Africa Drawn

Africa is certainly not only a continent of small villages in the jungle and savannah. The urbanisation of the continent is advancing rapidly, while African cities and metropolitan regions are among the fastest growing in the world. Africa Drawn presents one hundred of the most connected and important cities of the continent. The approach of this book is an effort to map the urban form and structure of African cities, and to describe and illustrate how these different places were formed. Therefore, it presents the historic character of African locations as a valuable resource for imagining the future of the continent's cities. A visual feast of 300 images and masterfully drawn plans illustrate contemporary and historical place-making actions in Africa. The result is a fascinating documentation of African urban space and at the same time a convincing analysis of its structure and morphology. The drawings are accompanied by introductory texts and, for the first time, render possible a comparison of diversity of -urban form on the continent.
Gary White, born 1966, architect and urban designer. Co-founder of South African-based Africa Drawn Project, which focusses on researching, visualising, and curating cities in Africa. Trained as an architect at the University of the Free State (BArch 1991) and as urban designer at the University of Cape Town (MCPUD 1993), he has worked in practice and academia for twenty-three years. Lives in Pretoria and works across Sub-Sahara Africa. Currently Director at GWA / Holm Jordaan.
Marguerite Pienaar, born 1977, architect. Co-founder of MoMa Architects and senior researcher for South African-based Africa Drawn Project, which focusses on researching, visualising, and curating cities in Africa. Trained as an architect at the University of the Free State (BArch 2001) and Pretoria University (M Arch 2013 Research), she has worked in practice and academia for thirteen years. Lives in Pretoria and works across Sub-Sahara Africa. Currently Director at GWA / Holm Jordaan.
Bouwer Serfontein, born 1977, candidate architect. Co-founder of South African-based Africa Drawn Project, which focusses on researching, visualising, and curating cities in Africa. Trained as an architect at the Tshwane University of Technology (M Tech  Arch  Prof 2006), he has worked in practice and academia for nine years. Lives in Johannesburg and Stuttgart, works in Europe and Sub-Sahara Africa. Currently Director at GWA / Holm Jordaan.
"A unique and timely contribution to African and urban studies, this beautiful and readable volume created through the collaboration of architects and urban planners explores the wide range of urban forms extant on the continent and analyzes them using the typology developed by Anthony O'Connor in his 1983 work The African City. The categories of indigenous cities, Islamic cities, colonial cities, European cities, dual cities, and hybrid cities are discussed and defined in the introduction. Each entry carries the date founded (if known), urban area, population, urban area density, and the GPS coordinates. Maps of significant features such as markets are also included. Drawings of prominent structures are included for some cities, an example being the Medina of Fez, Morocco. The "Resources" section covers all online research reports and conference papers, books, journals (print only), exhibition catalogs, and websites referred to in the annotations of individual cities. Much of the recent scholarship on African cities has focused either on specific issues such as sustainability or the formation and development of individual urban centers, so the breadth of the present volume's continent-wide coverage provides a useful comparative data set."
--R. B. Ridinger, Northern Illinois University, CHOICE Magazine