Dream Cities Forum, Kenya

The Dream Cities Forum is an initiative aimed at bringing a group of self motivated individuals who will dare to dream upon the UN’s millennium development goals (MDGs) and the Government of Kenya’s Vision 2030 through urban transformation interventions.

[cinemakenya]

Crafting Kenya | Photographic journey of Kenya’s arts & crafts.

This September, Wanja Laiboni will travel throughout Kenya, with a professional photographer documenting and studying Kenya’s diverse traditional crafts. She aims to collect the stories behind the crafts, the inspiration for their colors and symbols, and the materials and techniques used. The objective is to cover as much ground as possible, ensuring that the wealth of Kenya’s crafts is captured in images and word. The final project delivery is a professionally designed, digital compilation of Kenya’s crafts.

Help make it happen! http://bit.ly/craftingKenya

[dreamcitieskenya]

Project of the Week | Makoko Floating School

Location:  Lagos, Nigeria

Programme: School, Community Building

Area: 220 m²

Architects: NLÉ Architects

Status: Completed 2013

Makoko Floating School is a prototype floating structure, built for the historic coastal community of Makoko. Makoko is largely a self-sustaining, self-governing fishing community that is also a slum neighbourhood. It  straddles Herbert Macaulay, Yaba, and the Lagos Lagoon located on the fringe of Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos. As a pilot project, it is receiving an upgrade to its current solution, which is homes supported on stilts within the lagoon’s waters.

It has taken an innovative approach to address the community’s social and physical needs in view of the impact of climate change and a rapidly urbanizing African context. Its main aim is to generate a sustainable, ecological, alternative building system and urban water culture for the teeming population of Africa’s coastal regions.

Read more.

[dreamcitieskenya]

Event | Nai Ni Who? Festival

Nai Ni Who? is an exploration of Nairobi in a 3-month festival of 12 weeks covering 12 neighbourhood zones.

Celebrating the good, the bad & the possibilities. The Nairobi communities and ‘hoods’ each have a unique aspect about them; an identity that stands out while at the same time contributing to the character of Kenya’s major city, Nairobi. It’s a celebration and conversation about our beloved city.

The festival run from May 11th to Aug 3rd. Read more.

[soulbrotherv2]

African Students Who Invented Anti-Malaria Soap, Awarded $25,000

AFRICANGLOBE – Two African students have created a malaria-repellant soap using local herbs, and have won, consequently, a $25,000 Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) award.

The GSVC is the only international competition of Social Business Plans, dedicated to students, young graduates, and entrepreneurs with high social and/or environmental startups.

Moctar Dembélé who hails from Burkina Faso and Gérard Niyondiko, from Burundi, are the first non American born/citizen, to win the Global Social Venture Competition. [Read more.]

[dust-works]

Custom Door Hardware in the Shou Sugi Ban walls at the Tucson Mountain Retreat

©DUST

[archimaps]

Planning report on the restructuring of Glasgow in 1945

[archimaps]

Chicago in 1960

[africlecticmagazine]

Joe Osae-Addo, Ghanaian-born architect shows his very aesthetically pleasing modern African home in Dwell Magazine. 

[africlecticmagazine]

Tanzanian-born self identified Ghanaian architect David Adjaye explains his working process and the role that his race and African heritage does and doesn’t play in his work, particularly as relates to designing of the groundbreaking Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington DC which was unveiled in February 2012.

See more on David Adjaye and this beautiful project in our feature of the Ghanaian.

[senaykenfe]

Ancient Troglodyte Village.

[dreamcitieskenya]

The Elena Garro Cultural Center by Mexican architects Fernanda Canales and Arquitectura 911 renovates an early 20th century home on Fernandez Leal street and converts it into a cultural center for the community. the intervention can be experienced in three primary design moves: a boxed concrete extension meeting the street that frames the original facade of the existing home, a series of exterior courtyards creating an exterior path for gatherings of various sizes, and a three-storey rectangular volume at the back of the residence that contains a multi-purpose room, storerooms, and a parking lot on the ground floor.

All images © jaime navarro

[dreamcitieskenya]

Rift Valley from Above

Michael Poliza took to the skies by helicopter to capture the extraordinary landscapes of the Rift Valley in Kenya and Ethiopia from the air. View more stunning images.

[cinemakenya]

Events | TEN CITIES

Events in Nairobi are happening through April 2013

Ten Cities, is a global and culturally revelatory project that is documenting the social practice of going clubbing. It is the brainchild of Goethe-Institut Kenya in partnership with Adaptr and C/O Berlin. The project spans two continents, 10 countries and three disciplines (music, photography and writing).

The cities involved are Berlin, Bristol, Johannesburg, Cairo, Kiev, Lagos, Lisbon, Luanda, Nairobi and Naples. About 50 DJs, producers and musicians are teamed up therefore enabling them to produce music together and exchange their knowledge about the club scenes in their countries. Kenya’s popular Just A Band and Camp Mulla are taking part.

Read more.

[dreamcitieskenya]

Spark Africa: Algerian Dessert is Goldmine for Solar Energy

Solar energy from 0.3% of the Sahara desert could power the whole of Europe! Find out more in this minisode of Spark Africa.

[dreamcitieskenya]

Steve Jobs vs. Rem Koolhaas

"To talk about Jobs as though he were an architect — already a dubious proposition — is to talk as well about advanced capitalism, about global systems, the counterculture...and all manner of phenomena apparently inimical to the critical tradition, to monumentality and the public sphere."

[dreamcitieskenya]

We Are Building What Others Are Tearing Down

What can Kenya learn from the failures of elevated highways across the world? This post will focus on two cases (Embarcadero Freeway & Minhocão) delineating the costly dangers of snaking elevated highways through the middle of an urban setting and in this case, cutting off sight lines to Nairobi’s Uhuru Park.

[dreamcitieskenya]

A Case Against Elevated Uhuru Highway | An Open Letter

"why glorify the thoroughfare in Nairobi CBD by building an elevated highway specifically for them?"