Durban museum wins African Architecture Awards’ top honour

The Umkhumbane Museum in South Africa won the Grand Prix

(Image credit: Designed by Choromanski Architects)

last updated 20 October 2022

The Africa Architecture Awards received over 300 entries from 32 African countries for its inaugural edition. Taking place on the rooftop of the new Thomas Heatherwick-designed Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, the ceremony was a celebration of the first pan-African architecture awards heralding a creative wave of onstruction and design across the continent.

The Umkhumbane Museum, in South Africa and designed by Choromanski Architects, won the Grand Prix prize, selected by the jury because the project represented the future of African architecture. Receiving a bronze trophy, final category winners included projects by CEICA (Angola), Aissata Balde, and Ogundare Olawale Israel, both from the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg.

The awards, which were founded and funded by construction industry innovator Saint-Gobain, have taken two years of preparation and stimulated many conversations about African architecture along the way, thanks to a stellar steering panel headed by professor Lesley Lokko, ambassador Phill Mashabane, advisor Zahira Asmal, and patron Sir David Adjaye and many architects.

‘The Africa Architecture Awards are very critical. Now is the time to promote excellence and best practice on the continent,’ said Adjaye. ‘The awards are particularly important because this is the moment that a lot is happening on the continent in terms of development, in terms of the architecture that’s being produced.’

Thread, Sinthian, Senegal, by Toshiko Mori.

Ecowski Centre for Renewable Energy and Efficiency (ECREE), Cape Verde

New Sight Eye Hospital, Republic of Congo

‘Architecture of Crisis: the Windhoek Community Boreholes’, by Elao Martin, Namibia University of Science and Technology

The Monolith of Kasolo, by Federico Fauli, Architectural Association, School of Architecture, London

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the African Architecture Awards website

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Harriet Thorpe is a writer, journalist and editor covering architecture, design and culture, with particular interest in sustainability, 20th-century architecture and community. After studying History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Journalism at City University in London, she developed her interest in architecture working at Wallpaper* magazine and today contributes to Wallpaper*, The World of Interiors and Icon magazine, amongst other titles. She is author of The Sustainable City (2022, Hoxton Mini Press), a book about sustainable architecture in London, and the Modern Cambridge Map (2023, Blue Crow Media), a map of 20th-century architecture in Cambridge, the city where she grew up.

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