Peter Stutchbury was given a steep hillside in Bayview, New South Wales where flat land was scarce, and instead of cutting the slope to create a platform to build on, he gave the flat ground entirely to the people and drove the building into the hill.
Cabbage Tree House. Bayview, New South Wales, Australia. Peter Stutchbury Architecture. 2018 Australian House of the Year.
The structure is anchored to rock strata nine metres below the surface so that the building functions as a staircase between the plateau above and the creek below, connecting the land rather than interrupting it. Exposed brick in the warm ochre of the surrounding sandstone, raw concrete ceilings, a circular skylight cutting through to pull the sky inside, and an angled east facade positioned specifically to channel cool creek breezes through the interior in summer while the mass of the brick and concrete holds warmth from the winter sun and the wood fire. The building heats and cools itself by reading the site rather than fighting it.
Across Africa, architects and engineers are excavating hillsides, flattening land that communities depend on, and building houses that need generators and air conditioning because nobody stopped to read what the land was already offering. The discipline is not expensive. The decision to pay attention costs nothing.
Peter Stutchbury Architecture | Cabbage Tree House | Bayview, NSW, Australia | Photography: Michael Nicholson
I studied architectural design in Cameroon and every architect they taught me was European. Every movement, every theory, every name on the required reading list. The Great Mosque of Djenné, the Moorish arch, Great Zimbabwe never appeared on any syllabus.
Now I am studying management and every economist is Western. George Ayittey, a Ghanaian who built an entire economic framework for African development, has never appeared in a single lecture. Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist who argued that Western aid is destroying African economies, same.
Two disciplines. Not one African name in the required reading.
This is not only an architecture problem. It is medicine, law, economics, history. Every field is taught through a foreign lens and when a student tries to think beyond it they are disciplined for it.
We are not behind because we lack knowledge. We are behind because we were taught that ours does not count.
@shavnyuy Is anything or anyone physically stopping Africans from developing and incorporating their own curriculum without been dependent on the western curriculum?
@jerrynwobodo @shavnyuy Is anything or anyone physically stopping Africans from developing and incorporating their own curriculum without been dependent on the western curriculum?
So let me get this straight, it was revealed that the United States ruling class is full of child torturing pedophiles and the reaction of the American people wasn’t to immediately revolt, but to vote out Thomas Massie who helped expose the scandal
America is cooked 💀
@starexem1@kg32221381@Dereal_hotshot@zapatas_mom So you're dating your age mates and every single time, they turn into children when dating you?
Every single age mate you've dated did this?
Aren't you the common denominator?
Have you tried choosing better?
After helping Blaise Campaoré to murder Thomas Sankara and become Burkina Faso's president, this was how French presidents used Burkina Faso's government money as their personal election slush funds over the next 27 years.
This is the true face of France.
When you see hook-nose Macron and the other suit-wearing, pink twats talking about "la democracie," "la liberté" and all that shit - this is what the fuck they actually mean.
Instead of having a sovereign government that uses its money to build roads, schools, and hospitals for Africans, they want a Blaise Campaoré that will pack your road and school and hospital money inside a Djembé drum and smuggle it to France so that they can use it to win their election.
As an African, having reflexive distrust of and extreme hostility towards western white people is a survival reflex and a sign that you have common sense.
@starexem1@kg32221381@Dereal_hotshot@zapatas_mom What is the of these "women" who turn into children?
Are you per chance, dating people way younger than you? And expecting them to act as old as you?
Ukraine's newfound status as a hired thug doing dirty work on behalf of western powers anywhere they won't do it themselves is no longer just Russia's problem, but is now increasingly our problem in Africa and across the Global South.
@VotaSpartaco@richimedhurst That's the thing, no other country is interested in attacking their neighbours and beyond, only the US. Its the US that has bases scattered around the world. If the tables were to turn, I assure you they'd think very carefully before starting a war.
There's no way to offend a Nigerian like telling him to look at the wider context of his problem and find a systemic solution instead of fixating on the eye-level problem and reacting blindly.
Telling them this makes you an unbearable know-it-all, and who do you think you are?