African Architecture

African Architecture

Author: Nnamdi Elleh

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13:

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Provides an extraordinary account of the evolution, transformation and development of architecture across this continent. It is examined and evaluated from a wide range of ethnic, climatic, political economic and religious factors.


African Fractals

African Fractals

Author: Ron Eglash

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 9780813526140

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Fractals are characterized by the repetition of similar patterns at ever-diminishing scales. Fractal geometry has emerged as one of the most exciting frontiers on the border between mathematics and information technology and can be seen in many of the swirling patterns produced by computer graphics. It has become a new tool for modeling in biology, geology, and other natural sciences. Anthropologists have observed that the patterns produced in different cultures can be characterized by specific design themes. In Europe and America, we often see cities laid out in a grid pattern of straight streets and right-angle corners. In contrast, traditional African settlements tend to use fractal structures-circles of circles of circular dwellings, rectangular walls enclosing ever-smaller rectangles, and streets in which broad avenues branch down to tiny footpaths with striking geometric repetition. These indigenous fractals are not limited to architecture; their recursive patterns echo throughout many disparate African designs and knowledge systems. Drawing on interviews with African designers, artists, and scientists, Ron Eglash investigates fractals in African architecture, traditional hairstyling, textiles, sculpture, painting, carving, metalwork, religion, games, practical craft, quantitative techniques, and symbolic systems. He also examines the political and social implications of the existence of African fractal geometry. His book makes a unique contribution to the study of mathematics, African culture, anthropology, and computer simulations.


African Identity in Post-Apartheid Public Architecture

African Identity in Post-Apartheid Public Architecture

Author: Jonathan Alfred Noble

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1351960407

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Since the end of Apartheid, there has been a new orientation in South African art and design, turning away from the colonial aesthetics to new types of African expression. This book examines some of the fascinating and impressive works of contemporary public architecture that 'concretise' imaginative dialogues with African landscapes, craft and indigenous traditions. Referring to Frantz Fanon's classic study of colonised subjectivity, 'Black Skin, White Masks', Noble contends that Fanon's metaphors of mask and skin are suggestive for architectural criticism, in the context of post-Apartheid public design. Taking South Africa's first democratic election of 1994 as its starting point, the book focuses on projects that were won in architectural competitions. Such competitions are conceived within ideological debates and studying them allows for an examination of the interrelationships between architecture, politics and culture. The book offers insights into these debates through interviews with key parties concerned - architects, competition jurors, politicians, council and city officials, artists and crafters, as well as people who are involved in the day-to-day life of the buildings in question.


Architecture and Power in Africa

Architecture and Power in Africa

Author: Nnamdi Elleh

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2002-12-30

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 0313013888

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Two of the most ambitious religious edifices of the 20th century are the Our Lady of Peace Basilica in the West African country of the Ivory Coast and the Hassan II Mosque in Morocco. Nnamdi Elleh not only provides a substantial architectural and pictorial analysis of the buildings themselves. Using these two buildings as case studies, he also investigates questions of national memory, urban form, architectural styles, concepts of democracy, social hierarchies as well as the elites who make the decisions to build Africa's post-independence monuments and capital cities. His book is an exciting synthesis of theoretical and empirical analysis that is bound to stimulate debate about the form and content of post-colonial identities in Africa.


African Indigenous Knowledge and the Sciences

African Indigenous Knowledge and the Sciences

Author: Gloria Emeagwali

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-07-08

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9463005153

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This book is an intellectual journey into epistemology, pedagogy, physics, architecture, medicine and metallurgy. The focus is on various dimensions of African Indigenous Knowledge (AIK) with an emphasis on the sciences, an area that has been neglected in AIK discourse. The authors provide diverse views and perspectives on African indigenous scientific and technological knowledge that can benefit a wide spectrum of academics, scholars, students, development agents, and policy makers, in both governmental and non-governmental organizations, and enable critical and alternative analyses and possibilities for understanding science and technology in an African historical and contemporary context.


The Architecture of Peter Rich

The Architecture of Peter Rich

Author: Jonathan Noble

Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers Limited

Published: 2021-01-22

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9781848222571

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Internationally renowned, Peter Rich's career represents a lifelong attempt to find a contemporary, yet uniquely African mode of design. This book follows the chronology of his work which emerges from a fascination with African tribal settlements, including his documentation, publication and exhibition of Ndebele art and architecture, and his friendship with sculptor Jackson Hlungwani. It explores what Rich calls "African Space Making" and its forms of complex symmetry; various collaborative community oriented designs of the Apartheid and post-Apartheid period, especially Mandela's Yard in Alexandra township; and finally, his more recent timbrel vaulted structures, constructed from low-tech hand-pressed soil tiles derived from his highly innovative and award winning work at Mapungubwe. The book shows how Rich combines these rich African influences, his sensitivity to the local context and his environmental awareness with Modernist principles.


Butabu

Butabu

Author: James Morris

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1568984138

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This volume examines the complex technique of wet earth construction, as practised in parts of West Africa. It includes a variety of structures, ranging from small huts to mosques, including the mosque at Dougoumba which dates from the 12th century.


Adjaye: Africa: Architecture

Adjaye: Africa: Architecture

Author: David Adjaye

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2016-09-27

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0500343160

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A complete overview of architecture in fifty-three African cities, seen through the eyes and images of one of the world’s leading young architects Educated in England, David Adjaye’s lifelong dream was to return to Africa as an architect to document the continent’s built environment. Over a decade, he tirelessly documented these dynamic, colorful cities, photographing thousands of buildings, sites, and public spaces, and letting each building speak for itself. The result was a stunning seven-volume work that has become an essential resource for all those interested in the burgeoning continent. The fifty-three cities featured in this remarkable study are grouped according to the terrain in which they are set: the Maghreb (north Africa); Desert; Sahel (the semi-arid transitional region between the Sahara and the south); Forest; Savannah and Grassland; and Mountain and Highveld. Each metropolis is illuminated by a concise urban history, maps, and satellite imagery, along with the dozens of photographs Adjaye has taken with an architect’s eye. This compact edition selects the highlights from over 4,000 buildings and places captured for the initial seven-volume work. The result is one of the most original, ambitious, and important architectural publications of our time.