magazine no. 17

Magazine No. 17

Construct Africa
No. 17 - Construct Africa
- page 02
  Construct Africa
  Rethinking architecture in Africa
- page 03
  Editorial
  Construct Africa
- page 04 - 11
  What is "Afritecture"?
  Andres Lepik discusses the manifold issues raised by his exhibition in Munich
- page 12 - 13
  Makoko Floating School
  A new school prototype for a village prone to flooding near Lagos, Nigeria
- page 14 - 17
  Ahmed Baba Institute
  Manuscript Research and Conservation Centre, Timbuktu, Mali
- page 18 - 20
  Making Space
  Kibera Public Space Porjects, Nairobi, Kenya
- page 21 - 24
  Red Location
  Cultural Centre and Museum in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
- page 25 - 38
  Continental Shift
  A group discussion about how to reconnect architecture with Africa
- page 39 - 42
  Accelerated Learning
  An innovative school building programme
- page 43 - 45
  Neighborhood Knowledge
  Informal Studio: Ruimsig, Johannesburg, South Africa A course for residents as experts of their own living situations
- page 46 - 47
  Locally Sourced
  House Renovation and Conversion, Nairobi
- page 48 - 49
  My Home, My Bed, My Mango Tree
  Creating as sense of place at a sustainable orphanage in Guabuliga, Ghana
- page 50 - 53
  East Coast Critique
  Dar es Salaam's ANZA Magazine
- page 54 - 57
  Bookmarked
  uncube editors' picks of 2013
- page 58
  Klaustoon
  XI. Form Follows Friction (AKA: Za Ha Ha.. Did I?)
- page 59
  Next
  Slovenia!
- uncube's editors are Sophie Lovell (Art Director, Editor-in-Chief), Florian Heilmeyer, Rob Wilson and Elvia Wilk. Graphic design: Lena Giavanazzi.
  
  uncube is based in Berlin and is published by BauNetz, Germany's most-read online magazine covering architecture in a thoughtful way since 1996.
Putting this issue of uncube together has been tough but inspiring, and generated much debate in the office. It grew out of a new exhibition in Munich called Afritecture – Building Social Change. The theme of socially engaged architecture in Sub-Saharan Africa is immensely broad, with projects and situations ranged across thousands of miles and many countries. Our task has been to unpick common issues, yet avoid excessive generalisation.

Despite a clear thread emerging related to the integration of the formal and the informal (a global issue), the central paradox at the heart of this project remains: the negative implications inherent in any attempt to present a panoramic view of an entire continent, versus the potential benefits of bringing some of these remarkable projects to light. Of course, uncube is never afraid of a challenge.

The editors
Cover Photo: courtesy DesignSpaceAfrica
What is
»AfRitecture«?
Architecture curator Andres Lepik discusses the manifold issues raised by his exhibition in Munich

Interview by Florian Heilmeyer, Illustrations by Lena Giovanazzi
»We wanted to gather together examples of an architecture that we contend could be a model for a possible future in Africa.«
»Anyone who believes it’s possible to save the world with some well-designed toilets is naïve... But you also can’t allow yourself to become paralysed from shock, either.«
»An approach that focuses on social commitment is rare in architecture throughout the world.«
»We present an architecture that is consciously not aligned with typical commercial paradigms as seen in Dubai or Shanghai.«
The exhibition »Afritecture – Building Social Change« is Andres Lepik’s first endeavour as the new director of the Architecture Museum at TU Munich. It’s a bold move, given the title’s potential to stir up controversy. Couldn’t Afritecture sound a bit post-colonial, especially given the show’s context in a city that can easily be understood as a symbol of Western prosperity?

But Lepik’s selection of smart, small-scale projects from the Sub-Sahara and their sensitive presentation seems to justify the risk of ruffling feathers – particularly when it comes to the projects’ potential to serve as models for future initiatives the world over. We spoke to Lepik in Munich on the occasion of the show’s opening, curious about how he envisions its role. He met our concerns head-on.
Exhibition view of “Afritecture”, in the background: Sammlung Brandhorst, Architect: Sauerbruch Hutton. (Photo: Esther Vlethsos courtesy Pinakotheken der Moderne)
Your exhibition showcases 26 projects from 10 African countries south of the Sahara. This is an area larger than the US, China or Europe – isn’t that stretching it a bit far? Aren’t these countries too diverse to gather together in a single exhibition?

Sub-Saharan Africa is an enormous territory with immense differences. The goal of “Afritecture – Building Social Change” is not to exhibit the current state of architecture in this entire region. It is rather a continuation of my involvement with socially-engaged architecture, which I examined in my exhibitions in New York in 2010 and in Frankfurt am Main in 2012. I included a few projects from Africa in these shows, and this time I wanted to focus entirely on Africa. But to state that I could give an overview of everything happening in this huge area would be presumptuous. Instead I felt like I was in a research ship travelling across the ocean, lowering a few probes to the ocean floor and removing some samples that I thought were important and interesting. Now we’ve put these samples up for public discussion.

What criteria did you use for selecting the projects?

We wanted to present projects that fulfill a social function, are built for a broad audience and have participatory strategies for local communities. Another important criterion was how vigorously the architects were personally involved in either the research and/or the concept, demonstrating a strong commitment to social responsibility. We were also concerned with how each project responded to local conditions: climate, topography, and materials, plus political, social and cultural parameters. It was not easy to find projects that met all these criteria – yet we would have had the same difficulty on other continents. A focus on social commitment is rare in architecture throughout the world.

As a result of these criteria, the viewer encounters extremely ambitious but relatively small projects. They prompt reflection, but ultimately one is left with a good, reassuring feeling. Together with the title “Afritecture” and given the enormous range of problems in Africa, does this give us a false impression?

Every exhibition is an assertion about the future, and our assertion is that these 26 projects have significance as models for a new understanding of architecture in Africa.

We present an architecture that is consciously not aligned with typical commercial paradigms of construction, as seen in Dubai or Shanghai, but which is developed through local or regional traditions and uses local materials and technologies to create something specific to its context.
For visitors to the exhibition and readers of the catalogue, however, it could remain difficult to understand the highly disparate local contexts of the projects.

We couldn’t represent and explain every project with all its details. I suppose each of these projects could have been an exhibition on its own. But we are not hiding the context.

I think our selection includes both the small-scale and the large-scale: there are local projects such as Bärbel Müller’s HIV orphanage on the edge of a village in Ghana, which only consists of a few buildings and is dedicated to a specific problem in that community, as well as projects that relate to a larger and mostly informal context, such as the Red Location District, the Floating School in Makoko or the Kibera Public Space Project in Nairobi. These aren’t megastructures or large-scale interventions, but they can have a huge impact on their surroundings.

Exhibitions can also have an impact. As curator, I naturally hope that we can have an impact on the discourse and on public opinion.
To enter the exhibition, visitors were asked to take their shoes off. (Photo: Esther Vlethsos courtesy Pinakotheken der Moderne)
Comparative Cartography: There is a considerable degree of immapancy – insufficient geographical knowledge – when it comes to understanding the scale in question when talking about Africa as a continent. It always helps to have a comparison for the sake of perspective.
- ANDRES LEPIK is director of the Architecture Museum TU Munich and professor for architectural history and curatorial studies. He studied art history at the universities of Augsburg and Munich. From 1994 he was curator at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin and from 2007-2011 at the Architecture and Design Department for The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where he presented “Small Scale, Big Change. New Architectures of Social Engagement” in 2010 which was his first major exhibition dedicated to the topic of socially engaged architecture. After his Loeb-Fellowship at the GSD in Harvard in 2011 he followed this interest by the exhibition “Think Global, Build Social” in 2012 at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt/Main and now by “Afritecture – Building Social Change”.
  
  AFRITECTURE – BUILDING SOCIAL CHANGE
  13th September 2013 – 2nd February 2014
  Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany
  
  www.architekturmuseum.de
We hope these projects will receive greater attention and appreciation in their own countries as a result of this exhibition.

It’s difficult to talk about all the issues in this exhibition without making blanket statements or over-generalisations. For me, the exhibition and the catalogue seem to imply categorical hope and optimism. I’m sceptical of that impression, because I don’t know enough about the context of each project or its effects. What about you? Are you optimistic?

In the face of the rapid, simultaneous developments in the cities of Asia, South America and Africa, anyone who believes it’s possible to save the world with some well-designed toilets or kindergartens is naïve. Alarmingly naïve.
And it’s just as misguided to believe that substantial change could be effected in three or five years. But you can’t allow yourself to become paralysed with shock either.

The reality in many parts of Africa does not give cause for optimism. The quantity and magnitude of poorly designed buildings can be devastating. We cannot persistently use the USA, Germany, or Japan as a reference – indeed, that is precisely what leads to these imported concepts that don’t work in the African context. The examples in this exhibition point to a possible future that could not only serve short-term political interests, but also tangibly improve the living conditions of many people.

In that fundamental sense, the themes and issues covered by the exhibition are no longer just African, but are of global importance – and of course we in Europe and North America should also ask ourselves what we can learn from these ideas and approaches. I’m optimistic.

About andres Lepik
Makoko
Floating School

A new school prototype for a village prone to flooding near Lagos, Nigeria

Architect: NLÉ
The largest public space in the village, the Makoko Floating School rides the waves, protecting it from annual floods. (All photos © Iwan Baan)
- PROJECT: Makoko Floating School
  
  LOCATION: Makoko, Lagos, Nigeria
  
  ARCHITECTS: NLÉ and Dykstra Naval Architects, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  
  DESIGN TEAM: Kunlé Adeyemi, Lisa Anderson, Thijs Bouman, Leslie Ebony, Marije Nederveen, Segun Omodele, Adekunle Olusola, Chryso Onisiforou, Martin Oreoluwa, Berend Strijland, Monica Velasco
  
  CLIENT/BENEFICIARY: Makoko / Iwaya Waterfront Community
  
  CONSTRUCTION: 2012 - 2013
- NLÉ is led by the architect, designer, and urbanist Kunlé Adeyemi, who has worked closely with Rem Koolhaas at OMA on numerous projects, including the Lagos Masterplan. Born and raised in Nigeria, Adeyemi studied architecture at the University of Lagos, where he began his early practice before joining the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in 2002. His work focuses on city development research and urban interventions.
Makoko is an overcrowded former fishing village with 150,000 residents that spills from a marshy shore out into a brackish lagoon. It is one of many informal settlements in the largest and most rapidly growing metropolis of sub-Saharan Africa.

Many of Makoko’s wooden houses are built on stilts above the water. But every year during the rainy season, many of the buildings on land, including the school, are submerged. With the Makoko Floating School, NLÉ has created an extension to the existing school that is also a prototype for other settlements with similar conditions as well as an ambitious scheme: the Lagos Water Communities Project.

The three-level wooden construction with its triangular frame structure floats on a pontoon made of 256 recycled plastic barrels. At around 100 square metres, the lower storey offers the largest public space in Makoko. The two upper storeys house four classrooms and two workshops for up to 100 students.

A low centre of gravity and the triangular shape keeps the floating platform quite stable even with rapid and dramatic shifts of weight. The expansive roof surfaces are equipped with photovoltaic panels for electricity, and rainwater is collected in the plastic tanks. Compost toilets in the lower storey are a novelty for the village: until now, all sewage was deposited in the lagoon.

Project Info

About the Architect

The Makoko School's three stories include workshop, classroom, and play areas.
Ahmed Baba
Institut

Manuscript Research and Conservation Centre, Timbuktu, Mali

Architect: DHK Architects and twothink architecture

Aiming to reclaim the heritage of a city that has long been a prominent centre of scholarship and Islamic theology, yet challenged by political and economic pressures in the postcolonial period, the Ahmed Baba Institute set up by the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project, is a new research centre for the conservation and consolidation of over 20,000 rare manuscripts.

The Ahmed Baba Institute aims to form a pivot between the organic streetscape of the old city and the more rigid grid of the new. (All photos © Iwan Baan)
The Institute's public reading room.
The Ahmed Baba Institute's facade impliments traditional and contemporary materials, integrating the local vernacular of Sahelian architecture.
- THE DHK GROUP, founded 30 years ago, offers both architectural and urban design, as well as interior design consulting services, under the company brands of: DHK Architects, DHK Urban Design, and DHK Thinkspace. The group operates from Cape Town and Johannesburg, with additional offices in Namibia and consortium offices elsewhere in Africa. DHK has worked on projects throughout Africa, in countries including Mauritius, the Seychelles, Tanzania, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana, as well as over the last 18 years in Italy.
- PROJECT: Ahmed Baba Institute
  
  LOCATION: Sankore Precinct, Timbuktu, Mali
  
  PROJECT ARCHITECTS: DHK Architects and twothink architecture, Cape Town, South Africa
  
  DESIGN TEAM: Peter Fehrsen, Derick Henstra, Andre Spies
  
  CIENT: Timbuktu Manuscript Trust
  
  DATE: 2006 - 2009
The project faced formidable challenges given limited infrastructure and the arid desert climate. There was also the cultural challenge of reaching international research objectives, whilst being mindful of local economic conditions, and respecting the local vernacular of the region’s architecture. The resulting 50,000-square-foot institution includes proper storage, a conservation lab open to public viewing, a specialised public library and a state-of-the-art auditorium.

Though Timbuktu has faced many challenges, its multi-storey adobe architecture legacy has remained mostly intact. Project architect Andre Spies’ design aims to form a pivot between the organic streetscape of the old city and the more rigid grid of the new. Traditional influence in the form of carved portals, and thick mud walls, is found in the exterior entrance “hallway”. The building also upholds the local mud vernacular, purchasing mud bricks from local craftsmen and drawing on the important societal role of the mason by enlisting a local expert who blended mud and concrete to create a façade material consistent with the local fabric yet also rain repellent. The building is arranged around a central courtyard, creating sightlines to the Sankoré Mosque, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

project info

ABout the architects

The entrance “hallway” of the Insitute.
Making
Space

Kibera Public Space Projects, Nairobi, Kenya

Architect: Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI)
This series of projects was designed in partnership with local representatives to improve the physical, economic, and social quality of life in Kibera, southwest Nairobi, which is Africa’s largest informal settlement. Home to approximately half a million people, the settlement is without legal recognition and so lacks basic municipal infrastructure including any waste disposal or sewage facilities. As a result both are deposited in the small rivers which traverse the sloping site, severely diminishing the quality of life for residents and creating a continual danger of disease transmission.

Kibera locals do their laundry in a new wash station that employs water from a natural spring. (All photos courtesy Kounkuey Design Initiative)
- KOUNKUEY DESIGN INITIATIVE (KDI) partners with residents of impoverished areas to develop and implement design solutions that improve the physical, economic, and social quality of life. KDI believes that participatory planning and design are key to sustainable development. By working collaboratively with communities from conception through implementation, KDI builds on their ideas, enhances them with technical knowledge and design innovation, and connects them to extant resources. In doing so, they empower communities to advocate for themselves and to address the major physical, social, and economic challenges that they face.
  
  www.konkuey.org
- PROJECT: Kibera Public Space Projects 01 – 05
  
  LOCATION: Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya
  
  PROJECT ARCHITECTS: Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI): Margaret Knight, Michelle Sintaa Morna, Los Angeles, USA/Nairobi, Kenya
  
  DESIGN TEAM: April Schneider, Jack Campbell-Clause, Jessica Bremner, Chelina Odbert, Arthur Adeya
  
  CLIENT: Slumcare, Ndovu, and Usalama Youth Reform (community-based organisations)
  
  CONSTRUCTION DATE: ongoing since 2006
Pursuing an approach known as “urban acupuncture”, a concept first implemented successfully in the Rio favelas in the ‘90s by Jorge Mario Jáuregui, six then-students from the fields of landscape architecture and architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design joined together to launch the Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) in 2006.

The first project between 2007 and 2009 was devoted to transforming a riverbank into a publicly usable space by stabilising it with gabions. This created a stable surface no longer inundated with refuse, and a new open space which is now the site for an assembly and educational building, a small garden centre with composting facilities, a playground for children, an office building and a rainwater tank. Later projects resulting from workshops with residents include a public sanitary facility and a multifunctional building accommodating a sales kiosk and bathrooms. A laundry station, situated by a natural spring discovered at the site, uses water that is not potable but can be used to wash hands or clothing.

PRoject info

ABOUT THE ARCHITECTS
Kibera Public Space Project 03 emerged from workshops with local residents, aiming to create new economic, social, and infrastructural perspectives.
Red Location

Cultural centre and museum in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Architect: Noero Wolff / Noero Architects
The Red Location art gallery forms a u-shape around a corrugated roof shack dating from around 1902, that has been integrated into its site plan. (All photos © Iwan Baan)
In the polished concrete, high-ceilinged spaces of the museum’s interior, giant rusted-steel “Memory Boxes” are designed for the preservation and display of documents from the township, as well as commemorative artefacts contributed by every inhabitant.
- NOERO WOLFF / NOERO ARCHITECTS
  Jo Noero founded Noero Architects in Johannesburg in 1984 (called Noero Wolff Architects between 1999 and May 2012). The practice has offices in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, and has been the recipient of local and international awards, including the Lubetkin Prize from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2006, the Ralph Erskine Prize from the Nordic Association of Architects in 1993, and the Gold Medal for Architecture from the South African Institute of Architects in 2010. Noero Architects has designed and built over 200 projects, and their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Venice Biennale, the Sao Paolo Biennale, the Singapore Biennale, and the National Gallery of Art in Cape Town.
- PROJECT: Museum of Struggle and the Red Location Cultural Precinct
  
  LOCATION: New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
  
  PROJECT ARCHITECTS: Noero Wolff Architects
  
  DESIGN PARTNER: Jo Noero
  
  PROJECT TEAM: Jo Noero, Heinrich Wolff, Robert McGiven, Tanzeem Rezak, Avish Mistry, Amit Patel, Ricardo Sa, John Blair
  
  CLIENT: Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality
  
  CONSTRUCTION DATE: 2003 to present
The elongated form of the museum echoes those of the surrounding township.
Red Location is a cultural centre and museum in New Brighton, one of the oldest townships on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth. The centre’s name refers to the reddish rust of the corrugated metal roofs of the surrounding township.

The museum, which opened in 2005, commemorates the area’s intense resistance to the apartheid regime. It was extended in 2011 with a library, digital archive and an art gallery, which shows art from the townships as well as a permanent collection of works from the Eastern Cape.

During construction the project provided work and training for local inhabitants, with a third of construction workers recruited from among unskilled labourers in the immediate vicinity. The three completed buildings’ forms and materials – such as the museum’s unplastered brickwork and saw-tooth roof – deliberately correspond to neighbouring industrial buildings, helping integrate them into their surroundings. Currently Red Location has 119,000 visitors annually, benefitting not only the institutions themselves but also local residents’ businesses. Future phases of the project will include two theatres, an arts and crafts school and a music school.

Project info

About the architect
Continental shift

A group discussion about how to reconnect
architecture with Africa

Text by Florian Heilmeyer, Illustrations by Lena Giovanazzi
»The question is: what kind of an architect does Africa need?«
Luyanda Mpahlwa (Cape Town)
»What we need are people that bridge the gap between the few formal areas and the informal system.«
Thorsten Deckler (Johannesburg)

»We don’t even have terminology to talk about these kinds of cities. We need to re-evaluate culture and our language to find words to describe what’s in front of us.«
Angela Mingas (Luanda)
A symposium accompanying the Afritecture exhibition provided an ideal opportunity for uncube’s Florian Heilmeyer to gather five experts to discuss some of the pressing issues facing architecture across Africa.

Although the participants came from a diverse range of countries, professions and contexts, certain key topics and issues stood out during the week of lectures and discussions accompanying the show: questions of formal and informal structures, of rediscovering or protecting traditional techniques, of education, and of local identity. During the uncube round table discussion, these issues crystallised around the need for entirely new models and ideas for architecture and urbanism.
- LUYANDA MPAHLWA
  (Cape Town, South Africa)
  
  Luyanda Mpahlwa’s architectural education in South Africa in the 1980’s was interrupted when he was incarcerated for political activities against apartheid. As an exile in Germany, he later completed his architectural degree at Technische Universität Berlin. In 2000, Mpahlwa moved back to his native South Africa, where he founded the MMA Architects studio in Cape Town. In 2009, he established his own design practice, Luyanda Mpahlwa DesignSpaceAfrica. He is the recipient of the South African Institute of Architecture Award of Excellence for the South African embassy building in Berlin. Mpahlwa was the first African ever to be awarded the International Curry Stone Design Prize in 2008. Another career highlight was his role in the technical committee team organising the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
  
  designspaceafrica.com
Florian Heilmeyer // I was relieved that during the discussions over the last two days there was no attempt to summarise a “typical Africa” or to identify any Pan-African trends. For me the many different projects, ideas and perspectives from many different African countries are clearly connected to current issues being discussed worldwide. The problems of economic growth, rapid urbanisation, rapid social transformation and weak political structures are shared not only between African countries but around the globe. Yet there are also specific shared approaches to be found in your work. Could it be said that you’re all trying to understand and upgrade older techniques in order to revive them in the face of globalised concepts of Modernism?

Luyanda Mpahlwa // In a very general way I’d say yes. We still need to connect architecture with Africa. Most of what we have learned in the universities in Africa is not applicable in practice; it fundamentally misunderstands how Africa works. In the village where I was born in South Africa, there is no architect or engineer – but people know how to build. They learned to build from their parents, who learned it from their parents. This culture of building one’s own house continues today in many African cities, but over time this understanding has been lost in the face of Modernist planning methods. We now have the opportunity and the responsibility to reconnect people with local building conditions and knowledge.
»Do we need an ‘African architect’? No. We need to empower local people to make them part of the solution.«

ABout Luyanda Mpahlwa
Empty Promise: Thirty miles from Angola‘s capital of Luanda, Nova Cidade de Kilamba was built by the China International Trust and Investment Corporation to house half a million residents – who have yet to arrive. Though governmental subsidies may finally be enticing people to buy homes, the few people to be seen there are still mostly guest workers brought in to maintain its empty grounds. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
- NAEEM BIVIJI
  (Nairobi, Kenya)
  
  Naeem Biviji studied architecture at the University of Edinburgh where he graduated in 2004. He has worked for HCP in Ahmedabad, India, and as a furniture maker in Kenya and Scotland. In 2005, in collaboration with Bethan Rayner, he co-founded Studio Propolis in Nairobi, Kenya. Operating across disciplines and scales, their approach to architecture combines studio-based design work with a direct involvement in the process of making. Studio Propolis is involved with a broad range of work from design and built architecture projects to prototyping and manufacturing custom furniture and joinery. Work includes institutional buildings, houses, gallery spaces, mass seating solutions and one-of a kind pieces of furniture.
  
  www.studiopropolis.com
»In Kenya there is no culture of building anymore, it seems to have died out.«

ABOUT Naeem Biviji
Naeem Biviji // I agree. In Kenya, where I have lived and worked since 2005, there is no culture of building anymore, it seems to have died out. As an architect I feel impotent to do anything in an environment crippled by unchanging planning laws and regulations. Due to rapid globalisation the markets are flooded with cheap materials, products and systems, and the skill level of many workers in Kenya is very low. We need to build up local industry, train people and re-integrate older materials and techniques.

Florian Heilmeyer // And to revive the culture of building without architects?

Luyanda Mpahlwa // When I say people don’t need architects in Africa, I don’t mean that architecture is unnecessary. The question is: what kind of an architect does Africa need?
What tools do we need to make architecture accessible and to connect it to the skills within our many different cultures? Architecture cannot create an appropriate environment without connecting to local culture, but at the same time these cultures are changing fast. People working in cities are now used to a certain lifestyle and infrastructure. The traditional is considered anti-modern, poor and antiquated. Even the South African Rondavel, typical round huts with pitched roofs, are disappearing.

Andres Lepik // In 2011 the government in Rwanda officially prohibited thatched roofs, even in the smallest villages. They have to be replaced by corrugated iron because the president decided that thatched roofs are no longer “decent architecture”.

Angela Mingas // I was born in Angola and studied architecture in Portugal, Spain and the UK before I returned home. My friends and I were unsatisfied with architecture education in Angola, so we founded the second private architecture school in Luanda. We try to address the question of what architecture and urbanism in Angola are today. If we can look at Luanda in an unbiased way, this city is a laboratory breeding all kinds of different forms of urbanity, formal, informal and everything in-between. But how can we develop an unbiased approach if terms like “formal” and “informal” already evoke wrong associations and images? At our university we discuss new urbanisms with a broad range of people from different backgrounds, like sociologists, economists, politicians, philosophers, and poets. We want to really understand how Luanda works, and only then can we develop methods for improving real living conditions.

Florian Heilmeyer // Thorsten, you were born in Namibia, studied in Johannesburg and went abroad to work in the Netherlands with OMA on projects in Asia and Europe. In 2004 you returned to South Africa. What was it like to come back to Johannesburg?

Thorsten Deckler // Johannesburg is also a laboratory. You cannot separate architecture from urbanism there. Johannesburg educated us as we started to explore and analyse the unknown territories of the informal settlements. Well, at least they were unknown to architects! Statistics say that only five per cent of the built environment in Africa is formal planning.
Forced Modernisation: Rwandan “nyakasi”, the traditional round huts with thatched roofs, are becoming obsolete across the country as the central government pressures residents to replace the thatching with corrugated sheet metal, one of various “forced modernisation” schemes. Though more reliable for rain-protection, metal roofs are not appropriate for the climate and they are unsustainable since residents cannot repair them individually. (Photo: Melanie and John Kotsopoulos)
- ANGELA CHRISTINA MINGAS
  (Luanda, Angola)
  
  Angela Christina Mingas is both director of the CEIC Arquitectura (Centre for Studies and Scientific Research) and the FCT (Faculty of Technological Sciences) at the University Lusiada of Angola. Since 2004 she has held different positions at this institution in her primary fields of expertise, including architecture, pedagogy and academic administration. In 2013, she received her PhD from Universidade Lusiada, Oporta, Portugal. Mingas gained experience as an architect and consultant in various venues, both private and public. For the Expo Zaragoza 2008 she was on the technical sub committee for the Angola pavillion, and from 2009 to 2011, she was the technical consultant to the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Angola in Luanda.
»We try to help a new generation of architects to develop pride in their roots as Angolans, as Africans, as humans and as architects.«

About Angela Christina

This leaves 95 per cent to what we call “informal” – so why do we distinguish between the two at all? Both are valid and architects have to be able to work with both commercial and informal architecture.

Angela Mingas // The term “informal” makes no sense; informal is only classified as such because formal planning is unable to deal with different forms of urbanity. We don’t even have terminology to talk about these kinds of cities. We need to re-evaluate the urban culture and our language to find words to describe what’s in front of us. To address this we recently started a new course at our school where we try to invent a form of urbanity based on Bantu philosophy.

Thorsten Deckler // Architects often complain about their increasing irrelevance, which is ridiculous. We can’t focus on the five per cent of formal structures and call our work relevant.
- THORSTEN DECKLER
  (Johannesburg, South Africa)
  
  Thorsten Deckler studied architecture at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He has worked for OMA/Rem Koolhaas on projects in Europe and Asia, where he gained international working experience. In South Africa, Deckler worked together with Peter Rich on rural developments. He operated his own architectural practice for three years before joining forces with Anne Graupner to co-found 26’10 south Architects. Their work focuses on the various contexts of the city. Projects range from large-scale works to housing, from private residences to building conversions. Exhibitions, art installations and community events represent another line of their architectural services. 26’10 initiated an independent research project which investigated the “Informal City”. In 2012, the office was selected as the best emerging practice in South Africa.
  
  www.2610south.co.za
»Only five per cent of the built environment in Africa is formal planning. This leaves 95 per cent to what we call ‘informal’ – so why do we distinguish between the two at all?«

ABOUT THORSTEN DECKLER
In most African cities there is no way formal planning methods could ever get control over the incredible speed of development. What we need are people that bridge the gap between the few formal areas and the informal system, which breaks every rule you learn in university. We have to humanise our cities starting from what is already there. Even in South Africa, where modern town planning was used to establish a racist political system of control and segregation, it is incredible to see the potential of the townships to grow into real, liveable cities now. Unfortunately I see that our universities are still sticking to their old conservative concepts.

Florian Heilmeyer // Baerbel, you have worked at the University of the Applied Arts in Vienna since 2002 and you have frequently brought your students to Ghana and the DR Congo.
Fish Out of Water: Luanda‘s New Assembly Hall was completed in 2013. Designed by the Beirut-based DAR Group and constructed by the Portuguese company Teixeira Duarte, its resemblance to early 1900s colonial architecture represents the privileging of imported architecture styles ill-suited to local context. With no public competition, let alone pause for reflection, the whole building was built from prefabricated panels shipped to Luanda and slapped together in six weeks. (Photo: Sheenagh Burrell, almalink.org)
- BAERBEL MUELLER
  (Vienna, Austria)
  
  Baerbel Mueller founded nav_s baerbel mueller (navigations in the field of architecture and urban research within diverse cultural contexts), which has focused on projects in Ghana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2002. She is assistant professor at the Institute of Architecture (IoA) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and professor at the New Design University in Sankt Pölten, Austria. From 2002 to 2011, she taught at the studio of Wolf D. Prix, directing student realisation projects and interdisciplinary courses. Since October 2011, she has been the head of the IoA (applied) Foreign Affairs Lab, which investigates spatial and cultural phenomena in rural and urban Sub-Saharan Africa through research-based workshops and field trips.
  
  www.nav-s.net
How do you prepare the students for working in such a very different context?

Baerbel Mueller // I’m always asked whether it is different to work in Austria than in Ghana. In general terms, it isn’t – architects should always try to understand the given context of a project, in Europe and in Africa alike. Of course, the local circumstances are always very specific. In some places in Africa people don’t even understand what an architect is and you are always identified as an engineer. But it doesn’t matter what you are called. You face a task, you start a dialogue, and you build trust. It’s like being a politician, in the sense that you are a choreographer of many processes, trying to find spatial responses.

Luyanda Mpahlwa // It was interesting to return to South Africa after nearly 15 years away. My home country had changed so much that I almost had an outsider’s view.
»It’s like being a politician, in the sense that you are a choreographer of many processes, trying to find spatial responses.«

ABOUT BAERBEL MUELLER
At university in Berlin I was trained to look at context, history, politics, and culture. Can “African architects” solve all the problems? No. We need to empower local people to make them part of the solution. That being said, direct participation is not the solution to every task; that is a trap. We must analyse the context and find the right strategy, which is sometimes participatory and sometimes not. And universities are fundamental; young architects must learn that architecture is not about starchitecture or glossy images for magazines. I had to go to Berlin to find teachers that were interested in the traditional techniques of Africa.

Angela Mingas // It’s also a question of pride. When my students graduate and face the market, they come back to me say, okay, I see the advantages of traditional materials and techniques, but my clients don’t want to live in an adobe house. Just recently a huge factory for cement bricks in Luanda was officially opened and the Minister of Building said on national television: “This is a great moment in the history of Angola because we are finally leaving adobe architecture behind us”. Unbelievable! The majority of politicians are very prejudiced about their own cultural heritage, they see it as something uncivilised, as if they were ashamed. We try to help a new generation of architects at our university to develop pride in their roots as Angolans, as Africans, as humans and as architects. In Europe you get the title of “architect” after studying for three years. In Angola, we will also teach you art, philosophy, sociology, and literature. That’s what you need as an architect there.

Thorsten Deckler // We are blinded by the images that flood over us every day on television and the internet. When we approach people in the townships of Johannesburg and ask them how they want to live, they start drawing a villa like they’ve seen on television. They live in a shack with eight people on 40 square metres or less, but they dream of a villa. How does one find common ground around what is achievable?

Florian Heilmeyer // Listening to all of you over the last days I am not sure if I should be optimistic because of the many ideas and projects that seem to be going in the right direction – or pessimistic because of the diversity of simultaneous challenges. How about you, are you optimistic or pessimistic?

Angela Mingas // I don’t know. In Angola there is a lack of a vision for the future.
Dubai Chic: “Rising like Aphrodite from the foam of the atlantic!” Eko Atlantic, “the new financial centre of Nigeria”, is a planned district of Lagos funded by international banks and private investors, slated to house a quarter million residents and 150,000 employees. This Dubai-like investment bonanza will not only generate a business-tourism industry and a lower class of underprivileged guest workers, but also reverse coastal erosion! Eco-friendly, indeed. (Image courtesy Eko Atlantic)
Most of what’s happening is only a quick reaction to the most urgent challenges. We must solve so many problems at the same time that its hard to develop any long-term plan. We still have not the slightest clue what an urbanism or an architecture of an independent Angola could look like.

Naeem Biviji // It is a complex challenge, but that is exactly what makes me optimistic: there is so much work to be done everywhere and so many creative people working at the same time to find possible answers.

Luyanda Mpahlwa // I think Africa will need a long time to answer these questions. Architects in Africa are still operating on a rather small scale while all these Dubai-isms, Shanghai-isms, whatever-isms are happening. Politicians and companies are still trying to solve African problems with models they’ve seen in other places. But modern skyscrapers of glass and steel will not solve the problems.

Thorsten Deckler // Am I optimistic about Johannesburg’s future? I don’t know. It’s a city that’s fast and harsh and diverse and changing all the time. Nothing that I’ve learned in university seems to apply here. Our tool kit has to be constantly updated, and we have to be very creative about this. That’s what makes it so interesting, exciting and challenging.

Baerbel Mueller // I agree with Naeem: there is enormous pressure and potential with all these developments happening at the same time. So there are many opportunities, and we need to be very creative.

Angela Mingas // You are right that there are many opportunities. But Luanda is in a terrible state and sometimes I feel like if we were doctors, we would have to attest that it is a dying body. I’d rather be training an athlete. I would like to turn Luanda into Usain Bolt, but instead we are tinkering around with all these symptoms of death. It can be so depressing. We must have the strength to look at this dying body and still imagine it as an athlete.

Naeem Biviji // Yes. Imagine the athlete.
Accelerated
Learning

An innovative school building programme in South Africa

Architect: DesignSpaceAfrica
A massive reconstruction project: one of 50 new schools being rebuilt on the steep rural terrain of Eastern Cape, their design led by DesignSpaceAfrica. (All photos courtesy DesignSpaceAfrica.)
The traditional design of an older school building contrasts with a new building nearby.
As part of the “Nutrition Block Kit”, the new design offers a sheltered eating area with built-in seating.
- PROJECT: The DBSA ASIDI Schools Building
  
  PROGRAM: 50 schools in 50 weeks the first phase of the Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI)
  
  LOCATION: Eastern Cape, South Africa
  
  PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT/CONSORTIUM LEADER: Luyanda Mpahlwa/DesignSpaceAfrica (Pty) Ltd Architects
  
  PROJECT ARCHITECTS: Ruben Reddy Architects cc, NN Architects, TCN Architects cc
  
  CLIENT: The Department Of Basic Education (DBE)
  
  CONSTRUCTION DATE: Jan 2012 - Nov 2013
- DESIGNSPACEAFRICA (PTY) LTD ARCHITECTS, based in Cape Town, was established by Luyanda Mpahlwa in 2009, and is an interdisciplinary design team of 20, who collaborate on developing design ideas integrating architecture, urban design, interior, and architectural graphic design.
  
  LUYANDA MPAHLWA, born 1958 in Mthatha, South Africa, began his architectural studies in Durban South Africa, at the University of Natal in 1978. He proceeded to Natal Technikon for an Architectural Diploma, which he completed in Robben Island Prison in 1982 where he was incarcerated for his anti-apartheid political activities. After his release from a 5 year prison term in 1986, he went into exile in Germany through the assistance of Amnesty International, where he completed his architectural training at the Technical University of Berlin (TU-Berlin) in 1997.
  
  designspaceafrica.com
This school building programme in the Eastern Cape, South Africa has achieved mass upgrades on a tight timetable and budget, whilst establishing a simple but thoughtful and coherent architectural language. Each school incorporates core teaching and other spaces – classrooms, libraries, laboratories, administration block, hygienic ablutions, and assembly area – sited in and around a courtyard, which allows for good supervision of learners. The entrance is defined by a forecourt with seating, creating a threshold between village and school, marked by a “Name Column” as marker and identifier of each school. Face-bricks differ in colour to identify individual buildings.
The courtyard layout also creates the opportunity for place-making in a rural environment, where built form is scattered and civic institutions are few and far between. Each design maximises natural light and ventilation, with generous verandas containing built-in seating. Every school has on average 20 tanks for water harvesting, ensuring the availability of clean drinking water. The design process was based on a “kit of parts” approach, in order to meet the very tight delivery programme, with packages to standardise component design and simplify execution for contractors, some of whom had limited experience.
And whilst the original schedule of rebuilding 50 schools in 50 weeks was not achieved, in part due to the difficult terrain (steep slopes and poor access roads for bulk delivery of materials and poor weather), all 50 schools were due to be completed in the last month, less than two years after the first ground was broken. p

PROJECT INFO

About the Architect
NEIGHBOURHOOD Knowledge

Informal Studio: Ruimsig, Johannesburg, South Africa.
A course supporting residents as experts of their own living situations

Architect: 26’10 south Architects
“The informal city in this case does what the formal system cannot: it provides affordable shelter and a foothold to opportunities of employment and advancement.”

Around 60 per cent of urban inhabitants in Africa live in informal conditions. This project aims to connect formal and informal settlement strategies in a people-driven process towards improving their living environments. It also represents a shift in the education of built environment professionals in South Africa. The concept was developed in 2011 by 26’10 south Architects, in partnership with the Goethe Institute, the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and various local NGOs, residents and experts. The first course was run with 16 architecture masters students over a seven week period.

The students worked together with eight local community architects from Ruimsig, an informal settlement on the western periphery of Johannesburg, on strategies for immediate and long-term improvements to the settlement. This resulted in a detailed mapping of the existing fabric as well as a proposed re-blocking plan. The process was strongly guided by the NGOs, Ikhayalami and CORC, experienced in in-situ upgrading and the community-based Informal Settlement Network, representing the interests of the residents.

The re-blocking was concerned with making minimal physical adjustments, most of which could be implemented by residents themselves, in order to improve immediate living conditions. The main objectives were the equitable distribution of land, addressing overcrowding and the activities of slumlords, the adjustment of movement routes to legal road widths for improved circulation and passage of emergency vehicles, and the creation and improvement of public and semi-public spaces.

A guiding principle of the course is that the development is not “delivered” by professionals, teachers or students, but is developed in participation with residents as legitimate experts of their own living situations.
- 26’10 SOUTH ARCHITECTS (principals Anne Graupner and Thosten Deckler) is based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and works in the city’s various contexts on projects ranging from large-scale works to housing, private residences, building conversions, exhibitions, art installations, and community events. In 2008 the practice won a three-year appointment in Diepsloot, one of South Africa’s most dynamic and complex post-apartheid informal settlements. At this time 26’10 initiated an independent research project in collaboration with the Goethe Institute investigating the “Informal City”. This project has evolved into a pilot course on participative design in informal settlement upgrading, developed for the University of Johannesburg. Courses were held in Ruimsig (2011) and in Marlboro South (2012), in which the practice was involved in pre- and post-course consultation with residents and the city. In 2012, the office was selected as the best emerging practice in South Africa in the Backstage Award.
  
  www.housinginformalcity.co.za
- PROJECT: Informal Studio: Ruimsig
  
  LOCATION: Ruimsig, Johannesburg, South Africa
  
  ORGANISERS/PARTICIPANTS: 26’10 south Architects, University of Johannesburg teaching staff and students, Ruimsig community architects and wider community.
  
  SUPPORT: Goethe Institute South Africa
  
  DATE: 2011-2012
Detailed “life-world” and “procurement” analyses undertaken by the students, with guidance from the community architects, served to highlight the realities of life in the settlement and the capacity of residents to build their own houses. Immediately after the course, 38 structures were moved and upgraded by residents assisted by the NGOs from the most congested part of Ruimsig to better positions within the settlement, and a further 96 structures are in the process of being moved and ungraded too. This project has contributed to addressing the 2.5 million unit backlog in formal houses in South Africa, with the New National Delivery Agreement targets including action plans for the upgrade of 400,000 units in well-located informal settlements by 2014.

Project info

ABout the architects

Together with the inhabitants, Informal Studio developed a master plan for the restructuring of an informal settlement in the outskirts of Johannesburg. (All photos courtesy Informal Studio)
Locally
sourced

House renovation and conversion, Nairobi, Kenya

Architect: Studio Propolis (Naeem Bijivi and Bethan Rayner)

Entrance view of the existing building before Studio Propolis renovation.

The roof truss becomes an open veranda and trellis, creating a threshold space of shifting shadows. (All photos courtesy Studio Propolis)
- STUDIO PROPOLIS is a Nairobi-based design workshop focused on imaginative, hand-crafted furniture and spaces. Established in 2005 by a husband and wife team – UK trained architects and furniture makers, Naeem Biviji and Bethan Rayner – their projects are designed to order at their work space in Nairobi‘s industrial area.
  
  www.studiopropolis.com
- PROJECT: House Renovation and Conversion.
  
  LOCATION: Kyuna Crescent, Nairobi, Kenya
  
  ARCHITECT: Studio Propolis
  
  CLIENT: Private
  
  DATE: 2006
Faced with a lack of materials and skilled workers for this project, the architects Studio Propolis looked locally to fill the resource gap. The connection that developed between available materials and local craft culture went on to inform their own practice of design and making, grounding the project in its context.

What should have been a simple undertaking – to renovate and convert a run-down four-bedroom house and garage into three, two-bedroom units – was complicated due to a lack of available building materials and products, meaning everything from hinges to window and cladding systems had to be designed and manufactured from scratch. Custom-made doors reconnect the house to the garden, while also maintaining a strong security barrier. These use readily available standard steel casement sections together with locally made cypress plywood panels, creating a robust, economical and practical system.

The architects chose an approach of minimal intervention, leaving the existing footprint of the old house largely intact. Even then, much of the building material from the initial partial demolition was salvaged by the local community. Huge windows orient towards the east, flooding the rooms with morning light, while the roof plane slopes down to the west, protecting the outdoor areas from the hot afternoon sun. A trellis provides counter weight to the thrust of the trussed roof, casting an amorphous play of shadows throughout the house.

PRoject info

ABout the architects
My Home
My Bed
My Mango
Tree

Creating as sense of place at a sustainable orphanage in Guabuliga, Ghana

Architect: nav_s baerbel mueller

The compound arrangement of spaces echoes that of the surrounding village. The wall mural, developed from a colour concept of artist Bernard Akoi-Jackson, was painted by the children at the orphanage. (All photos: Baerbel Mueller)
- BAERBEL MUELLER is an architect and the founder of nav_s baerbel mueller (navigations in the field of architecture and urban research within diverse cultural contexts), focusing on projects in Ghana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2002. She is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Architecture (IoA) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and Professor at the New Design University in Sankt Pölten, Austria. Since October 2011 she has been the Head of the IoA (applied) Foreign Affairs Lab, which investigates spatial and cultural phenomena in rural and urban Sub-Saharan Africa through research-based workshops and field trips.
  
  www.nav-s.net
- PROJECT: Orphanage Compounds for Volunteers and Children
  
  LOCATION: Guabuliga, Ghana
  
  PROJECT ARCHITECT: Baerbel Mueller, Vienna, Austria
  
  DESIGN TEAM: Daniel Telly, Frank B. Kumah, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Eva Pieber
  
  CLIENT: NGO Braveaurora, Austrian house for African children
  
  DATE: 2009 - 2011
In 2008, many of the children in this village orphanage in northern Ghana were ill and undernourished. The Austrian architect Baerbel Mueller proposed a new residence adopting local building traditions and attentive to the hot, dry climatic conditions.

The 2,000 village residents live mainly in traditional mud huts that form residential courtyards arranged in compounds across the scattered settlement. Mueller took up the typology of the compound in an oval-shaped layout planted with trees to provide shade, which enclosed within its walls rectangular, single-room buildings. Two such homesteads, one for volunteer helpers and another for 16 children, were erected between 2009 and 2011. Bricks for the buildings were produced with machinery on site and plastered with clay mortar as a finish. The integration and training of local labour forces was intended to strengthen the local economy.

The buildings are furnished with projecting, pitched roofs topped with sheet metal, which allow both ventilation and shelter during the rainy season. Louvred doors filter the light and facilitate natural air circulation. The energy supply is based on solar technology. The sanitary facilities were also renovated and additional bedrooms made available for siblings. The children themselves decorated their dwellings and outer areas in colour, working with Ghanaian artist Bernard Akoi-Jackson.

Mueller sees work on the village as a long-term commitment. She also converted an unused school building into a library and reconstructed an existing computer room. Another vital project targeted further tree plantings designed to create wind barriers and lanes while reactivating the dried-out riverbed. Construction of a solar-run pump system to provide the entire village with clean drinking water is also underway.

PROJECT INFO

ABOUT THE ARCHITECT
east coast
critique

ANZA: East Africa’s first-ever architecture magazine
ANZA magazine is printed at a local printers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. (All photos courtesy Camenzind)
- INITIATORS AND FACILITATORS: Jeanette Beck, Benedikt Boucsein, Vinesh Chintaram, William Davis, Florian Graf, Axel Humpert, Sonja Lüthi, Mwanzo Millinga, Leila Peacock, Benedikt Redmann, Tim Seidel, Andrea Züllig
  
  PARTICIPANTS: Comfort Badaru, Paul K. Bomani, Wetaka Dickson, Emmanuel D. Gamassa, Anitah S. Hakika, Kanywanyi S. Kanywanyi, Linda Kakuru, Tonny Kazimoto, Comfort Mosha, Khalid Mussa Mtoni, Abella K. Mutalemwa, Scholastica A. Nanyaro, Rose Nestory, John Paul Senyonyi, Omari I. Shegilla, Missaga Steven
  
  WORKSHOP DATE: 19.9.2011-16.10.2011
  
  WORKSHOP LOCATION: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
  
  www.anzastart.com
  
  www.cazmag.com
ANZA is a magazine based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city, and was initiated in 2011 by the founders of the Zurich-based project studio and magazine Camenzind. Co-founder Benedikt Boucsein explains the background:

“We ran across the situation in East Africa more or less by accident whilst visiting a friend in Dar es Salaam, holding a lecture, and engaging in a discussion with students. It instantly caught our attention. Despite extreme urban growth in the area, there was not a single locally-produced critical voice in the form of an architectural magazine in the whole region. We threatened to return and produce a magazine and came back a year later with a team of friends and some hardware. The students whom we had initially engaged with formed our core team for the following four weeks.

During the workshop we wrote, designed and produced a primer issue from start to finish. Our friends – photographers, architects, graphic designers and artists – guided the process and held seminars on interview techniques, photography, editing, layout, publicity, websites and distribution, and helped set up a strategy and a magazine library. Issue 1 was printed in a run of 5,000 copies and distributed throughout the region and Europe. Today, ANZA (Swahili for ‘start’), run by the same team, is the only critical architectural magazine in East Africa. Two more issues have been printed, a third one is ready to go to press.”

About Anza

First issue of ANZA being distributed in Dar es Salaam.
Read all about it! ANZA on the streets of Dar es Salaam.
- THE WHOLE EARTH: CALIFORNIA AND THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE OUTSIDE
  Diedrich Diederichsen, Anselm Franke (eds.)
  
  Sternberg Press, co-published with Haus der Kulturen der Welt
  July 2013, English
  26 x 35 cm, 208 pages, 350 colour and b/w illustrations, softcover
  ISBN 978-3-943365-64-1
  
  www.sternberg-press.com
This month, we made editors’ picks of our own favourite tomes from the last twelve months. From tales of 750 families squatting in a 45-storey tower to a 27-kilometre tunnel made just for two protons to meet, we've been reading around the subject in the crazy world of architecture and beyond. Happy holidays!

“The Whole Earth: California and the Disappearance of the Outside” at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt was hands-down one of the best exhibitions anywhere this year. Using Stewart Brand’s seminal Whole Earth Catalog as a foundation for a thorough cataloguing and re-vivifying of 60s counter-culture – from eco-consciousness to cybernetics – curatorial power-duo Diedrich Diederichsen and Anselm Franke assembled a mind-blowing amount of visual material. The exhibition has yielded an equally dense, rich, and fascinating catalogue, whose format is arguably better suited to present the overflowing subject matter and its documentation. Whether or not you saw the show, this book is a stand alone gem. Part historical study, part retro-futurism, and wholly relevant, this publication belongs on your bookshelf right alongside the original catalogues from 1968-72. (ew)

ABOUT The Whole Earth
- INSIDE CERN
  Andri Pol
  
  European Organisation for Nuclear Research
  Andri Pol and Lars Müller (eds.)
  
  Lars Müller
  2014, English
  20 x 27.5 cm, 432 pages, 295 illustrations, softcover
  ISBN 978-3-03778-262-0
  
  www.lars-mueller-publishers.com
An opulent new photo essay that is a treat for closet nerds everywhere. Swiss photographer Andri Pol was granted access to the European Organisation for Nuclear Research’s inner sanctum near Geneva. The CERN complex houses 2,500 employees dedicated to investigating the origin of matter and, by default, humanity’s most fundamental questions: What are we? Where are we going? Where do we come from?

Pol’s documentary images reveal charmingly domestic and surprisingly humorous insights into everyday life at nerd central. It might suck up billions of CHF annually, with no expense spared on its spectacular custom-made hardware such as the 27-km-long underground Large Hadron Collider, but CERN’s shabby 1950s office spaces populated by boffins in shorts and sandals (with socks of course), maltreated pot plants, mountains of paper and impromptu pin-boards, reveal a world refreshingly devoid of aesthetic considerations. People here clearly have far more important things to think about.

See our interview with Andri Pol and a selection of images from the book here. (sl)

INside cern
- ARCHITECTURE AND CAPITALISM
  1845 to the Present
  
  Peggy Deamer, Ed.,
  Routledge, 2014
  264 pages,
  Paperback/Hardback, 15.7 x 23.4 mm
  
  With new essays by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Ellen Dunham-Jones, Keller Easterling, Lauren Kogod, Robert Hewison, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, Robin Schuldenfrei, Deborah Gans, Simon Sadler, Nathan Rich, and Michael Sorkin.
  
  ISBN 978-0-415-53488-8 / 978-0-415-53487-1
  
  www.routledge.com
OK, it might seem a bit of a heavy subject for Christmas. But hey: think Scrooge. Money has always been part of the Festive Season, which now appears as primarily a celebration of another big “C” word: capitalism. This book, tightly edited by Peggy Deamer, gives a series of incisive cuts through architecture and capitalism’s often rather cosy co-existence (architecture as built-capital and all that) with a series of newly commissioned essays from the likes of Deborah Gans, Michael Sorkin and Pier Vittorio Aureli.
The timescale covers the last 150 years – from boomtime Chicago and the breaking of the construction unions to Dometime London – or rather the ill-begotten Millennium Dome’s search for meaning – via the Werkbund, Bauhaus, Le Corbusier and Rem Koolhaas, the new Indian city of Gurgaon and the recent Occupy protests. It throws light on the Ghosts of Architecture Past, Present and Yet to Come. (rgw)

Architecture and Capitalism
- TORRE DAVID – INFORMAL VERTICAL COMMUNITIES
  
  Edited by Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner (Urban Think-Tank)
  Photos by Iwan Baan
  Hardcover, 416pp., 406 illustrations, 16.5x24 cm
  Lars Mueller Publishers, Zurich, 2013
  ISBN: 978-3-03778-298-9
  
  www.lars-mueller-publishers.com
  www.torredavid.com
Architecture meets life in the concrete structures of Torre David, a 45-storey office high-rise in Caracas that was abandoned half-finished when Venezuela’s economy collapsed in 1994. In the years following, 750 families moved into the structure, filling the empty floors with self-built homes and infrastructure including a gym, a church, grocery stores and hair salons. In this book, a handful of essays and particularly hundreds of photos by the inevitable Iwan Baan brilliantly portray the history and the daily life of this “Informal Vertical Community”. The compendium stretches this intense case study far beyond Urban-Think Tank’s 2012 exhibition about building, for which they won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. The clash of the formal and the informal, the improvised and the permanent have never come across in a more inspiring way than in this book. If you are considering tucking Rudofsky’s classic Architecture Without Architects under the Christmas tree this year (which is also a good idea!) think of this as a more current version. (fh)

TOrre David
Slovenia!
Photo: Miran Kambic