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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
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
Global pop star Akon and Senegalese government officials are readying to break ground on a new ground-up 2,000-acre sustainable tourism city near the country's capital, Dakar. Just finalized the agreement for AKON CITY in Senegal. Looking forward to hosting you there in the future... View full entry
The idea of establishing the museum dates back more than 50 years, to Senegal's late poet-president, Léopold Sédar Senghor.
Along with Martinican writer Aimé Césaire, Senghor was a creative force behind the philosophy of Négritude, which opposed the imposition of French culture on colonies in Africa and the Caribbean.
— BBC News
Senegal's new Musée des Civilisations noires opens this week in the capital, Dakar. Anyone know who the architect is? Nothing I could find/Google Translate seems to indicate. Perhaps, some nameless bureaucratic office or Chinese ExtraStateCraft(er)? See also from Al Jazeera View full entry
The Switzerland-based firm Manuel Herz Architect has been selected to design an important new expansion for a rural hospital in the Tambacounda region of Senegal. Conceived and funded by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Le Korsa, the facility's expansion will help alleviate a current... View full entry
Several African countries gained hard-fought independence from their colonizers during the 1950s and 1960s, and one way the countries expressed their new national identities was through architecture. The book African Modernism delves into this relationship between architecture and the... View full entry
The rural village of Sinthian in southeastern Senegal is home to the THREAD arts center, a new artists' residency and cultural community space set to open this March. The idea for the arts center originated from the long-term efforts of doctor and local Sinthian leader, Magueye Ba, who spearheaded... View full entry
The rainy season coincides with summer in Dakar, which means it’s the power-cut days. The heat goes up, A/Cs kick into gear and the power utility, Senelec, cannot cope. [...]
Enter solar. This potential renewable savior is a latecomer to Dakar because until recently solar power was banned in cities, as it was considered what the French pointedly call “compétition déloyale” – unfair competition.
But under pressure from Dakar’s own citizens, the ban was lifted under the last government [...].
— nextcity.org
