M’Afrique
The 2009 Milan Furniture Fair brought hundreds of thousands of visitors to Italy’s design capital, as it does every April. The event has been going for 48 years, aiming to showcase new products, from lamps to beds, garden furniture, objects, textiles, chairs, rugs – anything found in a home, an office, or garden. For one week, 2,723 designers and furniture companies, a third of them from outside Italy, show off their latest designs, many of them prototypes, hoping to attract the interest of some of the 350,000 professionals – buyers, manufacturers, fellow designers and journalists.
Moroso, an Italian design and upholstery studio known for its energy and innovation, had a superb display in their showroom. The whole new collection, called M’Afrique, had a strong African influence with striking colours and patterns. According to the firm’s Creative Director, Particia Moroso:
“The African continent is extraordinarily rich in creativity, materials and ideas that are sources of inspiration and nourishment for us. When applied to design, they engender products which exude tradition and modernity, innovation and history, form and beauty. I think there is so much of Africa and in this event my intent was to showcase the creativity of a few of the great artists and personalities of contemporary African culture. Going beyond the stereotypes that present Africa as a tragic or, at best, exotic experience, we want to highlight some aspects of contemporary African culture, which is in effect comparable to global culture. Looking at Africa through the eyes of contemporary art, photography, architecture and design is perhaps the most appropriate way of approaching this vast, powerful continent, so creatively rich and diverse that today it is still one of western modernity’s greatest sources of inspiration.”
The collection was designed by American designer Stephen Burks of the New York Studio Readymade Projects , increasingly known for his ecologically-conscious and artisan-based projects, was named “one of the world’s most wanted young designers” by Wallpaper magazine. He has been responsible for creative design direction for clients ranging from Artecnica, Boffi, B&B Italia, Calvin Klein, Cappellini and Missoni, as well as the non-profits Aid to Artisans and the Nature Conservancy. He was on the trend board of the 2009 Cologne Furniture Fair and was awarded this year’s Architektur & Wohnen Audi Mentor Prize as young designer of the year in Cologne during the fair.
Sitting alongside work by African artists Fathi Hassan and Soly Cissé were iconic pieces of furniture from Moroso’s archive covered in African fabrics – among them Ron Arad’s Victoria & Albert sofa and Doshi Levien’s Princess day bed. Walls were decorated with photography by London architect David Adjaye and African photographer Boubacar Touré Mandémory.
Milan based Patricia Urquiola and Philippe Bestenheider designed pieces especially for the show inspired by Africa, while Toord Boontje, Burks and fellow New Yorkers Bibi Seck and Ayse Birsel sought the expertise of African craftspeople to materialise their products. It all had the potential of resorting to cliche and resembling something you’d pick up in a London market, but Moroso managed to capture the spirit of a carnival in the furniture, and keep the products suitably chic for their price tag.
See more images of this stunning exhibition here and here.
Another African influenced piece at the show that was not a part of M’Afrique was by the Fashion Designer Ermanno Scervino launch of the company’s first furniture and linens collection inspired by the designer’s East African African vacations, particularly Kenya. Sofas, chairs and a canopy bed were covered with crocheted raffia in black or natural hues. An especially interesting raffia armchair with legs aand arms made of horns of the zebu cow (shown at left) was a show stopper. The furniture is produced under license by the Italian furniture house Nicoletti.
Brian Vermeulen on Great Zimbabwe
The architecture firm of Cottrell and Vermeulen claims diverse interests, from the built environment to landscape, exhibitions and new construction technologies and advocates a collaborative approach. The team has wide experience in education design. They have a reputation for innovation in early years and primary school design in particular. Their school work has gained acclaim throughout the United Kingdom. With African vernacular as inspiration, the firm prepared the Exemplar Schools Design report for the UK Department of Education and Skills in 2003.
In a June 2009 interview with Building Magazine’s Pamela Buxton, Partner Brian Vermeulen describes how the African Site of Great Zimbabwe, a major trading center until the 15th century, has influenced his work.
“I grew up in Zimbabwe, and when other architecture students were looking at Le Corbusier, my inspiration was more African.
I first saw Great Zimbabwe when I was about 11 or 12 — it was the only significant example of monumental architecture in southern Africa. At the time, I just saw very well put together stones and nice shapes and wasn’t aware of its political symbolism. Growing up in a white colonial state in the sixties and seventies I was politically naive and it was only when I went to Cape Town University to study architecture that I started getting interested in what I was doing in Africa.
It was a very strange political environment. South Africa was going through turmoil; Zimbabwe was going through a war. On my course, everyone else was looking at James Stirling who was the big thing at the time, but I decided to research African architecture and symbolism and I needed to get security clearance to go into archives to read banned documents on Great Zimbabwe. I got a shock when I realised that archaeologists had found out that it was built by Africans but had been banned from saying so because the regime was worried about encouraging black power. The documents had red stamps on them saying things like “confidential”, and “banned”. I slowly realised how censored society was — you become angry when you think you’ve been lied to. It changed me, and when I later moved to London I became involved in Architects Against Apartheid.
I went back to Great Zimbabwe as a student and again twice since. It’s the biggest sub-Saharan monumental building and is very well put together — some walls are 5m thick at the base and then taper upwards and there are very unusual organic shapes and corridors. The sacred part of the site is higher up, like an acropolis on a ridge; the space within the walled enclosure to the south is almost like the agora and is where the king may have lived. The space inbetween was where the people lived. The tall conical structure may be a symbolic grain silo.
There are things here that you can read into. On the top of the ridge were sacred stone birds that were taken off to museums by archaeologists. There’s a theory that they are Bataleur eagles. These are special — when I was a boy, people used to clap when they flew over. In the animist tradition of belief, the landscape, birds and animals were filled with powerful meanings and some of the trees on the site, such as the fig trees would have been highly symbolic. The landscape around it is very powerful — maybe that’s one of the reasons why there isn’t much monumental architecture in this part of Africa.
Photo Credit: Cottrell and Vermeulen
Unlike in Europe, a palace in Africa isn’t just the actual building. It’s the domain in which the building takes place — the space inside the retaining boundary wall and the temporary structures within it, which is quite a modern idea. You get an entire complex of buildings within the walls, sometimes incorporating trees and natural features. In some places in Africa, for example Mali, the people often sleep outside and put the animals inside so that the living space is the external room.
Great Zimbabwe influenced the way I see space, especially in our school buildings. In schools, outdoor space is just as important as internal space so the African palace is the perfect model — Cottrell & Vermeulen included it in some of the guidance we did for the government on Building Schools For the Future. The school becomes not just the building but a landscape for learning.
We’re currently building a Hindu school in Harrow — the Krishna-Avanti Primary School. We prompted our client to talk about the landscape in Hindu culture and we got another picture. In traditional Hindu villages they have one area of land which is spiritual (dharma), another area for wildlife, and another for prosperity (crops and livestock). In the school, we have a spiritual courtyard garden, vegetable gardens outside the classrooms and apple trees in the playground, as well as an undulating wildlife area around the perimeter.
At Westborough Primary School in Westcliff on Sea, where we previously designed a cardboard building, we’re now doing a zero-carbon refurbishment and this, by coincidence, has an African garden and recycled play structures. The school landscape is an extension of the classrooms and is a learning resource in itself.
After independence, Great Zimbabwe went a bit touristy for a while — the grass was cleared and curio sellers appeared. But now, after the turmoil of the last few years, the tourists have gone.
The grass grows very quickly and I’m hoping to go back again to rediscover the spaces that first inspired me.”
Inspiration: Great Zimbabwe
Built: 11th-15th centuries
Location: Masvingo, Zimbabwe
Formed of regular, rectangular granite stones, carefully placed one upon the other, Great Zimbabwe is the ruins of an amazing complex and a protected World Heritage Site. This major trading centre was built by the Bantu civilisation of the Shona between the 11th and 15th centuries and covered nearly 80ha. It had an estimated 18,000 inhabitants and controlled most of internal south-east Africa, with artefacts found there from as far away as China.
It consists of three areas: the hill complex, which was used as a temple and is the oldest part of the site dating back to 900AD; the valley complex, which was for the citizens; and the Great Enclosure or walled town, which was used by members of the elite classes.
The stone walls, up to 6meter thick and 12 meter high, are built of granite blocks without the use of mortar. Two high walls form the narrow parallel passage, 60 meter long, that allows direct access to the Conical Tower. Each layer of stones was laid on top of the other slightly more recessed than the last, to produce a stabilising inward slope. Early constructions used rough blocks and incorporated features of the landscapes such as boulders, while later walls were more refined.
The walls are thought to be indications of status, rather than purely defensive. The walls surrounded huts and linked them to form a series of courtyards. Some researchers claim the complex included an astronomy observatory.
The Great Enclosure is the largest single ancient structure south of the Sahara.
It is unclear why the city was abandoned. European explorers initially believed the city was the work of non-Africans — either the Phoenicians or Arabs. Archaeological excavations early in the 20th century found that the site was built by Africans but archaeologists were discouraged from suggesting that sub-Saharan Africans had instigated such a grand construction.
Eight carved soapstone birds measuring 30cm high were found in the ruins, combining human and bird features. After independence, the image of one of these birds became a symbol on the new Zimbabwe flag, with the country taking its name from the site.
A slide show of Great Zimbabwe images can be seen here.
Butabu
For centuries, complex and intricate adobe structures, have been built in the Sahal region of western Africa, including the countries of Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. Made of earth mixed with water, these ephemeral buildings display a remarkable diversity of form, human ingenuity, and originality.
In a fascinating book, published in 2003, titled ‘Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa’, and co-authored by British photographer James Morris and Harvard professor Suzanne Preston Blier, a stunning visual array of these structures is displayed.
In his Preface to the book, Morris writes:
“Too often, when people in the West think of African architecture, they perceive nothing more than a mud hut—a primitive vernacular remembered from an old Tarzan movie. Why this ignorance to the richness of West African buildings? Possibly it is because the great dynastic civilizations of the region were already in decline when the European colonizers first exposed these cultures to the West. Being built of mud, many older buildings had already been lost, unlike the stone or brick buildings of other ancient cultures. Or possibly this lack of awareness is because the buildings are just too strange, too foreign to have been easily appreciated by outsiders. Often they more closely resemble huge monolithic sculptures or ceramic pots than “architecture” as we think of it. But in fact these buildings are neither “historic monuments” in the classic sense, nor as culturally remote as they may initially appear. They share many qualities—such as sustainability, sculptural beauty, and community participation in their conception—now valued in Western architectural thinking. Though part of long traditions and ancient cultures, they are at the same time contemporary structures serving a current purpose.
The mud from which these buildings are made is itself a controversial substance that tests our conventional views of architecture. It is one of the most commonly used building materials in the world, and yet in our urban-dominated society it is seen, effectively, as dirt. Buildings subtly alter in appearance each time they are re-rendered, which can be as often as once a year. Yet the maintaining and resurfacing of buildings is part of the rhythm of life; there is an ongoing and active participation in their continuing existence. If they lost their relevance and were neglected, they would collapse. This is not a museum culture…”
In this review of the book from The Guardian Newspaper, journalist Jonathan Glancey writes:
“What these magnificent mosques prove is that mud buildings can be far more sophisticated than many people living in a world of concrete and steel might want to believe. Mud is not just a material for shaping pots, but for temples, palaces and even, as so many west African towns demonstrate, the framing of entire communities. The very fluidity, or viscosity, of the material allows the architects who use it to create dynamic and sensual forms.
Morris’s photographic trips through the region in 1999 and 2000 record a world of architecture that, sadly, is increasingly under threat. Perhaps it is mostly poverty rather than culture and memory that keeps this rich and inventive tradition of building alive…”
This book is a treasure trove of imagery and information to any architecture enthusiast. Critical elements like space, light, and texture are explored in intimate detail, revealing a strong argument for this kind of architecture to be studied, documented, and profiled more wildly. As Morris sums up his preface: “I am still curious why West Africa’s adobe buildings receive so little serious consideration. If architecture is a cultural expression, perhaps it is the culture from which these buildings have evolved, so alien to the European mind, that keeps it in the academic wilderness, hard for the commentators to place.
Sadly, the English version of the book is now out of print. There are, however, used and new copies avaibale from independent oulets via Amazon.com
Photographs and Preface published courtesy of James Morris.
AIST-Abuja Campus
African Institute of Science and Technology (AIST)
Abuja, Nigeria
2006
Client: Nelson Mandela Institute
Total Area: 240,000 m²
Architect: Massimilano Fuksas
Consultants: Arup Italia
The African Institute of Science and Technology has as its main inspiration principle the effort to foster Africa’s economic, social and political growth and development through the promotion of excellence in education. The Institute will address all the requirements of a modern world class academic centre, including teaching buildings, research facilities, residential space, a hotel, sport facilities and the associated infrastructure.
The site is on a green field plot between the city of Abuja and Nnamdi Asikiwe International Airport, with a design aspiring to wisely combine African tradition and cultural values with innovation applied to construction and cutting edge building management.
The buildings are organised along the main pedestrian axis, which crosses Nelson Mandela Square. The paved areas on the square are engraved with Mandela’s words to inspire new generations to build the peaceful common future of Africa.
“…Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor; that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine; that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
The Architecture adapts to the geography as a patchwork of African weavings.
The campus is arranged around a central axis which points to Aso Rock. Aso, means “victorious” in the language of the (now displaced) Asokoro (“the people of victory”). A visual axis towards the holy rock, a path that will drive students to their individual “victories”, to become the outstanding professionals who will use their knowledge and leadership to transform local communities and improve the human condition across the African continent.
Constructed from local timber, stone and brick, campus buildings will incorporate sustainable technologies, such as water harvesting and photovoltaic technology. Traditional textile patterns and African “red earth” structures inspired Fuksas’s design: In plan view, residential quarters are designed as long, sinuous interconnecting shapes. Individual faculty complexes, each one different from the other, comprise buildings grouped around internal streets and courtyards. Vertical openings in the buildings’ timber skin will filter light and promote natural ventilation.
