海角大神

For decades, crammed neighborhoods of matchbox houses and tin shacks lined the edges of South Africa鈥檚 cities like grand human filing cabinets: places the white government could store the vast quantities of black labor it needed to keep the country going.

When these "townships" of workers 鈥撀爁orbidden from living in the cities proper 鈥撀爂ot too crowded, too diverse, or too revolutionary, the government would often simply tear them down and start over.

Today, however, these architectural afterthoughts have become the sites of some of the country鈥檚 most creative and forward-thinking design projects 鈥撀燽uildings that seem by their very existence to demand a new way of seeing places once confined to the margins of both South Africa鈥檚 cities and its history.

Among these projects is the airy and elegant community history museum聽that now soars above the township of Cato Manor in Durban, a coastal city here. And on Thursday night, the Umkhumbane Museum took the grand prize in the Africa Architecture Awards, the first ever pan-African award for building design.

鈥淲e come from a deep history of pain and suffering, but also a deep history of resilience,鈥� says Rod Choromanski, the lead architect on the project. 鈥淎nd we want to show people how important their lives and histories are.鈥�

In a wider sense, too, many of the award鈥檚 finalists embody a continent whose architects are simultaneously reclaiming a design history snuffed out 鈥撀爋ften violently 鈥撀燽y colonialism while also creating spaces that are asserting Africa loudly in the global architecture world.

Reimagined spaces

Finalists for the main award included a cultural center in rural Senegal whose thatched roof undulates like a sine wave and a Ghanaian office building whose design was inspired by the geometrical triangular patterns found in the bark of a palm tree. The finalists capture 鈥渁n incredible moment in time for pan-African architecture,鈥� wrote Evan Lockhart-Barker, managing director of a retail business development initiative for Saint-Gobain, the construction multi-national that sponsored the awards. 鈥淭he values and aspirations displayed in the awards have led to incredible insights about the continent and its shape-shifting ways,鈥� he wrote in a form response to journalists.

To many outsiders, architecture in Africa has long been synonymous with aging colonial cities, whose crumbling art deco and modernist facades at times felt like they were copy-pasted from European capitals. In many countries, indeed, colonial conquest had wiped out much of the existing architecture to make way for Western-style cities and towns. But even in those spaces, Africans have always innovated, often designing new spaces for themselves in the relics of old ones. In Johannesburg, for instance, one of the city鈥檚 main synagogues is now a popular Pentecostal church, where below the delicate Hebrew etchings on its stone gates hawkers now sell cell phones and sandwiches to congregants and passerby.

African architecture, meanwhile, has become increasingly prominent globally in recent decades. Like the continent they come from, Africa鈥檚 architects 鈥� and their projects 鈥撀燼re staggeringly diverse, but many are united by a loudly announced sense of belonging to the places they come from.

One of the finalists for the architectural awards this year, for instance, was an 鈥渁dventure playground鈥� in Addis Ababa designed by two Ethiopian architects, which incorporates local materials like bamboo, recycled tires, jerry cans, and satellite dishes. Another, the Senegalese cultural center, was built only using entirely local construction techniques.

'A new vision of this country'

Though a number of the projects in this year鈥檚 awards were produced by architecture firms outside the continent, African architects say their voices 鈥撀燼nd their ideas 鈥撀燼re shaping the continent鈥檚 design future.

鈥淲e do have an African architecture, but sometimes we feel we don鈥檛 have the vocabulary yet to describe what it is,鈥� says Ogundare Olawale Israel, a graduate student at the University of Johannesburg鈥檚 school of architecture and the winner of this year鈥檚 鈥渆merging voices鈥� prize.

For many African architects, the language their work speaks is deeply personal. Mr. Choromanski, for instance, comes from a mixed-race family in Durban who were forcibly separated by apartheid鈥檚 racial laws. Some of the family were classified as white, while others, including him, were labeled 鈥渃oloured,鈥� a term for mixed-race people. That label allowed them to be denied access to the city鈥檚 nicest schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods.

Similarly, the vibrantly multiracial Durban neighborhood of Cato Manor聽鈥� where the Umkhumbane Museum is located 鈥撀爓as the site of an infamous forced removal of its residents in the 1950s and 鈥�60s in order to re-segregate the area. Much of the neighborhood鈥檚 architecture literally crumbled beneath the apartheid government鈥檚 bulldozers.

The new museum, which was finished last year but has not yet opened to the public, holds exhibits on the area鈥檚 history, as well the history of the Zulu people. The mother of the current Zulu king was recently reburied in the space, further adding to its significance for residents.

鈥淪ometimes I think of the 1980s, when I was sitting in a classroom studying architecture while the country was burning, while Mandela was locked in prison,鈥� Choromanski says. 鈥淧eople were fighting for a new vision of this country, and the architecture can be part of that.鈥�