[Applause]
hi everybody
okay so I’m here to talk about the upper
modernist diaries identity and
architecture so what is an African
building when we think of this idea of
what it means to be African I think all
of us understand or have an idea what we
consider an African building to be and
it usually tends to be the idea of rural
vernacular this is a typical village
that wasn’t oil it had to be rebuilt in
a bare cooter after a series of wars but
this is a typical example of what we
understand it to be to mean to be
African it’s a series of simple
structures put together other
collectives usually with a central court
in the Middle where they would have
village meetings but in terms of its
individuality the buildings are small
simple structures to create shelter
allowed for cooling allow for light
where necessary to carry out rudimentary
village life activities of taking care
of children cooking in a collective
going to the farm and so on Oh what do
we then considered to be our urban
vernacular so we’re going from this idea
of rural into urban we’re moving from
villages into cities now what a lot of
people consider to be our vernacular our
vernacular is the Brazilian style this
was brought back by their gündüz the
Brazilian returnees who came back in the
early 1800s after slavery now personally
I don’t feel that these represents what
it means to be African purely because
they’re an imported style they were not
influenced from the bottom up they are
not indigenous but your average Nigerian
they are because they really don’t
understand where it’s come from this
type of housing has populated a lot of
Southwest
in Nigeria you have it from a bad
daughter back without illegals and even
in the East year it was seen as a style
of affluence so what do we consider as a
urban Civic recently last year July my
office completed Marilyn Moe on your
career road this building doesn’t fit
the standard typology or what a shopping
mall in Nigeria is because predominantly
what we’ve had coming has actually been
provided by the South African architects
the building in itself is a completely
unique design but was appropriate for
its use but the criticism that I’ve had
on this building is is it really African
then we look at this idea of modernism
what is modernism it was a philosophical
movement that manifested in architecture
art and design predominantly the alien
firm in the 1900s but in terms of
architecture and urbanism in Africa it
has a funny tension so this image here
is done by a lady called Nancy Woolf
with an American artist who came into
Nigeria in the 1980s when her husband
came to teach at the University of
Nigeria and in this image she depicts
this idea of the tension that exists
between modernization and and vernacular
culture so you can see the village heart
in relation to the planned mass housing
and the tension that exists between the
two this other image here shows who are
we the question of identity you can see
a Manhattan type skyline in the
background and you can see a masquerade
standing looking confused we have this
awkward tension that exists between the
then and the now so modernism how does
it all start everything really started
with industrialization industrialization
started in the early 1700s where it was
the opportunity to take the world from
being farmers and hunters into being
able to mass-produce using technology
and shifting the world from towns into
actual cities
but this came with with connotations
industrialization was supported by
slavery because initially before the
technology was advanced enough it was
about having mass humans being able to
produce on large scale following
colonized slave trade came colonization
where there was a scramble for the
African continent and followed by that
we then have this idea of modernism so
it’s important we understand this linear
process now this is a map of Africa as
we understand it today with our boundary
lines between states but it wasn’t
always like this these are the empires
that existed between the 1300s to the
1600s
we had trade between Empire States
trading in ivory trading in minerals
copper trading and clothes and there was
a lot of inter trading between these
different empires and then we had the
shift and this was really where it all
went wrong and the fifteen hundred’s
when the Europeans came in and he
started trading toward the South
Atlantic and taking slaves out and there
was 1515 million slaves that were
exported from the continents from 1500s
to 1900s and so in the 1800’s late 1800s
this is what they had this was a
scramble for Africa and this shows you
the the the colonization pattern that
existed so rudiment players were Britain
France Portugal Germany and Spain and
there were only two countries that were
not colonized in Africa Liberia and
Ethiopia library predominantly was the
place where we Chinese slaves were
allocated land from the United States of
America but if your mo was never
colonized by any stage there was a short
spell where Italy tried to take
occupation but it didn’t hold but
culturally they’re the most advanced on
the continent now the reason why this is
important is because here there’s this
idea of you know the
the nation states of a creature from
Africa first by colonization and then
opposing forces
we’ve been molded together not out of
our intents but by the powers that were
imposed on us
so when I talk about this idea of
understanding where we’re coming from
this sculpture is known as Sodom and
it’s the Elias sculpture that has been
carbon-dated
from a nation it’s considered to be from
1325 to 1360 you can imagine the
capacity or the skill that existed at
that time and then it makes you think
about how much has actually been lost
now I want to show you a video and I
will explain it after it’s been
[Music]
[Music]
okay the reason why I showed that is my
understanding of what we just watch
there are two videos you watch the
second one the first one was a
representation of a setting where
someone is accused of committing a crime
and they have sworn that they were not
the ones if you lift off the baskets and
the feathers are flats it means that
your innocence
if you lift it up on the feather stand
then you’re guilty the reason why I’m
showing this is that before colonization
we had systems in place that acted for
law that I said if you had on if you had
a problem you would go to an Oracle
but when colonization came we were told
on to understand that our culture was
wrong everything that we we we had in
terms of our religion was pushed to the
side and to be honest why you see
situation like that happened now it’s
considered as French culture I’m not
here necessarily to give credit to that
situation or give credit to the system
that we move with now but it’s more the
acknowledgement that in us developing
with the way the world expected us to
we’ve actually lost a lot and so with
that I come up with these ideas of what
is here I’m going to talk about Island
evolution and an evolution occurs when
mammals become either Dwarfs or Giants
because of lack of external forces a
typical example of this is the dodo bird
this has become now extinct it lived on
the island of Mauritius and in the 1600s
late 1600s it became extinct when the
foreigners or the Europeans came in on
the island the bird did not have the
ability to fly because in reality didn’t
need to but when the influences came in
the bird couldn’t fly was easy prey and
though it wasn’t it tasty bird its
gizzard was quite nice
and because of that they were they were
called in in masses and but doesn’t
exist anymore so this is a typical
example of an animal that lived in
isolation was able to evolve to a state
but when an external first came in it
couldn’t move forward and so I relate
this now with the situation of Africa
and still give other examples you have a
book that was written called economics
and in freakonomics they have they made
an assumption and I’ll just read it out
now on average children born in 1967
just after abortion became a bigger
display better education and labor
market achievements than children born
prior to the change this outcome came
can be explained by a change in the
composition of women having children
they actually noticed in the u.s. that
they had a drop in the crime rates in
the 1980s and it really was because a
whole generation were never born
so it now makes you think about
situations that exist this is the study
that was done by an artist called
Christina Miller called F Ranaut’s there
was actually a research teacher in
Namibia who set up a science program to
take astronauts from Africa into space
and this is an idea of what if we had
had a linear evolution without any
external forces would we have become
more advanced than we are
would you have had astronauts wearing
patterns very similar to the
tessellations that exist in African
cities or in our patterns or in our
culture’s and then I think as well what
if the gündüz didn’t come back what if
they didn’t bring their style of
architecture with them would we have a
completely different identity to what we
have now and then I think culturally
there are certain things that have
stayed with us this is a village in the
east and you can see here the very high
pitched roof which is quite significant
to show the idea of presence and
establishment if you look at a modern
house in the east today you still have
that coordination that exists even in a
modern building that hasn’t been because
it’s been a linear process but
culturally they’ve been certain aspects
that I’ve stayed with us so what is a
modernist African building
we can’t look at that without looking at
this idea of post-colonial modernism in
Africa in general Africa is a continent
we embraced post colonialism we’re
trying to create establish iconic
buildings to show that we had arrived
that we had come of age there was a
growth in terms of fill Civic buildings
theaters hospitals state institution
buildings but very many in many cases
across the continents in general those
buildings were not planned with long
term infrastructure and this is a
typical example of a building in Ghana
where you can now see we’ve gone back
with and you have people using the space
now to hang their clothes but there was
great intent in terms of modernism but
he wasn’t necessarily created by
Africans not African architects a lot of
the foreign architects that came in the
in the 1950s and 60s were trained in the
West but they were taught the principles
of tropical architecture to ensure that
the Builder that they were designing
would consider light and consider
ventilation being passively placed and
so this is an example of a building
anybody that was done by fryer also and
Nancy Drew but then we look at this idea
of how did the African actually
contribute towards this the first
Architects in Nigeria was called alamou
um he studied at Manchester school of
architecture and he was the first person
to come back and set up private practice
I read an interview with him and he also
questioned this idea of how to really
make a building African or an African
modernist building and to be honest he
didn’t really answer the question but he
did consider the spaces that we occupied
for example a lot of the houses that he
designed he was conscious of the fact
that we had several levels of public and
private living rooms because of the the
number of guests that you would receive
for maybe weddings or funerals which you
wouldn’t necessarily have had in the
modernist European or a Western building
and then I’m going to look at two
architects to kind of buttress this
point we have demos mokume who is very
well celebrated as an artist sculptor
and architect and here is an example of
the museum that he
the dominican chapel that was done any
better now some parties will consider
this to be a modernist building but in
mine comes my concerns here is that he
has emphasized a lot of ornamentation
which doesn’t seem necessarily well with
modernism modernism is about creating
buildings of simplicity true to form
plain lines and untrue to material but
he’s one of the first in our in our
country in our country to really push
this idea of being able to create
something that is African the next
artists architects I would like to speak
about is Frances Cary Frances Cary is
from Burkina Faso he grew up in a
village and he had designed a village
school which has been very well
celebrated internationally very
conscious of materiality and ensuring
that he created a building that is
appropriate for its environment
conscious of sustainability and being
able to be maintained by the local
community but also aesthetically pushing
the boundaries of what we should
consider architecture to be and because
of this he he was given the commission
to produce the serpentine Pavilion in in
in London in Hyde Park
this year now this building is one that
is done once a year it’s a temporary
structure done in the park there have
been 17 architects who have been
produced pavilion since 2000 and he was
the first from from our continents be
able to produce a building here but
what’s so beautiful is that he brought
the sensibility of being African to this
space conscious of this idea of the
village collective the collection of
light and even again looking at this
idea of patterning and structure that is
so prevalent in our culture now the
question that a lot of people have is
will he be able to translate this into a
building on a much larger scale now what
is our identity let’s take it away from
buildings here we have an image of
Ankara and we have an image of Ashoke a
lot of people feel that arrancars
actually african but it’s not entire was
actually set up by the Dutch as a cheap
imitation to them Indonesia Indah mosque
it was intended for the Indonesian mark
but he didn’t take up there it was
somehow absorbed by Africans who took it
forward and celebrated it whereas you
have Ashoka which is actually indigenous
to this environment Ankara has become
part of our tradition but it’s actually
not our culture when you look at people
who are beginning to celebrate this idea
of African and really bring it into
their work and here is some stuff that
is done by a company called da where
they produce utensils for kitchens and
the one on the left is the OMA room
which is a typical utensil exists in any
African kitchen which is used to stage
all of rice and scratch the bunch rice
from the bottom of the pot but here he’s
taken that Sensibility I started to
create clean contemporary pieces that
are appropriate for the international
market this is one of our chests that
we’ve recently produced as well from our
furniture line at Layla what we’re
looking at using beautifully made pieces
from from Nigeria using local fabrics
here is a dram and this next one is the
use of Oishi okay to create a very clean
contemporary armchair these are pieces
that are done by a company in Ghana and
this is by MOA our designs who you also
look at pottery and push this idea of
collective Passyunk that exists this is
done by a Nigerian product designer Tom
Oliver fry well he takes materials that
he is able to find locally to create
interesting geometries and push the idea
of what we consider to be good products
this is another piece that shows again
using modern materials but weaving in
that idea that very African patterning
that exists and so we then ask ourselves
70% of the world’s population is
expected to live in cities by 2050 half
of them will be in Africa and they will
be under 30 we have moved from rural to
urban as we move do we have a clear
narrative we have a clear narrative what
we consider rural vernacular but what do
we consider as our urban Civic
architecture here is a study that I’m
doing with a very famous artist Victor
he came on air where we’re beginning to
you can explore this idea of what does
it really mean to be African and this is
really a self-portrait
conscious of my personal features and
how they’re also expressing a lot of the
art that exists from our continent
whether it’s others been produced today
or other was produced from the 1300s so
we go back to this idea of of Francis
Kerry’s building and what he’s been able
to create in terms of his effort his
identity in his buildings and I think
something that’s quite interesting is
that though he might have created an
architecture that it seems more rural or
small-scale Africa being the last
frontier it’s really the last place on
earth where things are truly human well
we live in an environment now where
everything is artificial environments
where you have cities being developed
where everything is being controlled
it’s an opportunity for us to step back
and actually look at the way things were
done and see how we can add value to
where we’re going we have a unique
opportunity as Africans because of the
advance of technology we’ve been able to
jump many steps we have to consciously
make sure that we push the boundaries
further and I will leave you with a
statement from Walachia in camp there is
only one home to the life of the river
mussel there is only one home to the
life of a tortoise there is only one
shell to the soul of a man there is only
one world in the spirit of our race
if that world leaves its course and
smashes all boulders of the great void
whose world will give us shelter let us
know who we are
thank you
[Applause]
you
[Applause]
hi everybody
okay so I’m here to talk about the upper
modernist diaries identity and
architecture so what is an African
building when we think of this idea of
what it means to be African I think all
of us understand or have an idea what we
consider an African building to be and
it usually tends to be the idea of rural
vernacular this is a typical village
that wasn’t oil it had to be rebuilt in
a bare cooter after a series of wars but
this is a typical example of what we
understand it to be to mean to be
African it’s a series of simple
structures put together other
collectives usually with a central court
in the Middle where they would have
village meetings but in terms of its
individuality the buildings are small
simple structures to create shelter
allowed for cooling allow for light
where necessary to carry out rudimentary
village life activities of taking care
of children cooking in a collective
going to the farm and so on Oh what do
we then considered to be our urban
vernacular so we’re going from this idea
of rural into urban we’re moving from
villages into cities now what a lot of
people consider to be our vernacular our
vernacular is the Brazilian style this
was brought back by their gündüz the
Brazilian returnees who came back in the
early 1800s after slavery now personally
I don’t feel that these represents what
it means to be African purely because
they’re an imported style they were not
influenced from the bottom up they are
not indigenous but your average Nigerian
they are because they really don’t
understand where it’s come from this
type of housing has populated a lot of
Southwest
in Nigeria you have it from a bad
daughter back without illegals and even
in the East year it was seen as a style
of affluence so what do we consider as a
urban Civic recently last year July my
office completed Marilyn Moe on your
career road this building doesn’t fit
the standard typology or what a shopping
mall in Nigeria is because predominantly
what we’ve had coming has actually been
provided by the South African architects
the building in itself is a completely
unique design but was appropriate for
its use but the criticism that I’ve had
on this building is is it really African
then we look at this idea of modernism
what is modernism it was a philosophical
movement that manifested in architecture
art and design predominantly the alien
firm in the 1900s but in terms of
architecture and urbanism in Africa it
has a funny tension so this image here
is done by a lady called Nancy Woolf
with an American artist who came into
Nigeria in the 1980s when her husband
came to teach at the University of
Nigeria and in this image she depicts
this idea of the tension that exists
between modernization and and vernacular
culture so you can see the village heart
in relation to the planned mass housing
and the tension that exists between the
two this other image here shows who are
we the question of identity you can see
a Manhattan type skyline in the
background and you can see a masquerade
standing looking confused we have this
awkward tension that exists between the
then and the now so modernism how does
it all start everything really started
with industrialization industrialization
started in the early 1700s where it was
the opportunity to take the world from
being farmers and hunters into being
able to mass-produce using technology
and shifting the world from towns into
actual cities
but this came with with connotations
industrialization was supported by
slavery because initially before the
technology was advanced enough it was
about having mass humans being able to
produce on large scale following
colonized slave trade came colonization
where there was a scramble for the
African continent and followed by that
we then have this idea of modernism so
it’s important we understand this linear
process now this is a map of Africa as
we understand it today with our boundary
lines between states but it wasn’t
always like this these are the empires
that existed between the 1300s to the
1600s
we had trade between Empire States
trading in ivory trading in minerals
copper trading and clothes and there was
a lot of inter trading between these
different empires and then we had the
shift and this was really where it all
went wrong and the fifteen hundred’s
when the Europeans came in and he
started trading toward the South
Atlantic and taking slaves out and there
was 1515 million slaves that were
exported from the continents from 1500s
to 1900s and so in the 1800’s late 1800s
this is what they had this was a
scramble for Africa and this shows you
the the the colonization pattern that
existed so rudiment players were Britain
France Portugal Germany and Spain and
there were only two countries that were
not colonized in Africa Liberia and
Ethiopia library predominantly was the
place where we Chinese slaves were
allocated land from the United States of
America but if your mo was never
colonized by any stage there was a short
spell where Italy tried to take
occupation but it didn’t hold but
culturally they’re the most advanced on
the continent now the reason why this is
important is because here there’s this
idea of you know the
the nation states of a creature from
Africa first by colonization and then
opposing forces
we’ve been molded together not out of
our intents but by the powers that were
imposed on us
so when I talk about this idea of
understanding where we’re coming from
this sculpture is known as Sodom and
it’s the Elias sculpture that has been
carbon-dated
from a nation it’s considered to be from
1325 to 1360 you can imagine the
capacity or the skill that existed at
that time and then it makes you think
about how much has actually been lost
now I want to show you a video and I
will explain it after it’s been
[Music]
[Music]
okay the reason why I showed that is my
understanding of what we just watch
there are two videos you watch the
second one the first one was a
representation of a setting where
someone is accused of committing a crime
and they have sworn that they were not
the ones if you lift off the baskets and
the feathers are flats it means that
your innocence
if you lift it up on the feather stand
then you’re guilty the reason why I’m
showing this is that before colonization
we had systems in place that acted for
law that I said if you had on if you had
a problem you would go to an Oracle
but when colonization came we were told
on to understand that our culture was
wrong everything that we we we had in
terms of our religion was pushed to the
side and to be honest why you see
situation like that happened now it’s
considered as French culture I’m not
here necessarily to give credit to that
situation or give credit to the system
that we move with now but it’s more the
acknowledgement that in us developing
with the way the world expected us to
we’ve actually lost a lot and so with
that I come up with these ideas of what
is here I’m going to talk about Island
evolution and an evolution occurs when
mammals become either Dwarfs or Giants
because of lack of external forces a
typical example of this is the dodo bird
this has become now extinct it lived on
the island of Mauritius and in the 1600s
late 1600s it became extinct when the
foreigners or the Europeans came in on
the island the bird did not have the
ability to fly because in reality didn’t
need to but when the influences came in
the bird couldn’t fly was easy prey and
though it wasn’t it tasty bird its
gizzard was quite nice
and because of that they were they were
called in in masses and but doesn’t
exist anymore so this is a typical
example of an animal that lived in
isolation was able to evolve to a state
but when an external first came in it
couldn’t move forward and so I relate
this now with the situation of Africa
and still give other examples you have a
book that was written called economics
and in freakonomics they have they made
an assumption and I’ll just read it out
now on average children born in 1967
just after abortion became a bigger
display better education and labor
market achievements than children born
prior to the change this outcome came
can be explained by a change in the
composition of women having children
they actually noticed in the u.s. that
they had a drop in the crime rates in
the 1980s and it really was because a
whole generation were never born
so it now makes you think about
situations that exist this is the study
that was done by an artist called
Christina Miller called F Ranaut’s there
was actually a research teacher in
Namibia who set up a science program to
take astronauts from Africa into space
and this is an idea of what if we had
had a linear evolution without any
external forces would we have become
more advanced than we are
would you have had astronauts wearing
patterns very similar to the
tessellations that exist in African
cities or in our patterns or in our
culture’s and then I think as well what
if the gündüz didn’t come back what if
they didn’t bring their style of
architecture with them would we have a
completely different identity to what we
have now and then I think culturally
there are certain things that have
stayed with us this is a village in the
east and you can see here the very high
pitched roof which is quite significant
to show the idea of presence and
establishment if you look at a modern
house in the east today you still have
that coordination that exists even in a
modern building that hasn’t been because
it’s been a linear process but
culturally they’ve been certain aspects
that I’ve stayed with us so what is a
modernist African building
we can’t look at that without looking at
this idea of post-colonial modernism in
Africa in general Africa is a continent
we embraced post colonialism we’re
trying to create establish iconic
buildings to show that we had arrived
that we had come of age there was a
growth in terms of fill Civic buildings
theaters hospitals state institution
buildings but very many in many cases
across the continents in general those
buildings were not planned with long
term infrastructure and this is a
typical example of a building in Ghana
where you can now see we’ve gone back
with and you have people using the space
now to hang their clothes but there was
great intent in terms of modernism but
he wasn’t necessarily created by
Africans not African architects a lot of
the foreign architects that came in the
in the 1950s and 60s were trained in the
West but they were taught the principles
of tropical architecture to ensure that
the Builder that they were designing
would consider light and consider
ventilation being passively placed and
so this is an example of a building
anybody that was done by fryer also and
Nancy Drew but then we look at this idea
of how did the African actually
contribute towards this the first
Architects in Nigeria was called alamou
um he studied at Manchester school of
architecture and he was the first person
to come back and set up private practice
I read an interview with him and he also
questioned this idea of how to really
make a building African or an African
modernist building and to be honest he
didn’t really answer the question but he
did consider the spaces that we occupied
for example a lot of the houses that he
designed he was conscious of the fact
that we had several levels of public and
private living rooms because of the the
number of guests that you would receive
for maybe weddings or funerals which you
wouldn’t necessarily have had in the
modernist European or a Western building
and then I’m going to look at two
architects to kind of buttress this
point we have demos mokume who is very
well celebrated as an artist sculptor
and architect and here is an example of
the museum that he
the dominican chapel that was done any
better now some parties will consider
this to be a modernist building but in
mine comes my concerns here is that he
has emphasized a lot of ornamentation
which doesn’t seem necessarily well with
modernism modernism is about creating
buildings of simplicity true to form
plain lines and untrue to material but
he’s one of the first in our in our
country in our country to really push
this idea of being able to create
something that is African the next
artists architects I would like to speak
about is Frances Cary Frances Cary is
from Burkina Faso he grew up in a
village and he had designed a village
school which has been very well
celebrated internationally very
conscious of materiality and ensuring
that he created a building that is
appropriate for its environment
conscious of sustainability and being
able to be maintained by the local
community but also aesthetically pushing
the boundaries of what we should
consider architecture to be and because
of this he he was given the commission
to produce the serpentine Pavilion in in
in London in Hyde Park
this year now this building is one that
is done once a year it’s a temporary
structure done in the park there have
been 17 architects who have been
produced pavilion since 2000 and he was
the first from from our continents be
able to produce a building here but
what’s so beautiful is that he brought
the sensibility of being African to this
space conscious of this idea of the
village collective the collection of
light and even again looking at this
idea of patterning and structure that is
so prevalent in our culture now the
question that a lot of people have is
will he be able to translate this into a
building on a much larger scale now what
is our identity let’s take it away from
buildings here we have an image of
Ankara and we have an image of Ashoke a
lot of people feel that arrancars
actually african but it’s not entire was
actually set up by the Dutch as a cheap
imitation to them Indonesia Indah mosque
it was intended for the Indonesian mark
but he didn’t take up there it was
somehow absorbed by Africans who took it
forward and celebrated it whereas you
have Ashoka which is actually indigenous
to this environment Ankara has become
part of our tradition but it’s actually
not our culture when you look at people
who are beginning to celebrate this idea
of African and really bring it into
their work and here is some stuff that
is done by a company called da where
they produce utensils for kitchens and
the one on the left is the OMA room
which is a typical utensil exists in any
African kitchen which is used to stage
all of rice and scratch the bunch rice
from the bottom of the pot but here he’s
taken that Sensibility I started to
create clean contemporary pieces that
are appropriate for the international
market this is one of our chests that
we’ve recently produced as well from our
furniture line at Layla what we’re
looking at using beautifully made pieces
from from Nigeria using local fabrics
here is a dram and this next one is the
use of Oishi okay to create a very clean
contemporary armchair these are pieces
that are done by a company in Ghana and
this is by MOA our designs who you also
look at pottery and push this idea of
collective Passyunk that exists this is
done by a Nigerian product designer Tom
Oliver fry well he takes materials that
he is able to find locally to create
interesting geometries and push the idea
of what we consider to be good products
this is another piece that shows again
using modern materials but weaving in
that idea that very African patterning
that exists and so we then ask ourselves
70% of the world’s population is
expected to live in cities by 2050 half
of them will be in Africa and they will
be under 30 we have moved from rural to
urban as we move do we have a clear
narrative we have a clear narrative what
we consider rural vernacular but what do
we consider as our urban Civic
architecture here is a study that I’m
doing with a very famous artist Victor
he came on air where we’re beginning to
you can explore this idea of what does
it really mean to be African and this is
really a self-portrait
conscious of my personal features and
how they’re also expressing a lot of the
art that exists from our continent
whether it’s others been produced today
or other was produced from the 1300s so
we go back to this idea of of Francis
Kerry’s building and what he’s been able
to create in terms of his effort his
identity in his buildings and I think
something that’s quite interesting is
that though he might have created an
architecture that it seems more rural or
small-scale Africa being the last
frontier it’s really the last place on
earth where things are truly human well
we live in an environment now where
everything is artificial environments
where you have cities being developed
where everything is being controlled
it’s an opportunity for us to step back
and actually look at the way things were
done and see how we can add value to
where we’re going we have a unique
opportunity as Africans because of the
advance of technology we’ve been able to
jump many steps we have to consciously
make sure that we push the boundaries
further and I will leave you with a
statement from Walachia in camp there is
only one home to the life of the river
mussel there is only one home to the
life of a tortoise there is only one
shell to the soul of a man there is only
one world in the spirit of our race
if that world leaves its course and
smashes all boulders of the great void
whose world will give us shelter let us
know who we are
thank you
[Applause]
you
[Applause]
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