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The ten-year-old practice known as atelier masōmī has announced it is rebranding as Mariam Issoufou Architects. Formed by Mariam Issoufou (née Kamara) shortly after her graduation from the University of Washington, the Niger-based practice is now a widely known entity with projects featured in... View full entry
The Yale School of Architecture has just announced a new scholarship named after 2022 Pritzker Prize winner Francis Kéré in the interest of supporting African students at the school as they complete their journey to a career in architecture. “There are so many aspiring African architects, and... View full entry
Details of the new Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development in Monrovia, Liberia have been revealed this week by atelier masōmī, the lead designers of an all-female project that will include exhibition designs from Counterspace’s Sumayya Vally and input from local... View full entry
It’s a fact that Africa stands for something that comes from outside. But Africans share something that is 100% there. There is a sense, particularly among the young, that the time has come to define that something on their own terms. There is a sense that it is our time. — The Guardian
The woman tasked with leading the 18th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice this summer told The Guardian critic about the ideas involved in producing the Biennale, which promises a packed slate highlighting the untapped potential Africa contains. She also spoke to Africa’s... View full entry
Multitalented Nigerian architect, sculptor, and designer Demas Nwoko is named the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Biennale in recognition of what curator Lesley Lokko described as the “polyglot nature of his talents and oeuvres and to the rather narrow... View full entry
A new endowment fund will provide four-year scholarship opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students pursuing an architecture education in honor of the late architect Doreen Adengo who passed away in 2022 after battling cancer. The scholarship fund has been jointly established by Yale... View full entry
Renowned West African architect Mariam Kamara will be among twelve new professors joining the faculty of the ETH Zurich, the school announced on its website late last month. Her appointment represents a “turning point” for the ETH, as the school’s faculty is now predominantly female... View full entry
Even though the buildings in Sana'a are thousands of years old, they remain "terribly contemporary", says Salma Samar Damluji, co-founder of the Daw'an Mud Brick Architecture Foundation in Yemen.
Damluji says it is easy to see why these mud buildings have not lost their appeal – they are well-insulated, sustainable and extremely adaptable for modern use. "It is the architecture of the future," says Damluji.
— BBC
Yemen’s largest city Sana'a may even supplant Franis Kéré's home country as the world’s leading rammed earth capital, with a host of stunning, UNESCO-protected sites scattered around its Old City area. The material is one of many in an arsenal of alternatives being used to combat high... View full entry
Speaking at the Triennale di Milano, which kicks off tomorrow in the Italian finance capital, Francis Kéré lamented the Western notion that his “unknown” home continent is a vast but homogeneous place when in reality, it is comprised of 54 countries and over 1,000 different language... View full entry
A historic new museum is set to take shape in West Africa, the vision of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and designer Mariam Kamara of Niger’s atelier masōmī. Bët-bi is said to be the first institution dedicated to the (temporary) collection and display of repatriated objects taken from... View full entry
I never saw myself connected to this big thing. I was just using my skills to create comfortable spaces and beautiful schools and housing for my people. No, I never dreamed to see this work connected with Pritzker. No, no, never. — NPR
NPR’s Michel Martin got the newest Pritzker laureate and recently-named Dakar Goethe Institute designer to harken back to his childhood village in Burkina Faso, which he credited as a strong influence beginning with his educational experiences in darkened classrooms that frequently hovered... View full entry
Diébédo Francis Kéré has been awarded the 2022 Pritzker Architecture Prize, widely considered one of the industry's highest honors. "Francis Kéré has found brilliant, inspiring and game-changing ways to answer these questions over the last decades," said the jury citation for the award... View full entry
Senegal is taking a big step towards further establishing itself as an architectural capital thanks to Francis Kéré’s design for the Goethe Institute that has officially broken ground in Dakar. The 56-year-old architect was on hand Wednesday for a ceremony which included German President... View full entry
Their obsessive geometrical composition was an attempt to answer the call of Senegal’s first president, the poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, for a national style that he curiously termed “asymmetrical parallelism”.
Senghor never quite defined what this brave new style should look like, but he spoke vaguely of “a diversified repetition of rhythm in time and space”. Forceful, faceted forms and strong, rhythmic geometries became the vogue.
— The Guardian
Dakar is known as a regional hub of modernism, which is equally the product of Senghor’s arts-centered vision and of its past colonial linkage. Wainwright traced the history of post-independence architecture in Senegal from the 1974 International Fair to Abdoulaye Wade’s controversial outsized... View full entry
Architects, officials, and villagers confirm the trend: People are discarding traditional materials, mostly mud, in favor of concrete, as soon as they can afford it. As living standards increase making concrete more accessible, some of the world’s hottest, poorest landscapes are rapidly morphing from brown to cinder block grey. — National Geographic
Architects like Francis Kéré have been attempting to buck the trend of using concrete by experimenting with upgraded versions of terrestrial materials like mud bricks that simultaneously provide tools for community-building in developing countries like Burkina Faso. Facade detail of Kéré... View full entry
