Livability

Many questions whether these new cities could be built in other ways, or if Africans will ever have an alternative to the current model of placemaking, hodgepodge urbanism foisted on it, largely by colonialists.

‘Invented’ by artist and researcher Mitch Miller, ‘dialectograms’ are detailed, intricate drawings of place. Made mostly in Miller’s home city of Glasgow, they are drawn with and through close collaboration with local communities of interest. A process as much as a product, the ‘dialectogram’ borrows liberally from the disciplines of cartography, oral history, architecture and sociology, is articulated through visual disciplines such as illustration and sequential art and informed by writers such as Judith Okely, Michel de Certeau and Tim Ingold.

Every year, in the hot, dry town of Djenné in Central Mali, something special takes place – La Fête de Crépissage. Roughly translated to the “Day of Plastering”, this day sees the entire community of Djenné collaborate to reinforce the mud walls of the Great Mosque of Djenné – a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the African continent’s most distinctive architectural landmarks.

On the 16th of June 2015, Michelle Provoost gave the eight lecture of the New Towns lecture series, focusing on the newest generation of New Towns on the rise in the developing world, mainly Asia and Africa.

Investing in virtual projects has probably never been more timely, after all, we have been partially deprived of contact with the concrete world. Exploring the singularities of the present moment and the power of online engagement, a group of architects from Angola started an ambitious work: pursuing a new identity for Angolan architecture.