Best African Highrise Design

• 1 year ago
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• Competition

by Olalekan Afolabi & Olalekan Ileola-Gold

ITAN

Post-colonial Africa is often propagated in the light of her inter-tribal conflicts, corruption, civil unrest, and instability of all forms. Although the civil unrest has drastically reduced in most African countries, but the stigma remains, the world often forgets that the shadows of pre-colonial times continues to brag, lingering in serenity. Africa is still being painted on a wrong canvas in time despite her sufferings. In other to initiate a change in the portrait of Africa, an African iconic statement must address these 3 components of self-identity and awareness.

It should portray Africa and its participation in the YESTERDAY of life to remind her of a reference point that should not never happen again.

It must evaluate her position in the NOW of Life to ensure that it is united in one voice

It must finally take a leap, making gestures toward the TOMORROW of life to keep the future bright and secure.

 ITAN answers these three fundamental questions in all its sensibilities.

INSPIRATION

 “Her calabash contains her offering to the busy car park, a place of fair transactions: a glass of milk for a few naira, for less than the alms one might freely part with on a Sunday. A point of light travels through this palm-fiber roof to excite the lake of viscous white trapped inside. But there is no splash of milk. No, not like July monochrome raindrops when they slosh in monsoon buckets that travel heavy and tilt over Africa. Some people say that Africans have been left behind, as if time selects the ones it catches up and pulls to the ground. But time leaves no one behind, not even a girl with a calabash. Time swallows her stillness like a thirsty traveller on the road from Ibadan to Kaduna."

"The girl with a calabash” By Viola Allo

Published: Poetry for the Mind's Joy. 2011

The piece above, which is an excerpt from the award Winning poem for "Best in the Nation" by the Community College Humanities Association (2011), was written by a Cameroonian-born poet based in the United States and forms the inspiration for Itan.

Profoundly, “the girl with a calabash” portrays the contrast of genuine service in the face of poverty as it narrates the fulani milk hawker and all her struggles to sell her offering at a ridiculous price. This is Liken to mother Africa and her significant historical influence in the world and her seemingly continual humbling estate amidst her rich diversity.

Itan tells this story of Africa’s participatory role through an organic composition because the nature of its curvature agrees with the believe that Africa is a fertile woman, endowed Mother and a spectacle to behold.

Ironically, the form study commenced by exploring the structure and form of the calabash plant (Lagenaria siceraria) due to its organic structure, its relatively humbling materiality and diverse possibilities of domestication. Being one of the first cultivated plants in the world found to have travelled from Africa to Asia during human migration. There are various types of gourds domesticated for several purposes around the world, but only 3 of which still bear the African name were extrapolated for the form study.

FAÇADE. “UNITY FAÇADE”

The façade design was designed to answer the question of the present as Africa battles with division. It employs design to stall the wave of xenophobia and celebrate unity in the diversity of Africa. Thus, the Unity façade was innovated.

The design involves the use of African symbols and motives arranged and perforated into the building fabric in an intuitive order. The 54 maps of the 54 sovereign countries of Africa were prepared as templates for the arrangement of the African symbols.  These symbols were randomly placed against the maps of African nations to resonate the perception of value in the variegated symbols that compose individual maps. In addition to the forms, coloured glass panels representing the colours of Africa are infused with the cladding material to enhance the splatter of the symbols.