Article 25   Niger   Niger’s education system faces huge challenges. The African country currently has the highest birth rate in the world (seven children born to every woman on average), and simultaneously struggles to keep young people in the classroom, particularly be

KSP Engel   Algeria   Africa’s largest mosque, located in Algiers, was inaugurated in February 2024. The prayer hall fits 36,000 faithful and the complex takes in 120,000 visitors. Th svelte minaret soars 265 meters and features a viewing platform at the top. Given the se

Kéré Architecture   Benin   In the wake of decolonization in Africa, Benin achieved full independence from France on 1 August 1960, then under the name of Dahomey. The building in which the declaration was signed at the time has until now served as the headquarters of the Parli

Architectural Pioneering Consultants Wolfgang Rossbauer   Tanzania   Ubicada entre el monte Meru y el Kilimanjaro, en la región tanzana de Arusha, esta escuela de la remota aldea de Ngabobo es un encargo de la ONG Africa Amini Alama, a la que asisten…

Atelier Masomi    Niger   In rural Niger, markets run on a weekly basis, but the fast demographic growth of the remote village of Dandaji led to building of a new marketplace for daily shopping, on the original site around the ancestral tree villagers have always gathered at.

IDOM   Senegal   The design of the new university campus, located west of the capital, is conditioned by the extreme climate of the region and by the lack of infrastructures and services in the area. 

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   United Kingdom   Every year the Serpentine Gallery in London chooses an international architect to build a temporary pavilion in Kensington Gardens. The pavilion of 2017, designed by Francis Kéré, is conceived as a microcosm: a community structure that fuses cultural

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Germany   Located inside the iconic Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome in the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, the Camper Pop-up Shop pioneers a new form of retail shopping by combining the best attributes from in-store and online shopping through a mix of virtual

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Denmark   As part of the exhibition ‘Africa: Architecture, Culture and Identity’ at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the installation recreates the sensation of being under the shade of a big tree. This powerful symbol, present in both Nordic and African my

Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   After 31 years of dictatorial rule, the people of Burkina Faso rose up and ousted their former president following a violent revolt in 2014. In protest of the old regime, the former National Assembly was attacked and destroyed by the citizens. Aside

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Sudan   In a semi-desert landscape between the Nile and Atbara rivers, the remains of the city of the Kushites in Meroe – a powerful dynasty that reigned from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD – were declared a UNESCO Heritage Site in 2011. Located ab

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Mozambique   Located at the point where the Revuboe and Zambezi rivers converge, the project aims to create a new type of neighborhood to address the increasing demand for housing in Tete, Mozambique. The community will be able to test a new planning method that

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Kenya   Located in the Kenyan village of Kogelo, where Barack Obama’s father was born, the Mama Sarah Obama Legacy Campus will be an educational enclave for a thousand students and preschool-age children in danger of being marginalized. The project presents

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   Situated in the rural countryside of Boulkiemdé province, the Noomdo Orphanage lies approximately 2 kilometers outside Koudougou, and is home to more than fifty children between the ages of six and seventeen. Mimicking the nearby residential compound

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   The success of the primary school in Gando and its positive impact on the community encouraged to build a secondary school to offer opportunities to those students who wanted to continue their studies. Inspired in the distribution of the surrounding

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   Developed to establish an exchange between local craftsmen, builders, architects, students, and visitors, Atelier Gando was initiated under the organization of Francis Kéré with the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio in Switzerland. The Atelier w

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   The Songtaaba Women’s Association is made up of approximately 300 members from the village of Gando and the surrounding province of Boulgou. The association provides a venue for the local women to form a strong social and economic union, in order to

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   The construction of a health center as part of the Opera Village project followed the aim of improving basic health assistance for the local population. The CSPS, acronym for Centre de Santè et de Promotion Sociale, is fit out with the necessary inst

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   Two years before his death, artist, filmmaker, and playwright Christoph Schlingensief managed to embark Kéré on his dream of building an opera house in the heart of Africa. While traveling through Burkina Faso in search of the adequate site, the coun

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Mali   Located where the Niger and Bani rivers meet, Mopti is Mali’s fourth largest city and its main commercial port. After the restoration of the Great Mosque of Mopti, commonly known as the Mosque of Komoguel, The Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) turned

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Mali   Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence, the National Park of Mali, located in Bamako, the capital, reopened. Several new accesses were built, aside from a restaurant and a sports center. Clad in locally sourced stone, the

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   Following the strategies applied at the Primary School in Gando, the main aim of the project was to design a sustainable school that would adapt to the extreme conditions of Burkina Faso. Its construction was carried out with the help of workers who

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   Two years after the opening of the primary school in Gando, demand continued to increase, which encouraged to add an extension for more than 120 students. The extension was designed following the same principles that inspired the first school. The wa

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   The teachers’ houses were designed to attract teachers out to the countryside, as well as to promote the use of earth as a sustainable and durable building material. The houses were realized as a series of adaptable modules, each of size comparable t

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The year of artificial intelligence and of the war in Gaza has also been the one that has let the voices of the Global South be heard more clearly. After a year of universal use of ChatGPT, AI rises on the horizon as an extraordinary technological ad

Isabelle Regnier   The African continent is the great protagonist of a Venetian gathering that has its eyes on the future of the planet and is increasingly diverse.

In spite of everything, biennials maintain their influence on themes tackled by artists and architects. At the least, they reflect certain preoccupations, and in the best of cases they contribute to giving form to ‘agendas,’ albeit only while the spo

Biennale Architettura 2023

Amid the grandiloquence that architecture of success sometimes seems to don as proof thereof, this year’s Pritzker is the definitive anointing of a practice that stands out for humility and commitment to serve people in the most efficient and economi

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The world has its eyes on the war waging in Eastern Europe, but the continent’s south has its own calamity: the tragedy of hunger, terrorism, and desolation.

The Economist   Like an enormous grey skeleton, a six-storey apartment building looms over a quiet street in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Concrete balconies and bedrooms are discernible. But there are no windows, doors or lights. And the only painting is of the sc

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Diébédo Francis Kéré appeared on our screen with the Aga Khan Award in 2004. I wrote about him in the newspaper El País in December of that year, and the Yearbook released shortly after (AV 111-112) covered prominently the now mythical school in Gand

Luis Fernández-Galiano   In the beginning was the tree. If Gottfried Semper had extended his archaeological and ethnographic explorations to the African Savannah, he would there have found confirmation of many of his theses, and he would have modified others to enrich his na

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Francis Kéré commences a third century for our monographs, and there are good reasons for this. The most evident refer to his leading role in a new generation of architects determined to build a better world working for those in need, for whom the Bu

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Designed architecture should not be mixed up with ‘design’ architecture. Here we borrow the title from Victor Papanek to introduce the work of fifty studios from Africa and Asia that design for the real world. The sometimes precarious conditions, the

Ricky Burdett   Even in the short time of my involvement as a trustee of the Norman Foster Foundation in this ‘futuristic’ project, the future has become a reality. We all know that technology is moving so fast that we can’t keep apace of developments. But in the ca

David Adjaye   A lo largo de una década, David Adjaye ha viajado por 53 capitales africanas; fruto de este singular periplo, el siguiente relato da cuenta de la fértil diversidad de la arquitectura del continente.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The black continent has turned green: in the former heart of darkness there is room for hope, and both in the Sub-Saharan jungles and savannahs and in the political spring of the Mediterranean Coast budding green sprouts feed faith in a possible futu

Llátzer Moix   Burkinés de origen, Kéré se formó como arquitecto en Alemania y su primera obra fue una escuela para su aldea; su lema ‘ayuda para ayudarte’ resume la esencia de la solidaridad africana.

Peter Eisenman   Por primera vez en la historia, la cadena de televisión ESPN/ABC ha retransmitido en directo todos y cada uno de los partidos del Mundial de Fútbol 2010 celebrado en Sudáfrica, que se han seguido desde los hogares, los bares y hasta los ordenadores e

Henning Rasmuss   De los diez estadios que han sido escenario de los partidos del campeonato mundial de fútbol destacan los construidos en cuatro de las más importantes ciudades sudafricanas.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   We pretend to be citizens of the globe, but in truth we live in a small world. AV/Arquitectura Viva set out, from their birth almost a quarter of a century ago, to cover the architecture of the planet, and the choice of Berlin as theme of the maiden

Iain Low   Las primeras elecciones libres y democráticas celebradas en Suráfrica en 1994 marcaron un momento de gran expectación, también para la arquitectura. De manera parecida al proceso experimentado por España y Portugal en los años setenta, Suráfrica se d

It would be hard to name a continent as ignored as Africa, or depicted in more simplistic terms. In Africa lay one of the cradles of civilization – not to say cradle of the human species. Its history has been dotted with moments of crisis but also of

Hans Focketyn Ingrid Schröder Julia Jamrozik Manuel Herz   The Architecture of Independence. Ghana, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Zambia

Andres Lepik (ed.)   Ostfildern  2013  
Hatje Cantz   - 271 Pages 

Covadonga Lorenzo   Madrid  2013  
CEU Ediciones   - 111 Pages 

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Arquitecturas del siglo XXI

Antoni Folkers   Amsterdam  2010  
SUN   - 368 Pages