One great building in Kampala is Uganda House. Built between 1969 and 1980, it houses the headquarters of the Uganda People’s Congress, the country’s once-dominant political party.
Category Archives: Architecture
Fukuyama
I came across this great website with photos from the centre of Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture, principally taken around the city’s train station. They capture the essence of why visuals can be so powerful a tool to convey the changes that swept through postwar Japan.
1966 postcard with station area and castle in background
Kampala
I have just returned from a two-week stint in Uganda visiting a dear friend. While exploring Kampala on foot, I managed to gather some material for a future publication. Herewith some impressions from the city.
View from Sheraton Hotel towards central Kampala, with new Bank of Uganda building in the centre
The middle finger
Since I first blogged about the rise of the super slender skyscrapers in New York, 432 Park Avenue has been growing into the sky. The inequality argument has picked up, and some have likened the building to one giant middle finger the super rich are showing to New Yorkers.
Puzzling Yangon
Now that the writing process for our book is in full swing, I am dealing with some historical puzzles occasionally. Herewith two that I have shared with our Facebook readers recently. One is about a famous high school, the other about a beautiful yet dilapidated official building on Pansodan Street.
Raglan Squire
We are making good progress with our architectural guide to Yangon. With all the coverage on pre-independence heritage architecture (most recently on the occasion of President Obama’s visit to Yangon), I thought that post-war architecture could use a little more airtime, e.g. these two beautiful representatives.
Technical High School, Yangon (1956)
FIESP, Sao Paulo
I went on a short trip to Sao Paulo some while ago, and this building on Paulista Avenue caught my attention. It is the headquarters of FIESP – the Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo or Federation of Industries of the State of Sao Paulo.
Elusive Dharavi
Long overdue here are some notes from a walk we took through Dharavi last month. Dharavi is often referred to as Asia’s quintessential slum. What reminded me to put up this post was an article in the Architectural Review entitled “Enough Slum Porn: The Global North’s Fetishisation of Poverty Architecture Must End”.
Vertical Capital
Mexico City sits on doubly challenging terrain: First, it is situated on top of a dried lake and is sinking by several centimeters each year. Second, it is in earthquake-prone territory with the North American plate pushing against the Pacific plate here. Surprisingly, there is a lot of verticality in the city. And as the city famously chokes on brutal traffic, there are plans to build even higher into the sky, and deeper into the ground.
Mexico City – May 2014
WTC and NYC’s soul
The Guardian’s Jason Farago has written a beautiful long-form piece about Ground Zero thirteen years after the terrorist attack of 9/11. The struggle to rebuild this part of town is emblematic of the New York of the 21st century.
Model of WTC site as seen in Skyscraper Museum