Tag: sahel-and-sub-saharan-africa | ArchDaily

When the Water Comes: How Lagos Negotiates with Its Returning Floods

Toke Joseph — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Lagos is a city shaped by time, human interaction, the forces of nature, and its evolving, sometimes uneasy relationship with all three. Nowhere is this more visible than when the rain comes.

Mapping Narratives: What the UN Map Reveals About Symbolic Reparations

Romullo Baratto — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 07:30:00 +0000

This article is part of our new Opinion section, a format for argument-driven essays on critical questions shaping our field.

Nairobi Architecture City Guide: 11 Projects Building a Post-Independence Identity

Valentina Díaz — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Nairobi's architectural identity was transformed by Kenya's independence in 1963. As the new nation sought to define itself, the city became a testing ground for a modern architecture that could embody progress while responding to African culture, climate, and local conditions. This opened a period of architectural experimentation, with different approaches emerging to the relationship between modernity, identity, and place.

The Maison du Peuple: Reclaiming Brutalism for Nation-Building

Mohieldin Gamal — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

When African countries gained independence from European colonial rule during the mid-twentieth century, nation-building involved more than establishing new governments and political institutions. Newly sovereign states also needed to establish a built identity that could distinguish them from their colonial past, and architecture became an important tool in this process. Across the continent, monumental civic buildings, universities, conference centers, and cultural institutions were commissioned to embody progress and national unity. Yet this created a fundamental contradiction: many of these buildings adopted modernist and Brutalist architectural languages that had originated in Europe, while some were even designed by architects from former colonial powers. The Maison du Peuple in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, provides a particularly revealing example of how an architectural language associated with Europe could be appropriated and transformed into an expression of postcolonial independence.

How Can a Culture Be Translated into Space? Inside Studio NEiDA

Camilla Ghisleni — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

"Architecture that holds multitudes." This is the phrase Studio NEiDA uses to introduce itself, making its position toward the world clear: to listen to and respect the plurality of existences that move through each context. More than a statement of principles, the phrase seems to function as a method. What does it mean, after all, to design spaces capable of sheltering not only people, but also memories, knowledge, and conflicts?

When Mobility Becomes the Ground: Architecture, Adaptation, and the Search for Continuity

Valentina Díaz — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Few conditions have shaped contemporary architectural discourse as profoundly as uncertainty. Across international biennials, exhibitions, and forums, architecture increasingly imagines its relationship to the world through flexibility, reversibility, and responsiveness—qualities intended to engage with climate emergencies, political instability, and unprecedented human mobility. Buildings are designed to transform, infrastructures to evolve, and cities to accommodate conditions that appear increasingly unpredictable. This emphasis on agility has expanded the discipline's capacity to engage with environmental change, offering valuable strategies for a world in constant transformation.

Building Forward: How Vernacular Knowledge Is Shaping Contemporary Architecture

Daniela Andino — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Across different climates and building cultures, many contemporary projects are working with local ways of building in new ways. Earth walls, bamboo structures, shaded thresholds, and collective construction processes are being reconsidered not as references, but as tools for the conditions architecture is facing now and will continue to face.