Wallpaper - 07.2019

(Nancy Kaufman) #1
WRITER: CAROLINE ROUX

Photography: ©Rolex/Thomas Chéné

Mariam Kamara spent six years as a software
developer in the US before deciding to
study architecture, but she already has an
impressive CV that includes housing and
public buildings in her home country, Niger,
and a mission to develop a contemporary
architecture that responds to her region’s
customs, culture and climate. Currently
helping her in that mission is David Adjaye,
who is working with her as part of Rolex’s
Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative.
Adjaye began mentoring Kamara in May
last year while she was working on the design
of a cultural centre in her home town of
Niamey. Tanzanian-born Adjaye is doing other
work in West Africa (he’s currently building
Ghana’s National Cathedral in Accra) and says
he felt an immediate affinity with Kamara’s
practice. ‘She works to her own agenda and
principles, and that’s admirable,’ he says.
One of their first research trips was to
Mexico City. ‘It’s a place teeming with
diversity and experimentation in architecture,’
says Adjaye. The work of Luis Barragán stood

out, in particular. ‘From the outside, the
buildings are a cube with no apertures, then
you find a whole world inside,’ says Kamara
of visits to Barragán’s home and the convent
he built in Tlalpan. ‘He was influenced by the
architecture of North Africa. As Niger is in the
desert, we’ve a lot more in common with
North Africa than tropical Africa.’
In January, Adjaye and Kamara visited
Niger to complete the research for the
Niamey centre. Kamara was keen to solicit

CENTRE


STAGE


This year, a mentor in Rolex’s
prestigious protégé programme
puts West Africa in the spotlight

local opinion. ‘I like to talk to the users first,’
she says. It was the high-school students who
most impressed. ‘They’re all on social media,
but they talked more about books. They can’t
afford a plane ticket to London or Paris, but
they’re prepared to go there in other ways.’
The result of Kamara and Adjaye’s Rolex
Mentor & Protégé collaboration on the
Niamey centre will be revealed in London
in November. rolexmentorprotege.com;
ateliermasomi.com; adjaye.com

LEFT, DAVID ADJAYE
AND MARIAM KAMARA
PHOTOGRAPHED IN
DANDAJI, NIGER, IN
JANUARY 2019, ON THE
SITE OF AN EARLIER
PROJECT BY KAMARA,
A REGIONAL MARKET
BELOW, KAMARA’S
CONVERSION OF A
RUNDOWN MOSQUE
INTO A LIBRARY AND
COMMUNITY CENTRE


Newspaper


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