West African Adobe Architecture - From K. Kris Hirst

Source: http://archaeology.about.com/b/a/258045.htm?nl=1

From K. Kris Hirst,
Your Guide to Archaeology.


Photo Essay: West African Adobe Architecture
The traditional ephemeral architecture in the countries of West Africa known as Butabu is built of perishable fired mud brick or adobes.

For centuries, these complex adobe structures, many of them quite massive, have been built in the Sahel region of western Africa, including the countries of Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. Made of earth mixed with water, these ephemeral buildings display a remarkable diversity of form, human ingenuity, and originality.
Captured only in photographs, Butabu is fated to melt away in a few centuries. A traveling exhibit of photos of these structures taken by British photographer James Morris took place at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology last year, and they were kind enough to let me show you a handful of images.
The exhibition of 50 photos has ended, but you can enjoy a few of them in the slide show feature called Adobes of West Africa. Morris's work also appears in a 2003 book called Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa and co-authored with Africanist Suzanne Preston Blier.

* Adobes of West Africa, a slide show of four of the Morris photographs
* Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, Photographs of James Morris, exhibition notice at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
* Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, the book
* Mud, Glorious Mud (Jonathan Glancey in the Guardian reviews the book)
* Architectural Traditions of Mali, an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution
* Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions (CATE)
* Home page of James Morris
* Butabu on Archnet (that's ArchitectureNet, where you can find even more of Morris's photographs)



Wednesday August 22, 2007