Latest Issue
may-aug 2008
Virtual Tour
Click on the picture at the right to browse a digital version of the magazine.
From the Editor
Cover Story
Against time: standing up to the elements
- The skyline of Eri Bekentu, up the hill that faces Menelik’s old palace and the present residence and office of the prime minister to the northwest, is dominated by the rusty brown of old tin roofs leaning one on the other under the weight of small boulders that keep the sheets from taking flight in the wind. But perched on top of the steep asphalted road - in what looks like a defiance to be yellow and new in such a decaying locale - are new condominiums, emblems of low cost and low aesthetic everywhere they have been built in Addis.
Features
Geological and Geotechnical properties of the Medieval Rock-hewn Churches of Lalibela
- Their deterioration and implications for conservation
Free
The many challenges of sheltering a world heritage
- Even when the rest of the world insists on still identifying this nation by the heartbreaking famines of the early 80s, and its bottom rung position on every development index makes it hard to argue that perception to its death, there is still a defiant self-valuing that is almost universal among all Ethiopian citizens. This has to do with the pride in the nation’s history that is shared equally even by urbanites, despite their fling with western ideas, or the average farmer far removed from the outside world.
The Authority for the Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage
Free
Fasil Giorghis, Ethiopia and the borderland of the architectural avant-garde
- Addis Ababa contains numerous fine examples of buildings that are visible evidence of the city’s cosmopolitan and complex relationship to modernity. Many of these structures were designed by foreigners from as far a-field as India, Italy, Switzerland, the former East Germany, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, the former USSR and now China. Though dozens of dissertations have yet to be written about these exchanges, I would like to highlight the work of a young, forty-three year old Ethiopian architect, Fasil Giorghis, who also teaches now at the school of architecture at Addis Ababa.
On Restoration Theories
- I spent some time in Ethiopia about 36 years ago. I was in charge of the design of the then Jubilee palace. It was a great experience since it meant a very young architect, which I was, being in charge of an important project, prestigious if not large. The assignment gave me the chance to know and visit the wonderful country to which I have come back with great enjoyment and fond memories.
Interview
Architect Fasil Giorghis
- Anyone looking for expert consultation on either the history of architecture or the diverse heritage resources in Ethiopia is likely to have one name on the top of his or her list- that of the renowned architect and conservationist Fasil Giorghis. With his immense knowledge of the nation’s built patrimony and his architectural designs best known for their fusion of traditional elements into modern buildings, Ato Fasil has become a household name among all who are interested in the Ethiopian architectural history. Below is his interview with Construction Ahead on the nation’s built heritage, his long standing interest in it and the balance he hopes contemporary design will learn to strike between the old and the new.
Opinion
A case in point
- By the time ‘Old Tracks in the New Flower’, a book on 130 old buildings scattered around Addis Ababa, was published at the end of 2004 after many years of research, its authors –Gian Paolo Chiari and myself – were fascinated by our discovery of what the old capital could have been like. We saw that Addis was a beautiful and elegant city with a particular African character, its physiognomy or spontaneous basic unaltered for many decades.
Free
News
07/2008 -
Development or growth and heritage are inseparable…
07/2008 -
Cement prices at record high
06/2008 -
Ethiopian architects attend UIA summit
Events
05/2008 -
Second SPECIFY construction exhibition held
