The exhibition is closed, but you can find all about the exhibition here. The exhibition travels on, you will be informed about the next stop!

op 4 februari spreken Berend van der Lans en Belinda van Buiten in het architectuurcafe van FASa/dE locatie: ZEEP Architecten, Kleine Koppel 31, 3812 PG Amersfoort Zaal open 19h30, start 20h00, toegang gratis Learning from Casablanca: Afrika als proeftuin De grootschalige modernistische massawoningbouw maakte midden vorige eeuw een ware zegetocht. Van Europa tot Afrika, van de Verenigde Staten tot Amerika werden woonbuurten ontwikkeld volgens moderne principes. De Noord-Afrikaanse stad Casablanca deed daarbij dienst als proeftuin. Europese architecten experimenteerden er met nieuwe woningbouwmodellen, alvorens deze principes mondiaal toe te passen. Ook in Nederland zijn vele van de nieuwe uitbreidingswijken volgens moderne ontwerpprincipes gebouwd. In de huidige tijd worden ze vaak gezien als ‘probleemgebieden’ omdat de architectuur er soms niet in slaagde om de sociale veranderingen (veranderende leefstijlen, andere groepen bewoners) het hoofd te bieden. Ondertussen hebben de moderne proeftuinwijken in Casablanca een ware bottom-up metamorfose ondergaan. Vanaf hun realisatie tot op heden zijn ze voortdurend door hun bewoners getransformeerd, uitgebreid en aangepast. Bijvoorbeeld de Cité Horizontale in de wijk Hay Mohammadi, gebaseerd op het beroemde 8 x 8 Ecochard grid, onderging een van de meest succesvolle informele en particulier ontwikkelde transformaties. Het resultaat is een bijzonder aangename en mooie wijk om in te wonen. De afdeling Architectuur van de TU Delft en African Architecture Matters deden in de voorbije jaren onderzoek naar deze transformaties en hun relatie tot de oorspronkelijke architectuur van de wijk. Het 'Learning from Casablanca’-project onderzoekt het hoe en waarom van deze transformaties door de bewoners en stelt zich de vraag of de ervaringen in Casablanca een nieuw licht kunnen werpen op de wijze waarop over woonomgevingen in Nederland wordt gedacht. Tijdens de avond maken we kennis met African Architecture Matters en haar projecten. Welke architectuur vraagt het transformatieproces in Afrika? Welke kansen zijn er voor intrinsieke groei en ontwikkeling van woonwijken? Biedt graduele ontwikkeling ook voor Nederland nieuwe perspectieven? Een Architectuurcafé over het verschil tussen 'Hay Mohammadi’ en 'Belgische toestanden’ en tussen anarchie en keuzevrijheid. Over grid + keuzevrijheid + tijd = kwaliteit + sociale samenhang.

For the 125th anniversary of Maputo, African Architecture Matters and the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Maputo, together with the Faculty of Architecture and Physical Planning of the University Eduardo Mondlane of Maputo, the Department of Architecture of the University of Pretoria and the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University have the honour to announce the international art & architecture exhibition MAPUTOPIA passado-presente-futuro to take place in the Conselho Municipal de Maputo at Praça da Independência. from 30 November until 21 December 2012 opening hours: Monday - Friday: 07:30 - 17:00h Saturday - Sunday: 13:00 - 17:00h ‘Maputopia’ celebrates Maputo’s wonderful architectural qualities through a mapping exercise of its past, present and its possible future: another 125 years of architectural pride. For the 125th anniversary of Maputo, this exhibition celebrates Maputo’s architecture and brings current challenges to its heritage to the fore. Academics and artists meet each other and present a penetrating view on the city. ‘Maputopia’ is a traveling exhibition. From Maputo the exhibition will travel to the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Pretoria and from there to the Netherlands. In the Netherlands the exhibition will be held at the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal. The exhibition has received support from the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Maputo, the Mondriaan Fund, RoyalHaskoningDHV Mozambique and RoyalHaskoningDHV Netherlands, Standard Bank Maputo and is made possible with full commitment and dedication of the Faculty of Architecture and Physical Planning of the University Eduardo Mondlane of Maputo, the Department of Architecture of the University of Pretoria, the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology, African Architecture Matters and the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Maputo. #Maputo

As of today, 1 October 2012, African Architecture Matters is continuing its services from Amsterdam. Our address: African Architecture Matters Balistraat 92-hs NL-1094 JS AMSTERDAM the Netherlands phone +31 (0)20 463 78 80 e-mail office@aamatters.nl Our multi media library remains in Utrecht. In case you wish to visit the library, please contact us through mediateque@aamatters.nl The postal address of the Dutch secretariat of ArchiAfrika will remain in Utrecht, until the handover to ArchiAfrika Accra is completed by the end of this year. You can follow us on twitter as well!

Our cities are planned to detail. Urban plans foresee an end product, a final stage. The reality is different, causing friction. Everything changes over time, so do the demands on the built environment. We need to address this and incorporate flexibility to allow for spontaneous developments. Aerosol art works are often the first signs of this friction in our city scapes. Can aerosol art be instrumental? Does its bottom up origin legitimate it being a useful indicator? What meaning can Aerosol art give to the people, to the built environment? Does it allow for participatory trajectories and can it improve the social consistency in the city? What can architects, city planners and policy makers learn from it? Speakers among others are Saquab Ashraf and Ike Ijeh (Blackstone Architects, UK), Abderrahim Kassou (Casamemoire, Morocco), Benjamin Benrakad, Martin Travers and Mohammed Ali, moderation by Afaina de Jong, editor of the publication For The People By The People. Date: 27 September 2012 location: Van Eesteren Museum, Amsterdam Nieuw West more information on event and registration #art

#art

MSA stands for ‘Master Studio Afrika’ and is a joint program on architectural master (MSc/MProf) education and research on the Africa city between the Faculty of Architecture of the Eduardo Mondlane University of Maputo (FAPF-UEM), the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology (TUD) and the Department of Architecture of the University of Pretoria (UP). The direction and inter-party coordination of the project is in the hands of African Architecture matters. The first MSA project cycle in 2011 as well as the project preparation in 2010, has been made possibly through the financial assistance of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Maputo. The participating 36 students (27 UEM, 6 UP and 3 TUD) have presented their final master thesis on the Baixa de Maputo. Three workshops took place: a starting up field workshop in Maputo (21.02-05.03.2011), a mid-term review workshop in Pretoria (27-31.2011) and a concluding and evaluation workshop in Delft and Utrecht (24-26.02.2012). The field workshop consisted of exploration of the site, lectures by UEM lecturers and Municipality officers on the Baixa and first direction into research by design on the basis of the base material prepared in 2010. At the Pretoria mid-term review, the research results were presented together with collective urban frameworks and first steps into individual final design projects. Lectures on the Architectural Reading of Maputo, Urban Historic Landscapes, joint studio experiences in Africa and South America and informality in the city centre were delivered by lecturers of UP, TUD and the University of Witwatersrand. The whole group made an excursion to Soweto. Cooperation between students and tutors was not limited to these two encounters. A weblog was established in March 2011 with a Dropbox to which the students uploaded their work. The repository (http://www.archifacts.co.za/baixa/baixa.html) is continuously open to all project stakeholders and regularly updated with new documentation. In the research-by-design stage and the development of the urban framework, the students work revealed a number of cross-cutting themes that are taken as provisional findings and basis for the research application. The design interventions proposed by the students, on macro-scale (Maputo Municipality-Baixa), meso-scale (neighborhoods) and on micro-scale (individual buildings) address these issues and sometimes propose surprising and realistic solutions. The following findings were made : Definition and demarcation of the Baixa de Maputo The Baixa literally is the lower part of the city, in itself subdivided into the Old Baixa, the original island in the estuary, and the New Baixa consisting of mainly reclaimed land. The island quality of the Old Baixa is retained up to date, the Old Baixa still is an island, now within the New Baixa, with its narrow streets and cut-off from the sea. The Baixa is seen as the gentrifying part of the city. The heart of the Baixa is the Square of the 25th of June. The rather extended surfaces of green fields (escarpments) and thinly used brownfields. (FACIM, railroad reserves) to be found within the Baixa providing great opportunities for large scale ecological developments. The poor relation between the Baixa and the sea (except for the eastern part) due to blockage by the port works. Ecology Water issue 1: floods caused by failing drainage due to increased hard urban surfaces combined with global climate change. Water issue 2: anticipated shortage of clean drinking water. Water issue 3: anticipated failure of waste water discharge systems. Water issue 4: anticipated sea water rise. Green issue: deterioration of micro-climate due to decrease of tree cover and green areas. Urban Agriculture: to decrease dependency of the Baixa on the hinterland for food. Public Space The quality of public space is deteriorating due to new walled compounds and impermeable new buildings. The quality of the public space is eroding due to the car traffic and parking, taking over from the pedestrian and the tree. There is room for increased public space within building blocks. Mobility An all inclusive mobility plan incorporating all vehicles; pedestrians (priority), private cars and parking (storied parkades), absence of bicycles (strange in a flat area), cruise ships, ferry to Catembe, aircraft approach routes, chapas, the disappeared tramway, train. access ‘gates’ to the Baixa, the connection to the rest of the city and the hinterland. Democracy the preservation of the democratic character of the Baixa, inclusion of all population strata. continuity of informality in the Baixa (street vendors, prostitution, homeless). diversity in use of the Baixa (residential, work, recreation). Architectural character Maputo has its specific typologies, in particular the multi-functional vertically stacked buildings that are so well adapted to the metropolitan character of the city. The hybridity in building heights, the loose and deconcentrated placing of high rise in Maputo The remarkable sense of good architecture from streetscape via building mass to detail in Maputo. Built heritage The high quantity of valuable built heritage and monuments in the Baixa. The perceived threat of heritage to development and vice versa. Urban Heritage Landscape policies and design strategies. The findings will be presented in an exhibition and a catalogue in November 2012, on which more news will be unveiled soon. At the concluding workshop in the Netherlands we came to following observations : culture of displacement The culture of displacement was commonly thought as main success of the studio. The encounter, dialogue and confrontation with similar challenges at foreign sites, as well as the difference in research and educational culture has reciprocally enriched the tutors and students; Students confirmed that the working in a foreign environment together with the students and tutors from this foreign environment has contributed additional value to their work and learning; the TUDelft students results rank between the best of the year; A questionnaire was circulated amongst the UPretoria students : this culture of displacement, or, as they stated ‘cross cultural exposure’, was for them the greatest asset of the studio; For the Maputo students the same applied, they were especially positive during the mid-way review and workshop in Pretoria. program and curriculum The year program worked out better than expected, though there were some small hiccups; It appeared that the master graduation curriculae are essentially equal between the universities; The mid way studio Pretoria in August was successful, but late in the process (it was foreseen in Delft in June, but could not take place then due to lack of funds); There were too many students from UEM. To get motivation, financial support to and coordination of the group proved to be too high a challenge; Teaching experiments were valuable but not taken further (the startup sketching commission, Lidy Meijer’s exercise in Maputo, the lectures by experts in Maputo and Pretoria, the excursion to Johannesburg-Soweto). communication There is no studio thinkable without a central coordinator (was performed by AAM); The web-based communication was not used to its capacity. format The master thesis year is agreed as being the best moment in the study, as a year is really minimum to enable exchange and result; The formulation of the research question(s) and deliverables could have been more precise, and was not yet harmonized between the parties #education #Maputo #Architecture

On invitation by the Royal Netherlands Embassy, an introduction visit was made to Algiers in April 2012. The ideas behind the invitation were to search into possibilities to develop an educational cooperation between EPAU, TUDelft and AAMatters. In meetings with various partners – the EPAU, the EC Delegation, Vie de Villes and a couple of local avant garde architects – following topic themes surfaced : Peri-urban issues For an outsider, the city seems to expand without a well framed plan or vision. High-rise, exclusively residential neighborhoods pop up next to farms, industrial activities, old suburban tissues, ecological fringe areas etcetera. This development does have its roots in Algiers’ history it seems, as the city expanded in the past by adding seemingly independent neighborhoods. However, this was mainly due to the geographical situation and segregational colonial policy. Even Le Corbusier’s 1933 Plan Obus was based on a strongly segregated city, notwithstanding the revolutionary ideas. Both these conditions are left behind, as Algiers is expanding on the plains this time and government is not based on segregational policy. The growth of the city, up to the 1980ies followed this organic pattern in a rather natural and loose fashion, leaving the extension time to gradually embed in cultural, technical and natural context. Now, the situation is different, because of the near limitless horizon of the plains and the sheer volume of the growth itself. This causes serious strain on the ecological, infrastructural and cultural context. The rivers and embankments are polluted, mobility is a serious issue, and lack of attention to public space and amenities is dearly felt. However, after consulting various professionals, the situation appears to be quite different. What you see is not what is being conceived in terms of vision and plans, it seems. There is a great and visionary Strategic Plan (Plan Stratégique de développement de la Wilaya d’Alger 2009-2029, PSA’29) in the pipeline, near to being endorsed by the government and issued as guideline for the development of the city. This PSA’29 provides an integral vision on the Algiers urban area as well as its expected future limits within the Province of Algiers (Wilaya d’Alger). What may be lacking, within this ambiguous situation of ‘what you see is not what is being conceived’, is the connection between the numerous (relatively) small scale initiatives on the city edges and this grand vision. Where is the bottom-up attention for the local scaled issues of public space, ecology and cultural context, for instance ? built heritage issues Heritage is a touchy issue in Algiers. The Casbah is receiving increasing attention, and rightly so, because of its rich material and immaterial (La bataille d’Alger) heritage. Yet the modern heritage, of, say the period 1900-1975 – in terms of volume exceeding the pre-modern heritage – is being related to colonial history and thence an excuse for disregarding and demolition is easily found. There is only a small elite that is aware of the tremendous value of Algiers’ modern heritage. Great architects have worked in and on Algiers : Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Kenzo Tange, Roland Simounet and Fernand Pouillon, just to name a few. Algiers is, in this respect, comparable to other African cities such as Casablanca and Maputo, where an innovative generation of architects found more fertile ground to realize their dreams than at home. Other African cities with a comparable volume of built heritage are realizing that this heritage is not a burden but can be a generator for city revitalization : to think of Marrakech, Fès and Tunis in the Maghreb, Djenné, Asmara and Zanzibar in subsaharian Africa as well as the ‘Waterfront’ in Capetown. generosity of space in the urban fabric A specific issue that was noted by both Tom Avermaete and author from the visits and study of literature and plans is the development of public space in the urban fabric in Algiers through time. Algiers offers a broad range of interesting solutions in this realm throughout history : from the Casbah, via the pre-Hausmannian waterfront, squares and boulevards to the modern experiments of the Aero-Habitat and Pouillon’s neighborhoods of 200-Colonnes and Dar Mahçoul. The rich imbrications of public space and private residence provide examples from which a lot can be learned. It seems however, as already touched upon under the above heading of the peri-urban issues, that the contemporary developments in Algiers disregard this rich tradition. Researching this tradition of ‘generosity of space’ and applying this approach in a contemporary adaptation, could stand at the base of a sustainable development of the city. This issue is of particular relevance to the Dutch situation as well, as the initiators have discovered through their preceding research and education program on Casablanca (Learning from Casablanca, African Perspectives Casablanca November 2011) and could become a basis for cross-views and exchange between Algeria and Europe. #Algeria #heritage

During a conference in Accra from 1-3 June, organized by ArchiAfrika and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the ArchiAfrika educational network was launched: the fourteen gathered architecture schools from all regions of the African continent decided to work together to develop excellence among the next generation professionals in the African built environment. (photo AA Accra) The parties agreed that strategies to address the challenges in the African built environment should be developed from within the continent, in a cross disciplinary and cross cultural dialogue, including the excelling contemporary architects of Africa in the activities. A committee, existing of Mr. Benabdeljalil and Prof. George Intsiful (KNUST – Ghana), Prof. Aletta Steenkamp (University of Cape Town – South Africa) and Dr. Lawrence Esho (Kenya Polytechnic University College), will elaborate a programme consisting of international lecture series using new technologies, innovative workshops, trainee and summer school programmes for staff and students. African Architecture Matters in the person of Berend van der Lans was supportive to the event in assisting in programming, coordination, communication etc., while Antoni Folkers produced a report for the NAi platform. Read more via the websites of ArchiAfrika, Archnet and Modern Ghana among others. #education #Architecture

ProCredit Ghana is a micro finance bank, supporting many small and medium size businesses and in that sense contributing to the sustainable development of one of the fastest growing economies in the world. ProCredit takes its catalyst position serious and is not limited to finance when it comes to sustainability. Their new head offices, developed along Nsawam Road in Accra and designed by MultiCad Consulting Architects, Planners & Engineers Ltd., has been developed aiming at minimising environmental impact and maximising energy efficiency. African Architecture Matters executed an assessment for ProCredit to counter check the measurements and optimise the scheme. The assessment resulted in additional recommendations for passive energy savings, localised sourcing of materials and minimising maintenance costs. The proposed measurements, in addition to the design, will minimise environmental impact, but also result in a financially efficient building.

(2 students of the CUAD with the architects Mbaye Sene and Cherif Chiattara during the workshop) African public space may well provide successful solutions for public space challenges in the West – was the conclusion of the jury of the Blueprints of Paradise competition, developed by the Afrika Museum and AAmatters in 2010. As part of the Dak’art Biannual, the College Universitaire de l’Architecture de Dakar and African Architecture Matters explore this further in a workshop with over 40 students of the 1st to 3rd year of the school, taking place in the week before the Dak’art Biannual, being opened by Senegal’s new Minister of Culture Yousou N’Dour on the 11th of May. The results of this workshop, 6 proposals that aim to optimise the public space in and around Amsterdam CS, introducing ‘structured order’, ‘improved interconnectivity’ and multiple, more spontaneous and flexible use of the space, will be presented during the exhibition ‘Vision sénégalaise sur l’espace public aux Pays-Bas: La Gare Centrale d’Amsterdam Réinventée’ as part of the OFF programme of the Dak’art Biannual. the exhibition will be held in the garden of the Residence of the Dutch Ambassador, at the Rue des Ambassadeurs in Dakar between 18 May and 1 June 2012. Please find more information about the exhibition, the location, the OFF programme and the Dak’art biannual. The workshop is run by Mamadou Jean-Charles Tall, Mouhamadou Naby Kane (both CUAD), Cherif Diattara, Mbaye Sene (both Archi Art Concept) and Berend van der Lans (AAmatters). The project is supported by the Royal Netherlands embassy in Dakar.