Usually representing spirits, ancestors or the primordial couple, these figures were placed in shrines and treated with great respect. Through a wide range of style, scale, belief and function the couples depicted share a timeless, serene equality necessary to the continuity of their societies.

White Cube/ OMA

Architects: OMA
Location: Lusanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Project Team: Design team: David Gianotten, Max Scherer, Adrian Subagyo Executive Architects: Bureau d’étude Ijambo, Arsène Ijambo Kambaza Construction: Copirec, John Kayamba Mafunkolo
Interior Décor: OMA
Project Year: 2017
Photographer: OMA
Website: www.oma.com

- 26 August 2018
- Datum Editorial
Art , Art Galleries , Research Centres , Contemporary , Contemporary African Directory , Selected Works ,

From the Architects;
Located in the heart of a plantation system, the research centre designed by Rem Koolhas led OMA in Congo aims to become a vector for a social and ecological shift.

White Cube/ Office for Metropolitan Architecture

Designed by the OMA, this White Cube is a central element of the Lusanga International Research Centre for Art and Economic Inequality (LIRCAEI). Located in the heart of the plantation system and at the crossroads of global inequality and climatological change, the research center aims to become a vector for a social and ecological shift. The festive and solemn inauguration of the White Cube marked the launch of the five-year research program of LIRCAEI. In Lusanga, the White Cube will attract both the capital and the visibility needed for plantations workers to buy back land and develop a new economic and ecological model on-site: the post-plantation.

White Cube/ Office for Metropolitan Architecture

The White Cube will include an internet platform that connects its research to plantations and museums worldwide. Plugged into these international networks, the White Cube will transform the former palm oil plantation of Lusanga into a legitimization machine, investigating and relaying the strategies of resistance alongside visions for the future of plantation workers globally. Within five years, LIRCAEI seeks to have designed the blueprint for a new economic model in which art serves as an engine to start inclusive and ecological post-plantations throughout the Congo.

- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...
- © OMA Repatriation of the White CUBE in Lusanga D...

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SELECTED WORKS

- Guelmim Airport / Group 3 Architects
- 18 Aug 2018
The new Guelmim airport is integrated in an existing military infrastructure located 3km north of the city. The stakes of the project wer...
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- Alice Lane Phase 1 Marsh / Paragon Architects
- 03 Oct 2016
The design of this building formed the last important piece of an urban puzzle. The volumes of the building needed to terminate views on ...

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DIRECTORY

- Cohabitation / Kilo Architectures
- 30 Jan 2016
This project, consisting of five experimental houses within a communal farm, proposes alternative modes of domesticity and co-habitation,...
- Villagio Vista / Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
- 17 Jul 2015
In Accra, a landmark building has helped in creating mental maps for its city users, contributing to the local conditions of the site. Th...
- Lokko House / Lesley Lokko
- 11 Aug 2015
When Lesley Lokko isn't travelling between cities and continents, she likes to say she thinks about architecture. I have had a chance to ...