keeping track of african and africa-related culture in the media (film, photography, television, and print)

africa.architecture: david adjaye’s urban africa

Posted: April 3rd, 2010 | Author: kamau | Filed under: architecture, environment, globalization, museums, photography | 3 Comments »

adjayearchitecture
Screen shot from BBC site of David Adjaye’s African urban architecture photos. © D. Adjaye

ARCHITECTURE: Tanzanian-born star-chitect David Adjaye has a show at London’s Design Museum. Urban Africa contains over 2000 images that he has taken over the last 10 years of the civic/commercial/residential architecture of all of Africa’s 53 capital cities. In a BBC interview [audio: interview starts around 5:40] he talks about how people have strong visual connections to the wild landscapes of the continent, but are a little baffled when told about about how cosmopolitan the cities are. The show’s goal is to redress this situation.

I wish I could go see this show. These days when I go back to Nairobi, I see the architecture in a different way. There are many old buildings that intrigue me (designed to address a certain notion of africanness and local climate needs) and new ones that leave me aghast (designed to mimic some bland, uncreative notion of modernity).

PHOTOGRAPHY: See also: Flickr: Nairobi Architecture

cine_afrique_znz
Cine Afrique building, Zanzibar. Photo by your humble servant © K. Mucoki

3 Comments on “africa.architecture: david adjaye’s urban africa”

  1. 1 maina said at 11:47 PM on April 9th, 2010:

    its time to take pictures of the architecture in nairobi, in the cbd (- central business district) where many are being torn down, making way for “newer architecturally pleasing” buildings.

    m

  2. 2 kamau said at 12:24 PM on April 19th, 2010:

    yep, so that future generations can at least recreate what was, particularly a certain idea of NBO post-independence.

  3. 3 sci-culturist said at 6:38 AM on April 21st, 2010:

    aha, the salmon pink cine afrique building!