Bal Harbour

200 BAL HARBOUR en years ago, when Dutch photographer Iwan Baan began documenting the African continent, "there was hardly any notion architecture would happen there," he says. In the decade since, visionary architects such as Burkina Faso-born Diébédo Francis Kéré and Boston-based MASS Design Group have worked to transform the landscape, building needed structures such as hospitals and schools from indigenous materials and with local help. Baan's photographs of these buildings, as well as older modernist creations that symbolized the hopeful spirit of newly born countries free of European colonization, reflect his signature method of placing architecture in the broader context of its environment and time. "In much architectural photography all notion of place has been stripped away," he says. "My work tells a story about the city and its surroundings. That building is there for a specific reason, and that is all part of the narrative." Pointing to the cover of 'African Modernism,' a book he published in 2015 with Swiss-German architect and writer Manuel Herz, Baan explains his enduring fascination with Africa's most provocative architecture: "We know the classic modernist icons of the West such as Brasilia, but there was also a large modernist architectural movement on the African continent. As countries like Ivory Coast and Ghana gained their independence, the governments had a utopian dream of building modern new cities, and hired mostly European architects to design large public projects and monuments,"said Bann."There's still a lot to see, but many of these structures are now being replaced by generic boxes. This is one of the main plazas in Abidjan, Ivory Coast." "Francis Kéré was asked by the Malian government to rehabilitate an old botanical garden in the center of Bamako, which was completely overrun. He worked with a local architect to create public buildings and small cultural centers there. This is a restaurant and viewing platform with his signature double roof. These structures are very low-tech— there's often no air conditioning. The larger roof creates shade, while another below it repels the heat and keeps it cool inside." "The founders of MASS Design Group, Michael Murphy and Alan Ricks, were still at Harvard when they began building in Africa. This is the first project they completed, the Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda. Often the electricity there is out, so they conceived a facility based entirely on natural ventilation, with no need for expensive generators. It's become a model for new hospitals all over Africa." "This is the waiting area of the same Butaro hospital. They worked with locals to build the structure, whose materials are all natively sourced. The volcanic rock on this wall is beautiful yet also very inexpensive, because it's basically from around the corner. And since it never gets cold, this window is always completely open. This allows the wind to blow constantly and reduces airborne diseases that arise in closed areas." T

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