The next generation of African architects and designers

Saki Mafundikwa is a respected African graphic Designer. In this book he beautifully illustrates how the Afrikan alphabets have a long history, fantastic variety and how some continue to be in current use today. They are comparatively little known due largely to their suppression by colonial powers. This book sets the record straight. An entertaining and anecdotal text explains the wealth of highly graphical and attractive illustrations. Writing systems across the Afrikan continent are reviewed: the scripts of the West Africans - Mende, Vai, Nsibidi, Bamum and the Somali, and Ethiopian scripts are included, analyzed and illustrated. Other alphabets, writing styles, paintings, pictographs, ideographs, and symbols are compared and contrasted. All the writing systems are put into the context of their use as a means to impart and record information and to communicate complex ideas. The proof of subliminal existence of the African Identity is compelling.

Architecture for the Poor describes Hassan Fathy's plan for building the village of New Gourna, near Luxor, Egypt, without the use of more modern and expensive materials such as steel and concrete. Using mud bricks, the native technique that Fathy learned in Nubia, and such traditional Egyptian architectural designs as enclosed courtyards and vaulted roofing, Fathy worked with the villagers to tailor his designs to their needs. He taught them how to work with the bricks, supervised the erection of the buildings, and encouraged the revival of such ancient crafts as claustra (lattice designs in the mud work) to adorn the buildings.

The late 1950s and early 1960s saw a large number of central and sub-Saharan African countries gaining independence, and one of the key ways in which they expressed their newly established national identity was through distinctive architecture. Parliament buildings, stadiums, universities, central banks, convention centers, and other major public buildings and housing projects were built in daring, even heroic designs—markers of the bright future these nations envisioned after independence. African Modernism is the first book to take a close look at the relationship between these cutting-edge architectural projects and the processes of nation-building in Ghana, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Zambia. Presenting some seven hundred color photographs by celebrated photographers Iwan Baan and Alexia Webster and insightful analyses of the interactions of architectural innovation and developing national political and social cultures, African Modernism is interesting to historians of architecture and Africa alike.