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kylekarpack's review against another edition
3.0
While fascinating, it was a little hard to get over how oddly this book was organized. Having finished, I'm still struggling to make sense of what I just read.
The short histories and casual observations were great. The photography was perhaps a little underwhelming and looks like it could have been done with a cell phone.
This is an interesting, unique concept for a book, and I would love to see a slightly more curated work on the topic.
The short histories and casual observations were great. The photography was perhaps a little underwhelming and looks like it could have been done with a cell phone.
This is an interesting, unique concept for a book, and I would love to see a slightly more curated work on the topic.
michaelnlibrarian's review
4.0
This is a "compact edition" of an earlier version from 2011, that apparently was published in seven paperback parts. It appears that the text throughout was reviewed and in some spots updated to account for more recent events.
There is far more to this book than the architecture of cities on the African continent. The book is organized by terrain-region, looking at the capital cities that fall into six different types (the maghreb, desert, the sahel, forest, savanna and grassland, and mountain and highveld). Some of these regions are distributed across the continent, and since the author presents each section in alphabetical order by city name, there is some geographic jumping around - from Bujumbura (Burundi) to Harare (Zimbabwe) and back to Kigali (Rwanda) and so on.
Each city has the same information presented - first, a short overview of the history of the country and its colonial ties through to (approximately) today, then some observations from the author about the particular capital city. A table of information is provided for each with that total national population figure, capital city population figure, ethnic groups, religions, languages, and some economic indicators as well as a map and Google earth type photo of the capital city from above. There are typically four pages of photographs of each city, covering "civic," "commercial," and "residential."
The photography is disappointing, as well as the layout of the photographs. Some of the photographs appear to have been taken from a car without much concern for vehicles or other things that appear in the photograph that don't contribute to appreciating the building. The photos are in several sized, but most are only about landscape format only about two inches on the long side, and at this size it is often difficult to see any useful detail of the buildings. And the photos do not have white space between them, or captions other than a single caption for a category that may or may not reference specifics of the buildings in the photos.
The lack of captions for the individual photographs throughout is probably the strangest thing about this book, although I understand that providing them would have been a significant effort and required a significantly different layout approach.
Eventually I thought to count up the number of cities, and I believe that at 55, the book covers all the countries of Africa. At first, looking at the organization of the book, I thought it was just a selection, but now I think it includes all of them. It is indicative of the unusual absence of much framing text for the book that it isn't obvious.
My thought was that this would be a good way to learn more about Africa by browsing, but in the end I switched to reading it from front to back. I do feel I learned quite a bit about Africa generally - this is because of the holistic approach the author is taking to describing urban architecture.
Many of the "observations" for each city are particularly interesting since the author is so well traveled in Africa. So, about Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) I learned, "Everyone in the city cycles - men, women and children! It is a great surprise, as I have not seen that any other African city to date."
David Adjaye was the lead designer (per Wikipedia) of the National Museum of African American History and Culture here in Washington DC, a citizen of the UK and Ghana. This book was published by a UK publisher, Thames & Hudson, and retails for 50 dollars (US). It seems an unlikely book for a general public library collection but I am pleased my local (Arlington VA) public library acquired a copy that I could check out a peruse.
There is far more to this book than the architecture of cities on the African continent. The book is organized by terrain-region, looking at the capital cities that fall into six different types (the maghreb, desert, the sahel, forest, savanna and grassland, and mountain and highveld). Some of these regions are distributed across the continent, and since the author presents each section in alphabetical order by city name, there is some geographic jumping around - from Bujumbura (Burundi) to Harare (Zimbabwe) and back to Kigali (Rwanda) and so on.
Each city has the same information presented - first, a short overview of the history of the country and its colonial ties through to (approximately) today, then some observations from the author about the particular capital city. A table of information is provided for each with that total national population figure, capital city population figure, ethnic groups, religions, languages, and some economic indicators as well as a map and Google earth type photo of the capital city from above. There are typically four pages of photographs of each city, covering "civic," "commercial," and "residential."
The photography is disappointing, as well as the layout of the photographs. Some of the photographs appear to have been taken from a car without much concern for vehicles or other things that appear in the photograph that don't contribute to appreciating the building. The photos are in several sized, but most are only about landscape format only about two inches on the long side, and at this size it is often difficult to see any useful detail of the buildings. And the photos do not have white space between them, or captions other than a single caption for a category that may or may not reference specifics of the buildings in the photos.
The lack of captions for the individual photographs throughout is probably the strangest thing about this book, although I understand that providing them would have been a significant effort and required a significantly different layout approach.
Eventually I thought to count up the number of cities, and I believe that at 55, the book covers all the countries of Africa. At first, looking at the organization of the book, I thought it was just a selection, but now I think it includes all of them. It is indicative of the unusual absence of much framing text for the book that it isn't obvious.
My thought was that this would be a good way to learn more about Africa by browsing, but in the end I switched to reading it from front to back. I do feel I learned quite a bit about Africa generally - this is because of the holistic approach the author is taking to describing urban architecture.
Many of the "observations" for each city are particularly interesting since the author is so well traveled in Africa. So, about Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) I learned, "Everyone in the city cycles - men, women and children! It is a great surprise, as I have not seen that any other African city to date."
David Adjaye was the lead designer (per Wikipedia) of the National Museum of African American History and Culture here in Washington DC, a citizen of the UK and Ghana. This book was published by a UK publisher, Thames & Hudson, and retails for 50 dollars (US). It seems an unlikely book for a general public library collection but I am pleased my local (Arlington VA) public library acquired a copy that I could check out a peruse.
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