All Stories: 31
Stories
Sort by:
Nejjarine Fountain and Museum: From Lodging House to Tourist Attraction
The Fez medina's Nejjarine Museum of Wooden Arts and Crafts has not always been a museum. It was built in 1711 as a fondouk (fondak), a lodging house for travelers that included a courtyard where…
Cine Atlântico: Projecting a changing city
If movies provide a view into a country’s ideals, hopes, realities, and dreams, so too do the theaters that project them. The history of Cine Atlântico perfectly shows Angola’s history of Portuguese…
Gate to the Emir's Palace, Zaria: Hausa Cultural Proclamation
Located in the old part of Zaria, known as Birnin Zazzau (walled city of Zaria) or Zaria City, the gate (kofar gida) to the Emir's palace stands out as a colorful representation of the Hausa people…
Braamfontein Gate: Reaching New Heights
Gentrification of an emptied business district still produces security concerns. This building attempts to allay fears with hired personnel, CCTV, and fingerprint access to the building.
Maboneng Precinct: A Trendy Post-Industrial, Post-Apartheid Paradise?
Transformed city spaces can take abandoned areas and turn them into urban magnets--but gentrification has its flip side.
The Agostinho Neto Mausoleum: A towering structure for a towering man
The Agostinho Neto Mausoleum is an obelisk-like concrete structure towering above the city of Luanda. It occupies the center of the Agostinho Neto Cultural Center, which takes up 4,633 square miles of…
Old Fourah Bay College Building: Mirroring the evolution of Freetown
The building that produced West Africa's Victorian-era graduates is being lost to Nature
Al-Qarawiyyin: University, Library, and Mosque in One
The university became popular early in Al-Qarawiyyin’s history. Students sat at the feet of the scholar, answering questions about texts. Famous alumni include 13th/14th-century theologian Ibn al-Haj…
The Polyclinique of the Médina: French Adoption of Sahelian Form in a Senegalese Context
The French found the climate of Dakar did not always suit their colonial vision of a Beaux-Arts colony, although its Neoclassical and Second Empire architectural styles were key to assimilation. That…
High Court of Justice, Benin City: Justice with a Traditional Face
This building and its annexes house the Edo State High Court, as well as the offices of the state judiciary. Several parts of the facade bear relief work by Ben Osawe (1931-2007). His three-story…
Kumase Public Works Department: Colonial Administration Survival
The Public Works Department (PWD) played a major role in early and later Anglophone colonial architecture and utilities. Although operative in the Ghana's coastal area as early as 1850, the PWD's…
The Residency: Home to Colonial Governance in Kumase
From Refuge to Elite Social Center
Palace, Fort, and Museum: Instruments of Power and Status: Construction and Destruction
Once the site of the Aban, a stone royal fortress/museum built in the European mode, its destruction gave rise to a British colonial fortress, a forceful sign of occupation. Today it stands as…
Adum Royal Palace: From Empire's Core to a Shopping District
Throughout the 19th century, the five-acre Adum Royal Palace Complex was the center of an Empire that held its own against British onslaughts. Its death knell occurred in the 1890s, and the 20th…
Manhyia Royal Palace: Seat of the Post-19th Century Asante Monarchs
Current Asante narrative stresses that the Asante insisted on paying the British for the new royal palace in 1925, so their ruler need not be beholden to the colonialists. British records show their…
Ring Road, Benin City, Nigeria: Oba Erediauwa Square: Busy Central Roundabout, Former Palace Forecourt
This busy center city thoroughfare has an ancient history that periodically resurrects when palace chiefs process through the roundabout.
Oba Akenzua Cultural Centre: Performing Arts and Exhibition Center
The Oba Akenzua Cultural Centre, designed by Nigerian artist Demas Nwoko, is centrally located in Benin City near the palace. Benin's premier venue for plays, video debuts, and other performances, it…
Benin Museum: Art Display, Archaeological Site, Palace Grounds
Benin City's National Museum was, in 1944, the second museum to be established in the country, under the auspices of Oba Akenzua II. He first hosted a collection of antiquities in the palace, some of…
St. Matthew's Cathedral, Benin CIty: Oldest surviving church in Benin City
This prominently located colonial church stands near the ancient market site of Ekiokpagha, where Oba Ewedo faced off against Benin City's republican indigenes centuries ago.
Home of Chief Isekhure: The Remodeling of a Traditional Chief's Home and its Destruction
The Oba's chief priest, educated in Canada, remodeled his traditional home in 1995. Stripped of his title in January, 2017 for offenses against the new monarch, Oba Ewuare II, parts of his house were…
Oba's Palace, Benin City, Nigeria: Site of the Benin Kingdom's Monarchy for Centuries
The present dynasty built its palace on an earlier dynasty's cemetery, incorporating the ancestors who owned the land.
Benin Walls and Moats (Iya): Defense or demarcation?
Four times as long as the Great Wall of China
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Architectural Complexities in a Tropical Climate
The University took possession of an estimated 13,000 acres of land north of the city center on Ibadan road, although less than half of the land is in active use. Renamed Obafemi Awolowo University…
Aare Crown Sculpture: Elevating the Office for a Time
This sculpture of the Ooni of Ife's singular crown reminded others of the kingdom's primacy
Afewonro Park: The Heart of Creation
The Oduduwa monument can be found within the grounds of Afewonro Park, located in Enuwa Square near the Ooni’s palace. The fiberglass figure, at the center of the city, represents Oduduwa, the Yoruba…
The Groote Schuur: Relic of Multiple Pasts
The regal estate that fronts Devil’s Peak next to Table Mountain was home to British colonialist, politician and imperialist Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902), whose belief in Anglo-Saxon supremacy led…
Mutual Heights: Cape Town's Art Deco Time Capsule
One of Cape Town’s most stunning works of architecture is Mutual Heights, formerly called the Old Mutual Building and the Mutual Building, Located in Cape Town Central, it is a masterpiece of Art Deco…
Mena House Hotel: A Royal Home for Guests, Yesterday and Today
Mena House Hotel has flourished and grown while harboring a rich history. Just 700 meters from the Great Pyramids, the Mena House still manages to stand out. Its elegant and elaborate architecture and…
Residences of South Sotho Speakers: Residences include numerous culturally significant practices linked to South Sotho identity
Domestic structures, which evolved over time as a result of cross-cultural interactions, were located around the lesaka cattle enclosure. These domestic spaces were recognized as the domain of women…
Surveying South Sotho Built Environments: Stories of Continuity and Change
Throughout history, the built environment of South Sotho speakers has responded to cross-cultural interactions and actively changing social situations from the time of their arrival into the central…