Adjaye, Africa, architecture : a photographic survey of metropolitan architecture / edited by Peter Allison.
Publisher: New York, NY : Thames & Hudson, 2016Copyright date: ©2016Edition: Compact editionDescription: 407 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), color maps ; 25 cmContent type: text | still image | cartographic image Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volume001: 18960522ISBN: 0500343160; 9780500343166Uniform titles: African metropolitan architecture Subject(s): Adjaye, David, 1966- -- Travel -- Africa | Adjaye, David, 1966- | Architecture -- Africa | Cities and towns -- Africa | Architecture -- Africa -- Pictorial works | Cities and towns -- Africa -- Pictorial works | Travel
| Cities and towns | Architecture | AfricaGenre/Form: Pictorial works.DDC classification: 720.96 LOC classification: NA1580 | .A352 2016| Item type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | MAIN LIBRARY Book | 720.96 ADJ (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Checked out | 14/05/2024 | 114356 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
This is one of the most original, ambitious and important architectural publications of our time, now available to everyone wishing to gain an understanding of a unique architectural heritage overlooked for too long.
The African continent contains some of the world's most vibrant culture and creativity, and yet its buildings - vernacular, colonial or contemporary - have rarely engaged the interest of Western architects.
David Adjaye, the first black architect to establish a truly global reputation in his field, has found endless sources of inspiration for his designs in the rich - and chequered - heritage of Africa's teeming metropolises.
His life dream was to return to the continent as an architect to document Africa's built environment. Over a long decade, he tirelessly documented these dynamic, colourful cities, photographing thousands of buildings, sites and places, and letting each building speak for itself, in telling contrast to a design world obsessed with photorealistic slickness. The result was a stunning seven-volume work that has become an essential resource for all those interested in the burgeoning continent.
This new compact edition will make the fruits of this once-in-a-generation record available to a much wider audience.
Originally published in 7 volumes in larger format as: African metropolitan architecture. 2011.
Includes bibliographical references.
The Maghreb. Algiers/Algeria ; Rabat/Morocco ; Tripoli/Libya ; Tunis/Tunisia -- Desert. Cairo/Egypt ; Djibouti/Djibouti ; Khartoum/Sudan ; Nouakchott/Mauritania -- The Sahel. Bamako/Mali ; N'djamena/Chad ; Niamey/Niger ; Ouagadougou/Burkina Faso -- Forest. Abidjan/Côte d'Ivoire ; Accra/Ghana ; Bangui/Central African Republic ; Banjul/the Gambia ; Bissau/Guinea-Bissau ; Brazzaville/Republic of Congo ; Conakry/Guinea ; Cotonou/Benin ; Dar es Salaam/Tanzania ; Freetown/Sierra Leone ; Juba/South Sudan ; Kampala/Uganda ; Kinshasa / Democratic Republic of Congo ; Libreville/Gabon ; Lilongwe/Malawi ; Lomé/Togo ; Luanda/Angola ; Malabo/Equatorial Guinea ; Maputo/Mozambique ; Monrovia/Liberia ; Moroni/Comoros ; Port Luis/Mauritius ; Praia/Cape Verde ; São Tomé/São Tomé and Príncipe ; Victoria/Seychelles ; Yaoundé/Cameroon -- Savanna & grassland. Abuja/Nigeria ; Antananarivo/Madagascar ; Dakar/Senegal ; Gaborone/Botswana ; Mogadishu/Somalia ; Pretoria/South Africa -- Mountain and highveld. Addis Ababa/Ethiopia ; Asmara/Eritrea ; Bujumbura/Burundi ; Harare/Zimbabwe ; Kigali/Rwanda ; Lusaka/Zambia ; Maseru/Lesotho ; Mbabane/Swaziland ; Nairobi/Kenya ; Windhoek/Namibia -- Essays. African metropolitan architecture / David Adijaye ; Cities, connections, and circulations in Africa / Garth Myers & Jenny Robinson ; Friend, enemy, neighbour, stranger / Okwui Enwezor ; A tale of three highland cites / Naigzy Gebremedhin ; The African urban past / Suzanne Preston Blier ; Imagined topographies / Nana Oforiatta Ayim.
This book presents fifty-three African cities that illustrate the continent's diverse architecture and features over 700 color photographs.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
This mix of travelogue and architectural study tracks eminent architect Adjaye's journeys to 53 African cities (Mogadishu is also included but he deemed it too hazardous to visit) in an effort to document the continent's built environment. The principal organization of the book is climatic, with the cities grouped according to natural location. He then considers geography, colonial history, histories of independence, religious identity, local quirks, and the many other elements that lead to "the architecture of habitation, of humanity in general: the city as an inclusive conglomerate." The volume features plenty of photography and numerous interesting structures, such as the expressive water towers of Bamako and the modernist villas of Nouakchott, but Adjaye's aim is to capture the overall built traits of a place. "It is a way of looking at architecture in terms of its collective identity, not as a series of freestanding icons," he explains. One elementary but crucial example is his steady attention to which cities feature substantial apartment buildings and which are composed mainly of single-family homes. That the look of a city will be determined substantially by the buildings residents want to live in is the type of organic detail often missed in most ordinary overviews; this is not one of those. Color illus. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.There are no comments on this title.