The Canadian Centre for Architecture has shortlisted sixteen applicants from which eight will be selected for the Mellon Research Project on “Centring Africa: Postcolonial Perspectives on Architecture,” catalysed by the AAM archives donated to CCA in 2016. We are happy to see that the collections of Georg Lippsmeier, Coen Beeker and Kiran Mukerji, previously under the custodianship of AAMatters in Utrecht, will reach a broader audience and contribute to the ongoing research on development of architecture in sub-Saharan African countries after independence. The material was originally donated to Antoni Folkers who as a student worked in the 1980s with Coen Beeker in Ouagadougou and later in the 1990s with Lippsmeier and Mukerji in Dar es Salaam. We wish all the shortlisted candidates a lot of success!

Last week on Thursday 24th we had the opportunity to present Ng’ambo Atlas to the public during the conference The Future of the African City at the African Studies Centre Leiden. The book launch was followed by a debate on the relevance of material and immaterial culture and urban planning for cities on the African continent with Prof. Filip de Boeck, Dr. Muhammad Juma, Prof. Nnamdi Elleh, Prof. Ronald Wall and OluTimehin Adegbeye, moderated by Aart Oxenaar. The first copy of the Atlas was handed over by Dr. Muhammad Juma, director of the Dept. of Urban and Rural Planning in Zanzibar and co-author of the book, to the Ambassador of Tanzania to the Netherlands, Her Excellency Irene Kasyanju. For those who couldn’t be there we are also planning a book presentation during the conference African Perspectives +12 at TU Delft (25-27 March) and in Zanzibar later this year. ----------------- Book details: Ng’ambo is the lesser known ‘Other Side’ of Zanzibar Town. During the British Protectorate the area was designated as the ‘Native Quarters’, today it is set to become the new city centre of Zanzibar’s capital. Local and international perceptions of the cultural and historical importance of Ng’ambo have for a long time remained overshadowed by the social and cultural divisions created during colonial times. One thing is certain: despite its limited international fame and lack of recognition of its importance, Ng’ambo has played and continues to play a vital role in shaping the urban environment of Zanzibar Town. This atlas presents over hundred years of Ng’ambo’s history and urban development through maps, plans, surveys and images, and provides insights into its present-day cultural landscape through subjects such as architecture, toponymy, cultural activities, public recreation, places for social interaction, handcrafts and urban heritage. Ng’ambo Atlas. Historic Urban Landscape of Zanzibar Town’s ‘Other Side’ documents the material collected through the heritage-based urban planning project Ng’ambo Tuitakayo! carried out by the Government of Zanzibar in collaboration with African Architecture Matters and City of Amsterdam and under the auspices of UNESCO. Sneak preview of the publication: The Ng’ambo Atlas can be purchased here. #Culture #Research #Publication #IntangibleHeritage #heritage #Zanzibar #HistoricUrbanLandscape #Book #Event

The new book: Ng’ambo Atlas illustrates the Historic Urban Landscape of Zanzibar Town’s ‘Other Side’ (LM Publishers). Ng'ambo Atlas is produced by the Department of Urban and Rural Planning in Zanzibar and African Architecture Matters. Ng’ambo Atlas book launch is organised in collaboration with the African Studies Centre Leiden and will take place on Thursday 24 January 2019 at 15:30 in the Academy Building, Leiden University, Rapenburg 73, 2311 GJ Leiden - Klein Auditorium. The event is open to public, but due to limited seating capacity registration is compulsory. If you would like to join us please register here. The programme includes the presentation of the Ng’ambo Atlas by Dr Muhammad Juma (director of the Department of Urban and Rural Planning in Zanzibar), a public key-note speech by Professor Filip de Boeck and a discussion with Professor Nnamdi Elleh, Olutimehin Adegbeye, Ronald Wall and Muhammad Juma. The first copy of the Ng’ambo Atlas will officially be handed over by Dr. Muhammad Juma to the Tanzanian Ambassador in the Netherlands, H.E. Irene Kasyanju. We are grateful for the support received for the research, production and publication of the book from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, the Creative Industries Fund NL, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Dar es Salaam, EFL Foundation and the City of Amsterdam. ----------------- Book details: Ng’ambo is the lesser known ‘Other Side’ of Zanzibar Town. During the British Protectorate the area was designated as the ‘Native Quarters’, today it is set to become the new city centre of Zanzibar’s capital. Local and international perceptions of the cultural and historical importance of Ng’ambo have for a long time remained overshadowed by the social and cultural divisions created during colonial times. One thing is certain: despite its limited international fame and lack of recognition of its importance, Ng’ambo has played and continues to play a vital role in shaping the urban environment of Zanzibar Town. This atlas presents over hundred years of Ng’ambo’s history and urban development through maps, plans, surveys and images, and provides insights into its present-day cultural landscape through subjects such as architecture, toponymy, cultural activities, public recreation, places for social interaction, handcrafts and urban heritage. Ng’ambo Atlas. Historic Urban Landscape of Zanzibar Town’s ‘Other Side’ documents the material collected through the heritage-based urban planning project Ng’ambo Tuitakayo! carried out by the Government of Zanzibar in collaboration with African Architecture Matters and City of Amsterdam and under the auspices of UNESCO. Click on the images below to preview pages of the book: The book launch takes place in relation to the conference Future of the African City organized by the African Studies Centre in Leiden I collaboration with AAMatters. To read more about the event check the ASCL website We look forward to seeing you on the 24th of January in Leiden! #Culture #Research #Publication #IntangibleHeritage #heritage #Zanzibar #HistoricUrbanLandscape #Book #Event

The Canadian Centre for Architecture is launching a collaborative and multidisciplinary research project on architecture’s complex developments in sub-Saharan African countries after independence. Catalyzed by the donations of AAM, and with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the CCA will direct an eighteen-month project to analyze and historicize the ways in which architecture manifests transformations in post-independence African countries. The grants will support original, case-based research on concrete projects, actors, architectural typologies, key geographies, or urban developments that explore the history of architecture’s agency in sub-Saharan Africa. Applications due October 31, 2018 For more, please visit cca.qc.ca/centringafrica #Research #education #Architecture

IHS will host the opening event for the exhibition on the 19th of March, starting at 15:30. Last year in March we held a symposium on the work of the Dutch urban planner Coen Beeker together with African Studies Centre Leiden. During the symposium we launched the publication The Beeker Method. Planning and Working on the Redevelopment of the African City: Retrospective Glances into the Future (available for download here) featuring contributions of practitioners and scholars from Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Zanzibar and the Netherlands and opened a travelling exhibition providing insights into Beeker’s long involvement as an urban planner in Africa. Since then the exhibition has been presented at the University of Amsterdam and is now set to be opened at the premises of IHS Rotterdam. Coen Beeker and Antoni Folkers will be present at the exhibition opening event which will also include an presentation of to the book and a Q&A session with Beeker and Folkers. Picture Coen and Zanda. Source: Coen Beeker. Date: 19th March Time: 16:15 – 17:30 Location: IHS Rotterdam Address: Mandeville (T) Building, 14th floor, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50 , 3062 PA Rotterdam For more information see here. You can visit the exhibition until mid-June. #exhibition #Placemaking #Urbanplanning

On 1st of March, Antoni Folkers will give the lecture ‘African Architecture matters and perspectives on Shared Space’ at the Uniciti Education Hub in Pierrefonds, Mauritius. The lecture is organised as part of the second year course of the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture, an educational trajectory that is set up in Mauritius with the ENSA Nantes. The ENSA announces: ‘Antoni Folkers PhD is an architect and urban designer. He commenced his professional career as researcher and designer in Ouagadougou before joining the Institute for Tropical Building (IFT) in Starnberg, Germany (1983). He is co-founder of FBW Architects & Engineers (1995) and currently FBW Group Consultant and director of FBW Netherlands. He has been responsible for the design and execution of a wide range of architectural and urbanism projects throughout East Africa and Europe, and is currently involved in various projects in Tanzania as architect, urban planner and researcher. In 2001, he co-founded the ArchiAfrika, platform for research and news on African architecture. In 2010, the management of ArchiAfrika was handed over to African network partners. In the same year, Berend van der Lans and Antoni Folkers established African Architecture Matters, active in research, education and activism in the field of African architecture and urbanism. Antoni Folkers published a wide range of books and articles architectural subject, amongst which Mtoni – Palace, Sultan & Princess of Zanzibar and Modern Architecture in Africa on his 25 years of building and research experience in Africa in 2010. He is currently guest lecturer and researcher at Delft, Maputo and Pretoria Universities.’ Lecture: African Architecture matters and perspectives on Shared Space By: Antoni Folkers Date: 1 March 2018 Time: 17:00hrs. Location: Unicity Education Hub Address: Royal Road, Pierrefonds, Maritius #education #sharedspace #lecture

Since a couple of years, the Ardhi University of Dar es Salaam and the University of Hasselt (B) organise parallel studios in which Tanzanian and Belgium students work on projects in Tanzania with a positive social impact in their environment. This collaboration brings interesting perspectives on the architectural profession on both sides. After a couple of sites in and around Dar es Salaam in the previous years, the studio focusses now on Bagamoyo and the challenge to use its rich history as a basis for future developments. On Thursday 15 February at 16hrs, the studio will commence with a Kick off lecture by Berend van der Lans, shining a light on issues like the use of public space, heritage based urban regeneration and private sector involvement in heritage management. Also visitors from outside the university are welcome. The lecture takes place at: Campus Diepenbeek Agoralaan Building E B-3590 Diepenbeek #Culture #Placemaking #Presentation #heritagemanagement #IntangibleHeritage #Zanzibar #Urban #HistoricUrbanLandscape #publicspace

Hoba Hoba Spirit from Morocco on stage Berend van der Lans visited the Festival sur le Niger in Ségou for a contribution to a conference on the architecture of Ségou in the context of the festival. The Dutch national newspaper Volkskrant included his report on their Afrikablog in Dutch . Below you will find the text in English. More images and some videos to be found via this album on Facebook. In Ségou, nowadays a somewhat sleepy town on the banks of the Niger, history still is written. Although the city almost looks the same as during my last visit back in 1994, new heroes follow in the footsteps of the once powerful Bambara rulers, so beautifully described in the books of Maryse Condé. From 1 to 4 February, the city was the setting for the Festival sur le Niger, a grand manifestation of culture with a variety of musicians and bands from many countries, theatre, dance, exhibitions and a conference on ‘Ségou, city of architecture’, the theme of the 14th edition. Around 30,000 visitors came to the Malian city, from the immediate vicinity, but also from neighbouring countries and the rest of Africa. And that is special in a place, quite literally on the border between relative safety and danger; on the other side of the river the area starts where the state no longer has control and you can bump into armed groups allied to Al Qaida , IS and other less friendly people, who do not believe in a free society. The stage floating on the Niger river The Dutch Embassy in Bamako informed me beforehand that for Ségou 'all non-essential trips are being discouraged'. Furthermore, it is advisable to avoid places where many people meet, especially foreigners. What is essential? And avoid places where many people come together, easier said than done during a festival! After some pondering, I decide to see the appeal that has been made to me for a contribution to the architecture conference as essential, partly because I assume that the organisation must be sure of its cause. They will not take the risk to expose the audience and all those bands to danger, will they? Still not completely reassured, but with a positive mood, I travel to Ségou via Casablanca and Bamako. The welcome is warm and hearty. I meet with friends from the African architecture and culture world and I get to know new people during the opening night. The next morning the conference starts with presentations on the architecture of Ségou and the importance it plays in a contemporary city. There is a series of beautiful buildings in the city, generally built in the years 1900-1940 by the French. Unlike many buildings in former colonies, however, they do not reflect the architecture styles of the colonial powers at the time. Groupe Centrale, a characteristic Neo-Sudanese style building in the centre of town The French architects were impressed by the original architecture of Mali and therefore took over its style characteristics in their designs. In the 'neo-Sudanese style' you see forms that are related to the ‘banco’ building style that one sees in Djenné and Timbuktu, some other historic cities lying downstream. In a presentation by Michel Fleury at the architecture conference during the Festival sur le Niger, this was discussed in more detail, in which the study by Janneke Bierman (nowadays heading Bierman Henket architects) and Joep Mol from 1993 served as a reference book. Work that eventually led to the restoration of the Groupe Centrale, an important school in the city, one of the reasons for me to visit the city in 1994. The conference continued with a number of presentations that highlighted different strategies for preserving heritage. My contribution, aimed at an initiative-rich private sector that invests in monumental buildings with the aim to use them for the sustainable development of the city, such as Stadsherstel Amsterdam NV has been doing since the mid-50s and Hifadhi Zanzibar for several years in Stone Town for the coast of East Africa, was well received. The festival was set up by the cultural entrepreneur Mamou Daffé, who is convinced that stimulating culture is essential for social cohesion and economic development. Since 2005 he has invested in a cultural centre, in exhibition spaces, in a hotel and brings together other entrepreneurs, the government, local and international funds. The opening play of the festival under the eyes of safety forces The Minister of Culture of Mali underlined during her speech at the opening that the government fully supports the festival and sees it as a cultural fist against terrorism that plagues the country. During the festival, 400 soldiers guarded the festival visitors. The audience wasn’t scared away by the threat. The visitors were carried away by new sounds from Kareyce Fotso from Cameroon, the Afro-fusion of the Women Groove Project from Senegal and the super popular magreb rock from Hoba Hoba Spirit from Morocco, as well as by veterans like Oliver Mtukundzi from Zimbabwe. Habib Koïté and Salif Keita from Mali, with whom every word is sung. None of the more than thirty bands that perform on the floating stage on the river Niger is put off by the safety situation. I cannot imagine a more peaceful atmosphere than during this vibrant festival in Ségou. Have we all crawled through the eye of the needle? Was the risk justified? We will not know. It ended well and the days were unforgettable for me and I suspect almost all other 30,000 visitors. We stood shoulder to shoulder for peace, but Mamou Daffé and his fellow citizens are left behind at the front. They are the real heroes. If possible, I will stand side by side again next year. #Culture #Seminar #heritage #Architecture #network

On 30th November 2017, 15:00hrs @ Shaughnessy House, CCA, Montreal - Canada, a seminar is taking place on the AAmatters collection which is handed over to CCA last year. To encourage architectural history to contend with the world beyond the Global North, and to interrogate and adapt the discipline’s tools, protocols, and premises accordingly, the CCA will host a public seminar on the historiography of architecture in sub-Saharan Africa. Although recent exhibitions focusing on contemporary practice and on the post-independence period have brought attention to architecture on the continent, the history of African architecture remains too little researched. This event is prompted by three important collections that have recently arrived at the CCA, which offer an opportunity for reflection on global histories of architecture with Africa as a point of focus. The collections, donated by the organization African Architecture Matters (AAM), are the archives and library of Dutch urban planner Coen Beeker, the library of German architect Georg Lippsmeier’s Institut für Tropenbau (IFT), and the library of IFT researcher Kiran Mukerji. With over three thousand titles in addition to slides, maps, and other documents, these collections form one of the largest existing holdings of books, manuals, and reports on African architecture and planning. During the seminar, Rachel Lee, Ayala Levin, Itohan Osayimwese, and Ola Uduku will respond to the question “which architectural history, today?” through presentations of their ongoing research and in conversation with AAM director Antoni Folkers. Lee is a postdoctoral researcher at the LMU Munich and will present on Hannah Schreckenbach, an architect and instructor in Ghana who collaborated with Lippsmeier and worked as a consultant for the German Technical Cooperation Agency. Levin, an architectural historian at Northwestern University, will base her presentation on examples from Israeli architectural, planning, and construction aid in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the Ivory Coast. Osayimwese is an assistant professor at Brown University and will speak on issues of primary sources, language, and translation through the figure of the late nineteenth-century German anthropologist Hermann Frobenius. Uduku is Professor of Architecture at Manchester School of Architecture, she was formerly Reader in Architecture and Dean for Africa at the University of Edinburgh. She will present and discuss her research on school design in Africa and also ongoing research and teaching collaborations focused on modernist architecture in post-war West Africa. For registration please register via the CCA website. #Architecture #Seminar #tropicalarchitecture

Tourism can be a nuisance, as becomes clear when listening to a growing number of inhabitants from Barcelona, Amsterdam, Paris etc, but it also serves as a source of identity and cohesion and as driver for socio-economic development. This is recognised by the shareholders from Hifadhi Zanzibar, as it was recognised by the shareholders of Stadsherstel Amsterdam some 60 years earlier. The Sovereign Investment Lab (SIL), a research unit of the Baffi Carefin, Bocconi University, and the Fondazione Riccardo Catella in Milano organise the workshop 'Tourism, Culture and Long-term Investment: Heritage Assets Management in the XXI Century' on 26 October 2017. The workshop aims at involving top international experts, investors and policy makers to discuss the frontiers in cultural heritage asset management and investment , the risk of tourism & heritage funds, and the economic and institutional challenges affecting the launch of cultural tourism as engine for sustainable development. Berend van der Lans from AAmatters will contribute to the workshop by sharing experiences from Stadsherstel Amsterdam and Hifadhi Zanzibar. More information on the programme can be obtained via the website from the Fondazione Riccardo Catella. You can follow the event via streaming on the website of Coima.

On 7th and 8th September, the second International Conference on African Urban Planning took place in Lisbon and brought together a group of dedicated scholars and planners. The event was organised by the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning of the University of Lisbon and the International Planning History Society. Iga Perzyna was present on behalf of AAmatters and had the opportunity to present two topics related to our recent projects: Modernising Ouagadougou, the work of Coen Beeker and the DGUT (1978-1989) and Swahili Urbanism? A Case Study of Ng’ambo – Zanzibar Town’s “Other Side”.

Hifadhi, the private company with the public goal to safeguard the built heritage of Zanzibar and Stone Town in particular that we have helped setting up, reached a first milestone. The Chairman of the Board of Directors Nassor El-Mahruki signed a contract with Wakf on taking over a building. It is the first building of Hifadhi and with this acquisition it will be able to show what Hifadhi offers Zanzibar. The team members are eager to get started and make this a success. And so is AAmatters.