in its gardens, over 250,000 bodies are buried. The Memorial also houses the Genocide Archive of Rwanda and exhibitions on the history of the Rwandan genocide.

Photo by BC Architects

Burundi Muyinga Library, Muyinga, by BC Architects

The building shows that it is possible to design thoroughly modern architecture using local building methods.

Photo by Vitaly Pozdeyev

Tanzania Michenzani flats, Zanzibar Stone Town, by Hubert Scholz

The rows of houses, more than a kilometre long, lie like a scar in the middle of the huts.

Yet the socialist series buildings were the first to be erected on the newly won land. In the 1970s, the GDR donated architectural know-how along with the complete supply of materials.

The fact that East German housing construction was successful in Africa has unfortunately been forgotten in Germany.

Photo by Nadia Moussa

Comoros Mitsamiouli Stele, Grande Comore Island, by Mahmoud Keldi, Nadia Moussa

This monument, a collaboration between local architect Nadia Moussa and Mahmoud Keldi, a Paris-based French-Comoran architect, aims to commemorate the crash's French-Comoran victims.

One would like to see more monuments in Africa that have such a high level of abstraction.

Photo by DHK Architects

Seychelles Kempinski Seychelles Resort, Mahé Island, by DHK Architects

Designed by the South African office, DHK Architects, the Kempinski Seychelles Resort project required that the former Plantation Club Resort and Casino on the island of Mahé be redeveloped.

Photo by Ulandi van Dyk

Mauritius Mauritius Commercial Bank, Quatre Bornes, by Jean Francois Koenig

It was the first project in the southern hemisphere to obtain a BREEAM good environmental certificate and has become an iconic structure in Mauritius.

Photo by Stefano Carera

Madagascar Under the Sails Residence, Nosy Be Island, by Stefano Carera, Eirini Giannakopoulou

The post Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi appeared first on Dezeen.

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architectnews · 4 years ago

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Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi

Continuing our collaboration with Dom Publishers, the editors of the Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide select architectural highlights from east Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide is a seven-volume book focused on architecture in Africa

Read on for picks from each country in the region selected by Meuser and co-editor Adil Dalbai:

Photo by Javier Callejas

Kenya Swahili Gem Apartments, Mombasa, by Urko Sánchez Architects

Photo by Arnold Mugasha

Uganda Baha'i House of Worship, Kampala, by Charles Mason Remey,  Cobb, Powell and Freeman

Called the Mother Temple of Africa, the structure on the outskirts of the city is one of eight Baha'i Houses of Worship in the world, and the only one in Africa.

This sacred building is enthroned on one of Kampala's hills. In the evening sun, the place looks picturesque, while the pulse of the metropolis beats in the valleys between the hills.

Photo by Adil Dalbai

Rwanda Genocide Memorial  Amphitheatre, Kigali, by John McAslan and Partners

Expressing the national collective memory in architecture is always a great challenge.

In the mass graves located in its gardens, over 250,000 bodies are buried. The Memorial also houses the Genocide Archive of Rwanda and exhibitions on the history of the Rwandan genocide.

Photo by BC Architects

Burundi Muyinga Library, Muyinga, by BC Architects

The building shows that it is possible to design thoroughly modern architecture using local building methods.

Photo by Vitaly Pozdeyev

Tanzania Michenzani flats, Zanzibar Stone Town, by Hubert Scholz

The rows of houses, more than a kilometre long, lie like a scar in the middle of the huts.

Yet the socialist series buildings were the first to be erected on the newly won land. In the 1970s, the GDR donated architectural know-how along with the complete supply of materials.

The fact that East German housing construction was successful in Africa has unfortunately been forgotten in Germany.

Photo by Nadia Moussa

Comoros Mitsamiouli Stele, Grande Comore Island, by Mahmoud Keldi, Nadia Moussa

This monument, a collaboration between local architect Nadia Moussa and Mahmoud Keldi, a Paris-based French-Comoran architect, aims to commemorate the crash's French-Comoran victims.

One would like to see more monuments in Africa that have such a high level of abstraction.

Photo by DHK Architects

Seychelles Kempinski Seychelles Resort, Mahé Island, by DHK Architects

Designed by the South African office, DHK Architects, the Kempinski Seychelles Resort project required that the former Plantation Club Resort and Casino on the island of Mahé be redeveloped.

Photo by Ulandi van Dyk

Mauritius Mauritius Commercial Bank, Quatre Bornes, by Jean Francois Koenig

It was the first project in the southern hemisphere to obtain a BREEAM good environmental certificate and has become an iconic structure in Mauritius.

Photo by Stefano Carera

Madagascar Under the Sails Residence, Nosy Be Island, by Stefano Carera, Eirini Giannakopoulou

The post Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi appeared first on Dezeen.

#Architecture – Dezeen

0 notes

architectnews · 4 years ago

Text

Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi

Continuing our collaboration with Dom Publishers, the editors of the Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide select architectural highlights from east Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide is a seven-volume book focused on architecture in Africa

Read on for picks from each country in the region selected by Meuser and co-editor Adil Dalbai:

Photo by Javier Callejas

Kenya Swahili Gem Apartments, Mombasa, by Urko Sánchez Architects

Photo by Arnold Mugasha

Uganda Baha'i House of Worship, Kampala, by Charles Mason Remey,  Cobb, Powell and Freeman

Called the Mother Temple of Africa, the structure on the outskirts of the city is one of eight Baha'i Houses of Worship in the world, and the only one in Africa.

This sacred building is enthroned on one of Kampala's hills. In the evening sun, the place looks picturesque, while the pulse of the metropolis beats in the valleys between the hills.

Photo by Adil Dalbai

Rwanda Genocide Memorial  Amphitheatre, Kigali, by John McAslan and Partners

Expressing the national collective memory in architecture is always a great challenge.

In the mass graves located in its gardens, over 250,000 bodies are buried. The Memorial also houses the Genocide Archive of Rwanda and exhibitions on the history of the Rwandan genocide.

Photo by BC Architects

Burundi Muyinga Library, Muyinga, by BC Architects

The building shows that it is possible to design thoroughly modern architecture using local building methods.

Photo by Vitaly Pozdeyev

Tanzania Michenzani flats, Zanzibar Stone Town, by Hubert Scholz

The rows of houses, more than a kilometre long, lie like a scar in the middle of the huts.

Yet the socialist series buildings were the first to be erected on the newly won land. In the 1970s, the GDR donated architectural know-how along with the complete supply of materials.

The fact that East German housing construction was successful in Africa has unfortunately been forgotten in Germany.

Photo by Nadia Moussa

Comoros Mitsamiouli Stele, Grande Comore Island, by Mahmoud Keldi, Nadia Moussa

This monument, a collaboration between local architect Nadia Moussa and Mahmoud Keldi, a Paris-based French-Comoran architect, aims to commemorate the crash's French-Comoran victims.

One would like to see more monuments in Africa that have such a high level of abstraction.

Photo by DHK Architects

Seychelles Kempinski Seychelles Resort, Mahé Island, by DHK Architects

Designed by the South African office, DHK Architects, the Kempinski Seychelles Resort project required that the former Plantation Club Resort and Casino on the island of Mahé be redeveloped.

Photo by Ulandi van Dyk

Mauritius Mauritius Commercial Bank, Quatre Bornes, by Jean Francois Koenig

It was the first project in the southern hemisphere to obtain a BREEAM good environmental certificate and has become an iconic structure in Mauritius.

Photo by Stefano Carera

Madagascar Under the Sails Residence, Nosy Be Island, by Stefano Carera, Eirini Giannakopoulou

The post Architecture highlights from east Africa include projects from Madagascar and Burundi appeared first on Dezeen.

#Architecture – Dezeen

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