CC15-program-WEB

Schools of Architecture | Afirca: Connecting Disciplines in Design + Development 1
For over 25 years the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida has organized annual
lectures or a conference in honor of the late distinguished Africanist scholar, Gwendolen M. Carter.
Gwendolen Carter devoted her career to scholarship and advocacy concerning the politics of inequality
and injustice, especially in southern Africa. She also worked hard to foster the development of African
Studies as an academic enterprise. She was perhaps best known for her pioneering study The Politics of
Inequality: South Africa Since 1948 and the co-edited four-volume History of African Politics in South Africa,
From Protest to Challenge (1972-1977).
In the spirit of her career, the annual Carter lectures offer the university community and the greater
public the perspectives of Africanist scholars on issues of pressing importance to the peoples and soci-
eties of Africa. Since 2004, the Center has (with the generous support of the College of Liberal Arts &
Sciences) appointed Carter Faculty Fellows to serve as conveners of the conference.
Gwendolen M. Carter

2 2015 Gwendolen M. Carter Conference
The Center For African Studies
The Center for African Studies is in the
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the
University of Florida. As a National Resource
Center for African Studies, our mission is to
promote excellence in teaching and research
on Africa in all the disciplines at the University
of Florida. The Center also disseminates
knowledge about Africa to the wider commu-
nity through an integrated outreach program
to schools, colleges, community groups, and
businesses. Central to this mission is sustaining
contacts and expanding interactive linkages
with individuals and institutions on the African
continent. In addition to undergraduate educa-
tion, the Center promotes and supports graduate
studies as essential for the development of a
continuing community of Africanist scholars.
The Center has over 100 affiliated teaching
and research faculty in a wide variety of fields,
including: languages, the humanities, the social
sciences, agriculture, business, engineering,
education, fine arts, environmental studies and
conservation, journalism, and law. A number
of faculty members with appointments wholly
or partially within the Center have facilitated
the development of a core curriculum in
African Studies in support of the undergraduate
minor and graduate certificate programs.
A full-time Outreach Director oversees
an active program that provides ongoing
training opportunities for K-12 teachers
and educators from postsecondary insti-
tutions as well as outreach for business,
media, and community groups.
CAS is funded in part by the U.S.
Department of Education Title VI
National Resource Center program which
supports research, teaching, outreach, and
development of international linkages. It
is the only National Resource Center for
Africa located in the southeastern US, and
the only one in a sub-tropical zone.
The Center thus plays a pivotal role
in addressing issues critical for under-
standing Africa in the global context. At
a time when the University of Florida is
expanding its international dimension, a
major component of the Center for African
Studies’ mission is to work with the rest of
the University in promoting Africa-related
programs on the campus and beyond.
School of Architecture, College of Design, Construction and Planning
Gainesville enjoys the presence of one
of the largest and best architecture schools
in the country. The 4-year undergraduate
program provides an intimate and multi-
modal environment, a dynamic think-tank
of creativity, reflection, and problem solving.
This program has for over 50 years chan-
neled record numbers of critical thinkers and
designers into the top architecture schools
and practices around the world. The 2 and 3
year professional graduate degree and PhD
programs sustain and energize critical practice
and teaching in the state of Florida and beyond.
The school has a deeply considered curric-
ulum, both coordinated and experimental. Every
term faculty pick work from all levels to exhibit
in the gallery as a register of accomplishment,
of questions asked, and proposals offered. This
is used as the forum for planning the next term.
We are delighted to welcome representatives
from Schools of Architecture across Africa
to join our conversation about the education
of the architect and to consider our collec-
tive influence on the built environment.

This interdisciplinary conference employs
the combined lens of architecture and anthro-
pology to explore the changing form of Africa’s
built environment across the continent today.
Our meeting is premised on the claim that
Africa’s architectural landscape in the opening
decades of the twenty-first century is marked
by a series of notable innovations and realign-
ments. Namely, architecture is emerging as
the center-piece of development design. This
is a function of unprecedented capital and
population mobility, urban growth, climatic
and cultural shifts, and transfers of knowledge
and technology that reposition the agents and
endpoints of development around large-scale
and sustainable improvement in standards of
living and structures of opportunity. With the
character of the built environment decisive
to these agendas, the reworking of infrastruc-
ture, landscape, public spaces, and building
types in a wide array of African cities, regions,
and rural communities is currently in train.
Integral to these trends, and our confer-
ence concerns, is a continent-wide effort to
expand architectural education. Architecture
schools and practicing architects are acutely
aware of their role in educating students along
with citizens, government officials, donors,
and investors about the importance of the
built environment in relation to develop-
ment ideals. These efforts increasingly draw
attention to the merits and possibilities of
popular and vernacular architectures, commu-
nity participation, and the mobilization of
indigenous materials, construction techniques
and design-solutions to enhance and enable
development outcomes. By no means are these
inward-looking, strictly nationalist or nativist
agendas. Rather, they are bound-up with highly
cosmopolitan circuitries of personnel, plans,
funds, and fabrication techniques. Architecture
schools and practitioners are likewise engaged
in a pan-African conversation to create methods
and curricula appropriate to future needs
and the common challenges of artistic and
aesthetic aspiration in a world where power
and resources remain unevenly distributed.
Though decidedly forward-looking, today’s
architectural engagements in Africa unfold
against the backdrop of an earlier history of
architecture-based development interventions,
from planned cities, refugee camps and resettle-
ment zones, to schools, markets, and affordable
housing schemes – also to be examined in the
conference. As in the present moment, they too
were tied up with global transfers of resources,
expertise, materials, values and design templates
and the longer legacy of architecture as a field
of practice by and for elites. Taking stock of
this common heritage of European colonial
and post-colonial influence and more recently, a
host of Chinese-built and funded architectural
projects, architecture schools and professionals
in Africa are now making a self-conscious move
in a new direction attuned to the promise of
international partnerships yet driven by on-the-
ground conditions and priorities and wary of
the lingering positioning of Africa as laboratory
for better endowed actors and institutions.
In the spirit of inter-disciplinary and
international collaboration and education,
Schools of Architecture|Africa examines
these themes through a series of conference
panels, round tables, ‘Pecha Kucha’ forum,
gallery exhibit and two distinguished lectures
involving architects, scholars, educators and
development planners and activists from the
US, Europe and a range of African coun-
tries and institutions, in addition to members
of the UF community. Support for these
endeavors is the outcome of unprecedented
partnership of UF’s College of Liberal Arts
and Sciences, College of Design, Construction
and Planning, Office of Research and US
Department of Education Title VI sponsorship.
Kicking off our program, Joe Osae Addo,
Ghana-based Architect and Chairman of
ArchiAfrika, will deliver the Plenary Address,
“Architecture and the African Condition.”
Kunle Adeyemi, Principal, NLE Works (Lagos
& Amsterdam), and 2015 UF Ivan H. Smith
Visiting Scholar in Architecture, will present
the keynote address “Water & the City.”
The four panels are Schools of
Architecture, exploring African architec-
tural education; Design and Development I,
addressing historical precedents; Design and
Development II, on contemporary vantage
points; and Street as Studio, which explores
popular influences on the built environment.
The closing roundtable probes the theme of
Afro-Cosmopolitanism—Building Networks of
Architecture Expertise. In addition to learning
from our panel and roundtable participants, we
include a ‘Pecha Kucha’ forum highlighting the
work of UF College of Design, Construction
and Planning, Department of Anthropology, and
Center for African Studies faculty and students.
An additional highlight, further embodying
the cross-disciplinary nature of this year’s Carter
Conference, the UF Architecture Building gallery,
where the conference is being held, features the
exhibition “African Cross-Currents: Architectural
Observations and Imaginaries.” The show
encompasses architectural drawings, project
designs, and photography of Carter conference
participants and invited guests. In conjunction
with the Carter conference Professors Chalfin
and Cohen are co-teaching a seminar on African
Architecture and student work will be included.
The students will be drawing on anthropological
research methods to intensively document
the conference in order to capture the ‘real-
time’ unfolding of architectural and develop-
ment paradigms and professional networks.
We invite you to reflect on and take part
in these discussions, activities, and engage-
ments and welcome your comments and
contributions to this collaborative endeavor.
Brenda Chalfin Professor of Anthropology
+
Donna Cohen Associate Professor of Architecture
Schools of Architecture | Africa:
Connecting Disciplines in Design & Development

Kunlé Adeyemi on…
Water & the City
NLÉ aims to critically examine two of the most significant chal-
lenges of our time: rapid urbanization and climate change, in the
continent with some of the world’s greatest opportunities, Africa.
The impact of rapid urbanization and economic growth of African
cities is now common knowledge, yet it cannot be overemphasized.
At the same time the impact of climate change through water has
now become day-to-day reality, with sea level rise, increasing rainfall
and frequent flooding. The relationships of ‘water and the city’ on
the African continent, have therefore become critical points of inter-
section for understanding the future of development in Africa.
It is an established fact that about seventy percent of the world is
covered by water. A less established finding is that nearly seventy percent of
the world capital cities are also situated by water. And more specifically, again
nearly seventy percent of African capital cities are also by water. According
to U.N. estimates, the population of Africa will double by 2050, growing
at a rate that will quickly surpass the population of China and rival Asia as
the world’s most populous continent by 2100. With this explosive growth,
African communities and cities are expanding rapidly and aggressively into
unchartered territories. Africa’s population surge coupled with the impacts
of climate change—sea level rise, heavy rainfall, and flooding—frames
one of the most significant and urgent contemporary global challenges.
In a twist of fate, it is said that although Africa is said to be the
least responsible for climate change, it is the most likely impacted by it,
with a large number of these rapidly urbanizing cities and communi-
ties by the water within the high to the extreme high-risk zones. This
clear and present danger, calls for an immediate response through adap-
tation and resiliency measures in development on the continent.
Keynote Address
Kunlé Adeyemi is an architect, urbanist and designer. His
recent work includes ‘Makoko Floating School’—an innovative,
prototype, floating structure located on the lagoon heart of Nigeria’s
largest city, Lagos. This acclaimed project is part of an extensive re-
search project - ‘African Water Cities’ - being developed by NLÉ, an
architecture, design, and urbanism practice founded by Adeyemi in
2010 with a focus on developing cities. NLÉ is currently developing
a number of urban, research and architectural projects in Africa; one
of which is Chicoco Radio Media Center; the amphibious building
in Delta city of Port Harcourt in Nigeria. Born and raised in Nigeria,
Adeyemi studied architecture at the University of Lagos where he
began his early practice, before joining Office for Metropolitan
Architecture (OMA) in 2002. At OMA he led the design, develop-
ment and execution of several large prestigious projects in Europe,
Asia, Africa and the Middle East. These include the Shenzhen Stock
Exchange tower in China, the Qatar National Library in Doha and
Prada Transformer in Seoul. Adeyemi is currently one of 5 mem-
bers of the International Advisory Council for the World Design
Capital 2014, a Fellow of the World Technology Network, and an
international speaker, lecturer and the Baird Visiting Critic at Cornell
University, Ithaca, New York.
Sponsored by the UF School of Architecture Ivan H. Smith Endowment
6:30p– 8:30p in Fine Arts
Building B (FAB) room 105

Donna L. Cohen
Donna L. Cohen, a graduate of Smith
College, the Cooper Union, and the University
of Florida, teaches beginning through thesis-level
design studios, in Florida and Italy. She worked
for seven years as assistant to artist Donald
Judd in NY, TX, and Switzerland, and interned
at Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects in NY.
Her interest in the layered interaction of
cultural and physical context with languages of
material, combined with her search for clear
expressions of space, has led her to study and
design architecture that acknowledges and
defines place. She is often involved in collab-
orative projects, with architects, artists, and
students, such as exhibits, including an upcoming
exhibit at Judd Foundation in Marfa, TX 2016.
Donna is currently a principal in Armstrong
+ Cohen Architecture, with her partner
Claude Armstrong, a practice that special-
izes in community initiated projects, including
projects and proposals in Tanzania, Ethiopia,
and Rwanda, as well as noted buildings on
American Pueblo lands, and civic and residen-
tial projects throughout the US. Their work is
included in New Architecture on Indigenous Lands
(University of Minnesota Press 2013); The
Green Braid: Towards an Architecture of Ecology,
Economy and Social Equity (Routledge 2007); and
recognized with awards from the American
Institute of Architects, Holcim Foundation for
Sustainable Construction Acknowledgement
Prize, the National Endowment for the Arts,
Harvard University Honoring Nations, and
the Dedalo Minosse Prize, among others.
With the UF Center for African Studies,
Cohen founded the working group on African
Architecture and Urbanism, and established
the first seminar to focus on African architec-
ture at the College of Design Construction
and Planning. She was recognized by DCP
as International Educator of the year, 2011.
The Carter Conference 2015 is an outgrowth
of the early interdisciplinary conversations
and projects about the built environment in
Africa; Donna hopes to continue conversations
and friendships, both personal and institu-
tional, made here in Florida this weekend.
Brenda Chalfin
Brenda Chalfin is Professor of
Anthropology at the University of Florida and
Center for African Studies Faculty Affiliate.
She holds a PhD from the University of
Pennsylvania and a BA from Amherst College.
She is broadly trained in African Studies and
started her career as an Africanist as a student
of Yoruba art and worked at the Smithsonian’s
National Musuem of African Art before
turning to graduate study. Brenda’s scholar-
ship is largely focused on West Africa. She has
extensive fieldwork experience in Ghana where
she is a long time affiliate of the Institute of
African Studies, University of Ghana - Legon.
At UF Brenda teaches courses across
the spectrum of Political and Economic
Anthropology. Her research has been concerned
with state-processes and sovereignty and Africa’s
position in the global economy, including the
production of global standards of stateness
that come with the engagement of international
markets. She has two monographs exploring
these themes, Shea Butter Republic: State Power,
Global Markets and the Making of an Indigenous
Commodity (2004) and Neoliberal Frontiers: An
Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Africa (2010).
Drawing on a longstanding interest in
borders zones and built environments, Brenda’s
research increasingly addresses infrastructure
and the governance of public space. She is
involved in the application of anthropological
method and theory to the study of maritime
frontiers and off-shore extractive zones in the
western Gulf of Guinea. She is now completing
a book manuscript, Infrastructures of Bare Life:
The Vital Politics of Waste on Ghana’s Urban Fringe,
under review with MIT Press. Supported by
a 2011 Fulbright Hays fellowship in Ghana,
a 2012 UF Faculty Opportunity Award, and
assisted by documentary photographer Eva
Egensteiner, this work examines urban infra-
structure and the boundaries of private and
public life in the ungovernable and invisibil-
ized spaces that underwrite the functioning
of Ghana’s high-modernist city of Tema.
Brenda’s residence and field research in
Tema and the sister city of Ashaiman for this
project and her confrontation with the archival
corpus of the Tema Development Corporation,
including the records of Doxiadis Associates,
motivated her to deepen her understanding
of architectural history and practice in Africa.
These crossovers inspired her early conver-
sations with Donna Cohen, leading to a
joint-course and this year’s cross-disciplinary
and cross-college Carter Conference.

Conference Schedule
Friday, 13 March
815 – 845 Coffee/Tea
845 – 900 Welcome and Opening Remarks
Abe Goldman Director, UF Center for African Studies
Brenda Chalfin UF Department of Anthropology
Donna Cohen UF School of Architecture
900 – 1000 Plenary Session: ‘Architecture and the African Condition’
Intro: Jason Alread Director, UF school of Architecture
Joe Osae Addo ArchiAfrika & Principal Architect, Constructs LLC.
1030 – 1230 Panel I: Schools of Architecture | Africa
This panel explores the recent resurgence of African Schools of Architecture and the related revival of architectural curricula and train-
ing programs. This trend is probed within individual institutions and countries and on a regional and continent-wide scale. We ask, what
pedagogical and professional agendas drive this process? On what partnerships does it depend? How is this rebuilding of architectural
training programs and mandates shaped by political and economic conditions, whether the terms of international finance and investment,
specific nation-building agendas, or wider disciplinary trends in architectural professionalism and pedagogy? And, since the conference
takes place in the US, can we suggest solutions to the challenges associated with distance (physical but also political and economic) be-
tween North American architecture programs and those in Africa?
Chair: William Tilson UF School of Architecture
Panel: Joachim Dieter Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development.
Thierry Iraguha Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, Rwanda
Mpho Matsipa University of Witwatersrand and Columbia University-Studio X
JC Tall College Universitaire d’Architecture de Dakar, Sengal
1230 – 200 Lunch
200 – 330 University of Florida Connections Forum
This interdisciplinary ‘Pecha Kucha’ style forum highlights the work of UF College of Design, Construction and Planning, Department
of Anthropology, and Center for African Studies faculty and students. Focusing on research and outcomes in the US and Africa, the pre-
sentations address a wide range of topics. These include pedagogy, design/build projects, materials research, solar and sustainable design,
urban infrastructure and waste in Senegal, transnational migration and monumental architecture in rural West Africa, Chinese construc-
tion projects in Ghana, and conflict and the built environment in the Sahel.
Nina Hofer Associate Professor, School of Architecture, College of Design Construction and Planning
Mark Mcglothlin Associate Professor, School of Architecture, College of Design Construction and Planning
Charlie Hailey Professor, School of Architecture, College of Design Construction and Planning
Bradley Walters Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, College of Design Construction and Planning
Fiona McLauglin Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Linguistics, College of Liberal Arts and Science, UF
Yang Xiao PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology
Benjamin Burgen PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology
Tess D’Auria Ryley PhD Student, Department of Anthropology
Design Construction
& Planning Gallery
Architecture Building
1480 Inner Rd, UF Campus, Bldg. 268
Gaineville, FL 32601

400 – 530 Panel 2: Design and Development I – Historical Perspectives
Development in Africa has long been equated with the character of the built environment, from the scope of industrial and infrastruc-
tural installations, to the architecture of dwellings and public space, and the planning of cities, villages, and regions. This panel considers
the character and emergence of development design theories and templates in the context of colonial and imperial rule and the transition
to independence and decolonization. It asks, what forces, interests, failures and contestations shaped the patterns and paradigms of devel-
opment design? How can we measure success? What lessons and warnings might earlier interventions and the founding conventions of
design for development provide for the current wave of development-centered design?
Chair: Luise White UF Department of History
Panel: Viviana D’Auria Department of Architecture, KU Leuven (Belgium)
David Rifkind School of Architecture, Florida International University
Fasil Giorghis Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development
630 – 800 Keynote Address: ‘Water & the City’
Kunle Adeyemi NLÉ
Ivan H. Smith Visiting Scholar in Architecture
800 – 1000 Reception
Design Construction and Planning Gallery
Design Construction
& Planning Gallery
Fine Arts B (FAB)
Room 105
University
Auditorium
Music
Building
Architecture
Building
Fine Arts C
Fine Arts A
Fine Arts D
Little Hall
Tigert
Hall
Fine
Arts B
Inner Road Inner Road
Stadium Road Stadium RoadStadium Road
Union RoadUnion Road

Saturday, 14 March
900 –1030 Panel 3: Design and Development | Africa II
In Africa, the character of the built environment has long been considered an indicator of development potentials, whether on the
aggregate level of the city or region, the level of a project, or the quality of domestic space and the surrounding landscape. This panel
considers the latest innovations in building-centered design and planning put to use for the achievement of development goals. How do
these innovations express and engage changing development paradigms, whether notions of sustainability, participatory planning, or the
shift from macro to micro-scale solutions, and the rise of human rights and humanitarianism and emergency solutions over master-plans?
What future outputs and debates do these solutions portend? How do they contend with middle-class, nouveau-riche, and foreign invest-
ment in ‘real-estate development’?
Chair: David Rifkind Department of Architecture, Florida International University
Panel: Sierra Bainbridge MASS Design Group
Jenni Reuter Hollmen Reuter Sandman Architects (Finland) + Ukumbi NGO
Delia Wendel Harvard University Graduate School of Design
1030 –1100 Coffee/Tea
1100 –1230 Panel 4: Street as Studio
Most architectural practice in Africa is highly context dependent, reflecting the social, economic and natural environment and the
day-to-dayactivities, needs and beliefs of ordinary people. This panel investigates how these practices and the resulting forms and
aesthetics are being engaged by architecture/planning professionals and students. In other words, how does the architecture of the street
move into the studio and back again? Can natural materials, vernacular designs, and construction techniques seep from the realm of
popular practice to professional endeavor? What is gained or lost in translation? Can a reevaluation of street energies and local materials
allow the creative and entrepreneurial spirits of individuals to flourish? What are the pathways of influence, interaction and borrowing as
ideas, skill sets, and materials travel between formal and informal spheres within and outside of Africa?
Chair: Deborah Pellow Department of Antrhropology, Syracuse University
Panel: Suzanne Scheld Department of Anthropology, California State University - North Ridge
Ibrahim Baidoo Municipal Cheif Executive, Ashaiman, Ghana (w/ Erika Kissieh Urban Associates)
Martin Murray Taubman College of Urban Planning, Unveristy of Michigan
1230 – 230 Lunch / Visit to Harn
230 – 400 Roundtable: Afro-Cosmopolitanism – Building Networks of Architectural Expertise
This closing conference roundtable explores the increasingly international itineraries and transnational foundations of African archi-
tectural education, professionalization, and production. Do these exchanges alter or reproduce the distribution of power and resources
between Global North and Global South? What are the risks and benefits of such collaborations? How does the character of educational
exchange and outreach compare with the networks built by individual architects and architectural firms and those that develop around
specific projects and commissions? Is the “African Architecture” of today necessarily a cosmopolitan construct? Does this make it global
or less authentically “African?” On the other hand, how do these networks and exchanges extend the reach of African interests and
architectural influence?
Participants: All invited speakers
4:00-4:30 Closing Remarks
Brenda Chalfin UF Department of Anthropology
Donna Cohen UF School of Architecture
Design Construction
& Planning Gallery
Architecture Building
1480 Inner Rd, UF Campus, Bldg. 268
Gaineville, FL 32601

Participant Biography
Joe Osae Addo
Joe Osae Addo is Principal of Constructs LLC, with offices in Ghana and the United States. Addo studied architecture at
the Architectural Association (AA) in London. He has worked for architectural firms in Finland, the United Kingdom and
the United States. When based in Los Angeles in the 1990s, Addo co-founded the architecture and design museum there. He
was a member of the Holcim Awards jury for region Africa Middle East in 2008 and 2011. Addo’s firm integrates architec-
ture, urban planning, landscape design, and building technology to create what he calls ‘inno-native’ ™ design solutions to
contemporary African architecture. Addo is involved in the development and manufacture of building materials that rely on
locally available raw materials. The firm has expanded its mandate to become ‘design socio-economists’ using architecture as
a platform to engage in projects ranging from re-branding of towns and cities, product design as economic empowerment
tool, to targeting urban planning initiatives.
Addo is currently Chairman of the Board of ArchiAfrika, a non-profit organization engaged in the promotion of African design and architecture and the in-
clusion of design in Africa’s development agendas by broadening the discourse of Africa’s built environment. Addo has lectured at the Amsterdam Academy
of Architecture, Aspen Institute, and the International Union of Architects World Congress, among other forums. Most recently, in his capacity as ArchiAfri-
ka Chair, he hosted the February 2015 ‘Accra Revisited’ Conference and Urban Design Event in Ghana.
Kunle Adeyemi
Kunlé Adeyemi is an architect, urbanist and designer. Adeyemi’s recent work includes “Makoko Floating School,” an inno-
vative, prototype, floating structure located on the lagoon heart of Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos. The work is featured in the
Museum of Modern Art 2014-2015 exhibition “Uneven Growth.” This acclaimed project is part of an extensive research
project - ‘African Water Cities’ - being developed by NLÉ, an architecture, design, and urbanism practice founded by
Adeyemi in 2010 with a focus on developing cities. NLÉ is involved in several urban, research and architectural projects in
Africa; one of which is Chicoco Radio Media Center, the amphibious building in the Nigeria’s delta city of Port Harcourt.
Adeyemi was awarded a 2014 Holcim Acknowledgement Prize for this project.
Born and raised in Nigeria, Adeyemi studied architecture at the University of Lagos where he began his early practice,
before joining in 2002 the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), a leading international partnership practicing
architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis. At OMA Adeyemi led the design, development and execution of several large prestigious projects in Europe,
Asia, Africa and the Middle East. These include the Shenzhen Stock Exchange tower in China, the Qatar National Library in Doha, and Prada Transformer in
Seoul. Adeyemi is currently one of 5 members of the International Advisory Council for the World Design Capital 2014, a Fellow of the World Technology
Network, and an international speaker, the Baird Visiting Critic at Cornell University.
Ibrahim Baidoo
Ibrahim Baidoo is an urban activist and political leader in Ghana. He currently holds the post of Municipal Chief Execu-
tive of the city of Ashaiman in Ghana’s Greater Accra Region. Ashaiman has been the destination for Ghanaian and
non-Ghanaian migrants since the 1960s. Its highly cosmopolitan and ever-growing population embraces all religions, ethnic
groups, and classes. For many years Baidoo represented Ashaiman on the Tema Municipal Assembly and was instrumental
in the establishment of Ashaiman as an autonomous municipality in 2009. Baidoo, a member of the National Democratic
Congress party, has committed his administration to wide-ranging infrastructural improvement in this largely unplanned and
underserviced city. The improvement of sanitation through the opening of a series of innovative public and private toilet
facilties based on sustainable biofill and biogas technologies has occurred under his leadership. He also intensified efforts
to build roads and drains in Ashaiman, projects long-neglected by earlier governments despite the high volume of traffic in
this expanding commercial center. In response to the success of recent slum upgrading schemes in Ashaiman, Baidoo represented Ghana at the 2014 World
Urban Forum 7 in Medellin, Columbia.

Sierra Bainbridge
Sierra Bainbridge holds Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture degress from the University of Penn-
sylvania. She is former head of the Architecture Department at Rwanda’s Kigali Institute of Technology (KIST). Bainbridge
is currently Senior Director at MASS Design Group. MASS is a design collaborative committed to sustainable architecture
and infrastructure building and design incorporating local labor and materials to foster human health, well-being and dignity.
MASS began in 2008 with the design and building of Rwanda’s Butaro District Hospital, a joint project of the US-based
Partners in Health and the Rwandan Ministry of Health. Bainbridge began her work in Rwanda with the Butaro Hospital
landscape design, ultimately becoming the Rwanda Country Director at MASS and establishing their Rwanda Office in 2009,
designing and overseeing their various projects in the region. Bainbridge played a key role in helping to establish the current
curriculum at the KIST during her appointment there from 2010-2012.
At present in her capacity as MASS Senior Director, Bainbridge oversees several architectural initiatives in East and Central Africa. They include the Kayanja
Center rural health care and research center in Uganda, several African Conservation Schools in Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Zambia and Rwan-
da, and the Butaro Hospital Expansion Plan. Bainbridge’s design work with MASS has been featured in A+U Magazine, Lotus and Detail. She has lectured at
the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, University of Toronto and the American Institute of Architects.
Viviana D’Auria
Viviana D’Auria is Assistant Professor in International Urbanism at the Department of Architecture at KU Leuven (Bel-
gium). Awarded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, she is currently a Rubicon research fellow at the
Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam. Before receiving
her PhD in Belgium she trained as an architect and urbanist at the University of Roma Tre (Italy). Her dissertation, titled
‘Developing Urbanism in Development: Five Episodes in the Making of the Volta River Project (1945-76)’ examines the
epistemological contribution of development aid to the discipline of urbanism through the lens of a large-scale river basin
development project. Exploring ‘practised’ and ‘lived-in’ architecture is an integral part of her research within a more gen-
eral interest in the trans-cultural construction of cities and their contested spaces. She is co-editor of Water Urbanisms (2008)
and Human Settlements: Formulations and (re)Calibrations (2010).
Covering the urban global south, in addition to her work in Africa, D’Auria is well-versed in urban issues in Latin America. She is an active participant in
the Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanization in the South. She oversees an international summer school on ‘ecological urbanism’ in
Guayaquil, Ecuador training urban designers and environmental planners to bring together ecological restoration and reclamation with equitable housing and
urban resource provisioning. D’Auria has published on Caracas, Venezuela in the volume, Latin American Modern Architecture: Ambiguous Territories (2013) and is
presently engaged in a comparative study of unplanned, incremental housing development in Accra, Ghana and Lima, Peru.
Joachim Dieter
Joachim Dieter is Scientific Director of the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Develop-
ment at Addis Ababa University. He holds a Diplom-Ingenieur in Architecture from Technische Universität Berlin, where he
occupied the post of Assistant Professor. His responsibilities at EiABC include all academic affairs, institute management,
qualified education, applied research and technology transfer, university industry linkage, entrepreneurship, international
university cooperation and the implementation of institute reform under the Engineering Capacity Building Program of the
Ethiopian Ministry of Education. As the Acting Scientific Director of the Materials Research and Testing Center (MRTC) at
EiABC he was responsible for human resource development and installation of an operating structure for the two sections
Construction Material Testing and Foundations Soil Section, the upgrading of all laboratory equipment, re-organizing and
renovation of all laboratory facilities and the Transformation of the MRTC into an entrepreneurial unit. He has served
as a visiting professor with the support of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which has made a long term investment in EiABC program
development.
Among the initiatives at EiABC under Dieter’s leadership is a collaborative exercise in experimental building construction involving EiABC, South Sudan’s
University of Juba and Germany’s Bauhaus University. The program’s prototypes recently received a Holcim Award. EiABC is also engaged in collaborative
work around the development of ‘climate adapted urban infrastructure.’ Dieter, along with EiABC colleagues and students, was involved in the publication of
Building Ethiopia: Sustainability and Innovation in Architecture and Design (2012).

Fasil Giorghis
Fasil Giorghis is Associate Professor of Architecture and Chair of Conservation of Urban and Architectural Heritage at
Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development at Addis Ababa University. He is one of
Ethiopia’s leading architects and earned his degree in Finland in 1991. For more than twenty years, Giorghis has devoted his
time to the study and preservation of the architectural heritage of Ethiopia, from traditional housing to historic towns. Giorghis
has participated in numerous international conferences and contributed articles on sustainable architecture and preservation of
cultural heritage. In 2008, he published a book entitled Addis Ababa the City and its Urban and Architectural Heritage from 1886-1941.
His architectural design work in his private firm focuses on regional hotels, cultural centers, private residences and restoration of
historic buildings, for which he melds use of local material, indigenous knowledge and environmental concerns in contemporary
design. Among his notable works are the Red Terror Memorial Museum, the new blocks of the Addis Ababa Alliance Francaise
and the adaptive re-use of the Goethe institute.
Outside of the Ethiopian capital, Giorghis designed the Axumite Heritage Library, worked closely with the World Monuments Fund at the archaeological site
of Gondar, and was involved in planning the South Omo Research Center and Museum. He is one of the principal planners of NESTown, the New Energy
Self-Sustained Town, an eco-friendly semi-urban center intended to be a prototype for urban development across the country. He was a member of the Hol-
cim Awards jury for Africa and Middle East in 2014. A designer and amateur artist, Giorghis has also participated in several local and international exhibitions.
Most recently, in September 2014, he was involved in organizing and hosting the “Future Memories” international conference on art, public space and the
culture of memory at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, Addis Ababa.
Thierry Iraguha
Architect Thierry Iraguha is among the first graduates of the Architecture Department of the Kigali Institute of Science and Technol-
ogy at the University of Rwanda, where he earned his degree in Architecture and Planning in 2013 and is now on the faculty. Iraguha
was earlier educated at Rwanda’s Ecole des science de Byimana and Ecole d’arts de Nyundo. He is currently studying for a Masters of
Science in Human Settlements at KU-Leuven (Belgium). The degree addresses rapid urbanization in the developing world and the appli-
cation of theories of sustainable development to urban transformation. Iraguha’s work was included in the Atelier Rwanda exhibit and
catalog at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Atelier Rwanda is a research collaborative of KIST and
University Iuav of Venice (Italy). Iraguha is also a founding member of the Rwandan Institute of Architects.
Mpho Matsipa
Mpho Matsipa is a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Architecture and Plannng and Director of Studio-X
Johannesburg, a global creative urban research laboratory affiliated with Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture,
Planning and Preservation. Her teaching, research and architectural design work address globalization and urbanism, spatial justice,
public culture, and race and representation. After starting her architectural education at the University of Cape Town, Matsipa received
her PhD in Architecture from UC Berkeley in 2014. At the helm of the Jo-burg branch of Studio-X, Matsipa brings together research-
ers, urbanists, activists, architects and policy makers. Giving expression to emergent urban visions, Matsipa’s agenda of urban collabora-
tion and interrogation is attuned to power asymmetries and the ethics of engagement within the city. Recent Studio-X initiatives include
Sundial: Radical Imaginaries in an Afro-Future City. Bringing together students and faculty from Wits and Columbia’s Global Africa Lab (the
precursor to Studio-X), her Street Values project, discussed in Architectural Review (2014), highlights the heterogeneous and intertwined flows of people, com-
modities, images and ideas through the documentation of Jo-burg’s Bree Street. Matsipa has curated several notable exhibitions among them, the South Africa
Pavilion at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition and Venice Biennale in 2008. She was a 2003-5 Fulbright Award recipient and in 2012-13 received a
New Future for Architectural Education and Practice grant from the Carnegie Foundation.

Martin Murray
Martin Murray is a Professor on the University of Michigan’s Taubman College urban planning faculty and Adjunct
Professor, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies. His work engages the fields of urban studies and plan-
ning, cultural geography, distressed urbanism, development, historical sociology, African studies, and transnational
urbanism. Murray began his academic career as sociologist with a strong foundation in urban geography. After his first
book on French colonialism in Indochina, Murray pursued his interest in South Africa and has published on a range of
topics including class formation and rural transformation, the transition from apartheid to parliamentary democracy, city
building, and urban planning. His current research focuses on questions related to master-planned “private cities” under
construction or in development in Africa.
Murray’s most recent book is entitled Commemorating and Forgetting: Challenges for a New South Africa (2013). Professor Murray is now completing a book series on
city building and spatial politics in Johannesburg after apartheid. The first—Taming the Disorderly City (2008)—examines the challenges for urban planning in
Johannesburg after the end of apartheid. The second—City of Extremes: Spatial Politics in Johannesburg (2011)—looks at the spatiality of wealth and poverty in
Johannesburg. The third as yet unfinished book—Panic City: Johannesburg in the Popular Imagination—investigates the intersection of public policing and private
security in contemporary Johannesburg.
Jenni Reuter
Jenni Reuter is a Finnish architect. She received her Masters of Architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology. A member of the
firm, Hollmen Reuter Sandman, she has collaborated with architects Sajia Hollmen and Helena Sandman since 1995, when they cooper-
ated on a Women’s Centre in Rufisque. Senegal. Today their activities span from interiors to urban planning. They work in Finland as
well as with several underprivileged communities around the world. Along with service as visiting critics and lecturers, the architects
also teach at the Aalto University in Helsinki. The group believes in innovation by investigation, where the landscape, climate, sensitivity
towards materials, and site-specific interventions are the means for a new architecture. The work of Hollmen Reuter Sandman has been
honored with both national and international awards and published and exhibited widely. In 2003 they received the Bauwelt Prize for
their work in Senegal. In 2008 they received a Holcim Acknowledgement for Sustainable Construction in Africa and Middle East. The
firm was a candidate for the 2014 BSI Swiss Architectural Award.
In 2007 Hollmen Reuter Sandman founded Ukumbi NGO. Ukumbi is a Kiswahili word meaning the space in front of a house where people gather and talk.
The mission of Ukumbi is to offer architectural services to communities in need. Hollmen Reuter Sandman realized that culturally informed and skillfully de-
signed architecture is a tool that can be used to improve the living conditions of communities, strengthen gender equality and to mitigate poverty. Ukumbi is
involved in numerous projects in Africa. They include the TunaHAKI Centre and KWEICO Shelter House in Moshi, Tanzania and the APE Learning Center,
Cairo, Egypt.
David Rifkind
David Rifkind is Associate Professor of Architecture in the College of Architecture + the Arts at Florida International
University. He is a graduate from Boston Architectural College, McGill University and Columbia University, where he
earned his PhD. Rifkind teaches courses in architectural history, theory and design. His research focuses on the shaping
of architectural modernism by political ideologies and agendas, with a special emphasis on period of Fascist rule in Italy
and its direct connection to modernism and expansion in Italy and East Africa. A Wolfsonian Affiliated Fellow, David has
several publications within his research scope, including the James Ackerman Award recipient, “The Battle for Modernism:
Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy.” His article “Gondar, Architecture and Urban-
ism for Italy’s Fascist Empire” earned the 2013 Founders Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.
Rifkind’s current research, dealing with urbanism and architecture in Ethiopia from the late nineteenth century to the present, is the first component in a long-
term study of modern architecture and urban planning throughout Africa. He is the author of the award-winning book, The Battle for Modernism: Quadrante and
the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy (2012) and curated the 2012 exhibition, “Metropole/Colony: Africa and Italy,” at Florida International
University’s Frost Art Museum. In 2014, Ashgate published A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture, which Rifkind co-edited with Elie G. Haddad. Rif-
kind is also a practicing architect and his “Tin Box” house, designed with Holly Zickler, has received critical attention for its sustainable materials and design.

Suzanne Scheld
Suzanne Scheld is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Northridge. She
earned her PhD at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A cultural anthropologist, Scheld specializes
in ethnographic perspectives on urban public space, markets, and expressive culture. Her on-going research focuses on
the cultural dimension of markets and neighborhood public spaces in Dakar, Senegal, where she has examined urbaniza-
tion in relationship to local and global processes since 1996. This work is discussed in her article “Youth Cosmopolitanism:
Clothing, the City and Globalization in Dakar, Senegal” (2007). Scheld’s recent publications address the impacts of Chinese
immigrants on Dakar’s informal economy, consumer protection movements, and market space in the city. Her essay “Veiled
Racism in the Street Economy of Dakar’s Chinatown in Senegal” was presented in an Advanced Seminar at the School for
Advanced Research in Sante Fe, New Mexico in 2011 and is currently featured in Street Economies in the Urban Global South
(2013), awarded the 2014 Society for the Anthropology of Work Book Prize. Currently she is exploring mixed cultural expressions reflected in the design and
use of public plazas in Dakar. This research is informed by her co-authored book Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity (2005), with Setha
Low and Dana Taplin.
Scheld is the editor-in-chief of City & Society, a tri-annual American Anthropological Association journal that pertains to the Society for Urban, National,
Transnational/Global Anthropology. She is the interim chair of the African Studies Interdisciplinary Minor’s Program at CSUN and the coordinator to the
Global Studies General Electives “Path” at CSUN, which is an experimental program that brings together 23 Global Studies faculty and over two hundred
students in the CSUN Global Studies Learning Community.
JC Tall
Mamadou Jean-Charles Tall is Senegalese architect, scholar, and activist. He graduated from the Ecole Nationale Superieure
d’Architecture de Marseille. Returning to Senegal, he served as Directeur Agence d’Architecture Africaine and has worked
as independent architectural consultant. In 2000 Tall assumed the post of Director, J & T Architectes et associéws, a private
firm involved in residential construction. In collaboration with colleagues, Tall played a leading role in the establishment of
the College Universitaire d’Architecture de Dakar in 1990 when the Senegalese government closed the only official architec-
ture school in the country. This institution, independent of financial support from the government, focuses on architecture,
cultural heritage, urbanism and the environment. In recent years the curriculum has turned to the study of public space, the
image of the city and urban disorder. In 2008 Tall took on the role of president du Conseil d’Administration College Uni-
versitaire d’Architecture de Dakar. The work of JC Tall and the school has been featured in Dakar’s 2012 Contemporary Art
Biennal. Tall’s activism has opened architectural concerns to political debate, as when he questioned the lack of government interest in engaging the services
of African trained architects and raised concerns about environmental management.
Delia Wendel
Delia Wendel is a designer, researcher, and strategist who focuses on post-conflict and post-disaster rebuilding. Delia is a PhD
candidate at Harvard Graduate School of Design and Fellow of the Harvard Safra Ethics Center. She holds degrees in Archi-
tecture (BArch, Rice University), Cultural Geography (MSc, University College London) and Architectural History and Theory
(MDesS, Harvard GSD). She has previously worked for architectural firms, run her own residential design practice, worked as a
consultant for UN-Habitat/ Nairobi, and as a Lecturer at Harvard GSD and University of Edinburgh. Wendel’s scholarship is
interdisciplinary, guided by Architectural Theory, Urban Studies, Cultural Geography, and Anthropology.
Wendel’s work is concerned with the intertwined nature of ethics, politics and space; ameliorative strategies for marginalized
groups; and the value of cultural, spatial and historical perspectives in rebuilding processes. Her current writing builds from
ethnographic and historical research in Rwanda, and examines how state peace building objectives are realized and challenged in the reconstruction of settle-
ments, housing, and civic spaces after the 1994 genocide. Based on 18 months of fieldwork, the research was supported by Social Science Research Council
International Dissertation Research Fellowship. Wendel’s recent publications include essays on post-Katrina rebuilding in New Orleans (Journal of Urban
Design, 2009; and Handbook of Architectural Theory, 2012), an avant-garde mass spectacle in 1920s Azerbaijan (Journal of Urban Design, 2012). Wendel is also the
co-editor of a Graham Foundation funded book, Spatializing Politics: Essays on Power and Place, in-progress. The book will include her piece on the imagined
spaces of peace and conflict in a Rwandan radio drama.

2014 Kongo Atlantic Dialogues: Kongo Culture in
Central Africa and the Americas
2013 The Politics of Permanent Flux: State-society
Relations in the Horn of Africa
2012 Health and Development in Africa
2011 African Independence: Cultures of Memory,
Celebrations, & Contestations
2010 Bridging Conservation and Development
in Latin America and Africa: Changing
Contexts, Changing Strategies
2009 African Creative Expressions:
Mother Tongue & Other Tongues
2008 Migrations In and Out of Africa:
Old Patterns and New Perspectives
2007 African Visual Cultures: Crossing
Disciplines, Crossing Regions
2006 Law, Politics, and Society in South Africa:
The Politics of Inequality Then and Now
2005 States of Violence:
The Conduct of War in Africa
2004 Movement (R)evolution:
Contemporary African Dance
2003 Dynamics of Islam in Contemporary Africa
2002 Zimbabwe in Transition:
Resolving Land and Constitutional Crises
2001 Governance and Higher
Education in Africa
2000 Renegotiating Nation and Political
Community in Africa at the Dawn of the
New Millennium
1999 Aquatic Conservation and
Management in Africa
1998 Africa on Film and Video
1997 Communication and
Democratization in Africa
Carter Conference Themes 1985-2014
1995 African Entrepreneurship
1994 Transition in South Africa
1993 Africa’s Disappearing Past:
The Erasure of Cultural Patrimony
1992 Sustainability in Africa:
Integrating Concepts
1991 Involuntary Migration and
Resettlement in Africa
1990 Health Issues in Africa
1989 Structural Adjustment and Transformation:
Impacts on African Women Farmers
1988 Human Rights in Africa
1987 The Exploding Crisis in Southern Africa
1986 The African Food Crisis:
Prospects for a Solution
1985 SADCC’s Bid for Independence from South
Africa: Will it Succeed?

Thank You
Made Possible by Support From:
Center for African Studies
School of Architecture
Ivan H. Smith Endowment
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
College of Design Construction and Planning
Office of Research
International Center
France Florida Research Institute
US Department of Education
The faculty, staff, and students who have made possible
the 2015 Carter Conference:
Ike Akinyemi, Coordinator, Administrative Services, Center for African Studies
Jason Alread, Professor & Director, School of Architecture
Luca Brunozzi, Graphic Designer, Center for African Studies
Todd Leedy, Associate Director, Center for African Studies
Tricia Smith, Office Assistant, Center for African Studies
William Tilson, Professor & Assistant Dean, College of Design Construction and Planning
2015 Carter Conference Course Student
Participants and Reseachers
Xhulio Binjaku
Benjamin Burgen
Tori Deutch
Endy Ezeluomba
Oluwabunmi Fayiga
Michael Garcia
Yang Jiao
Panquat Kyesmu
Eleanor Mckenna
Genna Reckenberger
Therese Ryley
Adriana Urbistondo

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