Buildings around the world are getting taller. Since the year 2000, global skyscraper construction has increased by 402%. Cities like Dubai are home to nearly 1000 high-rise buildings, and New York’s vibrant luxury real estate market has shown no signs of slowing down, with more high-rise additions slated to be added to its already towering skyline. There’s good in this – high-rises create much-needed space in already dense cities and can reduce urban sprawl in city centres, allowing for better preservation of natural areas.
Matthew Maganga
Junior Collaborator at ArchDaily and Curatorial Assistant at the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial. Interested in housing, urbanism, the politics of land, heritage - and how we live in our cities. Born and raised in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Based in United Kingdom.
Ground Level: The Mixed-Use Typology
Rethinking History: Democratising Architectural Heritage
The built environment we all inhabit is part and parcel of global, interconnected processes and systems. When we appraise the historically significant architecture of our cities, the structural integrity and aesthetics of a building merits equal consideration with factors such as the labour conditions of its builders to the existing power structures of its time. Examples of Italian Modernism in Eritrea, for instance, might be worthy of aesthetic praise – but intertwined with the legacy of these buildings hailed as Modernist icons is the sobering fact that they were built to further an imperial project. In the complex fields of architectural conservation, preservation and cultural heritage, democratisation should always remain a key priority.
Socialising, Commerce, and Trade: The African Market Hall in a Modernised World
A few months ago – in July 2021, the 47-year-old Kariakoo Market went up in flames in Dar es Salaam. Designed by Tanzanian architect Beda Amuli, the market is a central landmark – a key part of Dar es Salaam’s commercial hub. Early images of a new Kariakoo Market show a taller structure, with six floors compared to the three in Amuli’s design. Conversations on social media have abounded on the new design, and if a “tower” typology is really the appropriate choice considering the unpopular nature of other similar “tower” market halls in Dar es Salaam.
Orientalism and Architecture
We are twenty-one years into the twenty-first century. The world has never been more connected with the advent of new technologies, yet historical inequalities still run rampant. These inequalities manifest themselves in different ways. Global travel, for example – despite the ubiquity of aeroplanes nowadays – is still only widely accessible to citizens of “developed” countries due to prohibitive visa restrictions. In architectural education, many institutions still prioritise a Eurocentric curriculum, the architecture of non-Western populations largely ignored. Another perpetuation of prejudiced systems is Orientalism – and exploring this concept through an architectural lens is useful for interrogating contemporary design approaches and approaches of the future.
Contested Territory: The Climate Crisis and Land Ownership
Architecture, by its very definition, involves the construction of structures. Structures that are meant to serve as spaces for work, living, religious devotion, amongst many other purposes. Architectural projects and interventions, however, need land – and it is this intrinsic relationship, between land and architecture, that has massive ramifications not only regarding reducing carbon emissions but more importantly in forming an equitable future rooted in climate justice.
The Spatial Stories of Ousmane Sembène
When examining the world of African cinema, there are few names more prominent than that of Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène. His films ‘La Noire de…’ and ‘Mandabi’, released in 1966 and 1968 respectively, are films that tell evocative stories on the legacies of colonialism, identity, and immigration. And whilst these two films are relatively slow-spaced, ‘slice-of-life stories, they also offer a valuable spatial critique of the setting where the films are based, providing a helpful framework to understand the intricacies of the post-colonial African city, and the contrast between the African and European metropolises.
Hospitality and the Housing Crisis: Reclaiming Abandoned Architecture
All over the globe, countries are facing a housing crisis. United Nations statistics put the number of people who live in sub-standard housing at 1.6 billion, and 100 million of the world’s population are without a home. As conflicts and climate change forces refugees to move to new countries, and as housing prices around the world continue to rise, cities are having to grapple more and more with how to provide safe and affordable housing for their residents.
Cities and Conflict: Exploring Urban Adaptive Reuse
COP26, The United Nations Climate Change Conference, is scheduled to be held in Scotland soon, in the last week of October 2021. Against the backdrop of this conference is a heightened global awareness of climate change, as discussions take place on how a sustainable, more equal future can be achieved. The present and future state of architecture is a key component of this conversation, as criticism is levelled at architecture firms that “greenwash” and questions are raised on if the term “sustainability” is increasingly merely being used as today’s buzzword.
Urban Sprawl and Ghost Towns: The Impact of Mining on Cities
The urban settlements we inhabit today exist in their present form due to a host of reasons. There are cities that have grown due to their proximity to water – such as the growth of Dar es Salaam to the major port city it is today. There are the planned capital cities scattered around the world, governments of countries such as Brazil and Nigeria building cities from scratch from the input of acclaimed architects. There are also the settlements that exist and grow because of certain industries, such as Silicon Valley in the American state of California being home to giants of the technology industry. There’s an industry, however, that has spawned both pulsating cities and abandoned towns – the mining industry.
How "Smarter" Cities Can Exacerbate Inequity
The urban metropolises of our planet are home to an abundance of stories. They are home to stories of wealth, of innovation, and of architectural marvels. They are home, too, to stories of inequality, inequity and of urban divides – places where one’s income determines the quality of the spatial environment around them. Within these stories has developed an increasing advocation for making cities “smarter”, the goal being to use data and digital technology to build more efficient and convenient urban environments.
Power, Inequity, and Maps: An Urban Analysis
The way our world looks like today is a result of centuries and centuries of human migration, of complex natural phenomena that has resulted in the geographic appearance of the world’s continents today. We understand this world through our lived experiences, but we also understand this world through a two-dimensional man-made invention – maps. Maps define the many contested borders of the world and have been used in an oppressive capacity, in particular places, for example, segmenting off sections of a place from marginalised societal groups.
Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide: Exploring the Architecture of Bangui and Kinshasa
When we look at African architecture, we see the architectural diversity of a continent which has been shaped and moulded into its present form by a combination of internal and external factors. When we look at African architecture, there is also a tendency for certain regions to take precedence over other parts of the continent. The Tropical Modernist works of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew in Ghana and Nigeria, for example, are extremely well documented. So is the extremely well-preserved colonial-era architecture of the Eritrean capital of Asmara. Yet, there seems to be parts of the continent that “slip under the radar” in African architectural conversations – and the book Architectural Guide: Sub Saharan Africa is a welcome addition to African architectural scholarship.
National Parks: An Architectural Journey
The world is home to thousands and thousands of national parks – spaces allocated for conservation, hosting land usually left in its natural state for people to visit. The term “national park” itself differs in meaning around the world. In the United Kingdom, for example, the phrase simply describes a relatively undeveloped area that attracts tourists. In the United States, this terminology is a lot more rigid, describing 63 protected areas operated by the United States National Park service.
Can Vernacular Architecture Be Exoticized?
When we talk about vernacular architecture, we’re talking about an architectural style specific to a region – architecture that relies on the use of local knowledge and materials to construct buildings. It’s the Beehive Houses of Harran in Turkey, to the traditional Malay Houses found throughout southeast Asia. The vernacular architecture of various places continues to be a source of inspiration for contemporary architects, as they look to create sustainable architectural responses well-suited for their context.
Local Expertise Versus Local Extraction: African Vernacular Architecture and a More Holistic Sustainability
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.
A Climate Conversation: The Role of Architecture in Shaping a Sustainable African Future
When we think of migration, we think of movement. We think of the movement of people simply looking for greener pastures – a better life for themselves. But we also think of war, of conflict, of an unstable situation in a specific place forcing the hand of a location’s residents to seek safety elsewhere. Historically and into present day, war has been the reason for the increased presence of refugees. Instability in places such as Syria, Iraq, or the Central African Republic have caused millions to flee their homes. Lurking amongst this migration due to conflict, however, is the migration of people at mercy of the changing environmental conditions of the Earth – climate migration.
Architects Michael Green and Natalie Telewiak On The Architecture of Healing
In a Design and the City episode - a podcast by reSITE on how to make cities more liveable - Vancouver-based architects Michael Green and Natalie Telewiak advocate for more sustainable building on Earth, with a special mention for one of their preferred materials - wood. The interview sees the two architects balance the benefits and disadvantages of mass timber construction, which they are a strong proponent of as evidenced by their project T3, a LEED Gold Certified, seven-story timber office building in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Going Against the Grain: Firms Disrupting the Status Quo
Architecture is a long-standing profession, one that has produced the iconic landmarks we admire around the world, monuments which we revere around the world, and played a part in establishing the organisation of the cities we live in today. This description, however, is architecture in the traditional sense - and there are numerous examples of individuals and firms who have strayed away from traditional architectural practice, either through delving into adjacent fields or 'disrupting' the field with the harnessing of new technologies.