Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa FROM THE PUBLISHER
Many of the most noble buildings in Africa are made of the most humble of materials - mud. This adobe architecture shows sublime sculptural beauty, variety, ingenuity, and originality. Its plastic forms - from simple stairways, to rounded arches, to vaulted ceilings - are complemented by striking details such as the protruding timbers that play wonderfully with the strong sunlight while providing structures for annual repairs. In the Sahal region of West Africa - Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso - people have been constructing earthen buildings for centuries. But they remain little known to most of the Western world.
James Morris has extensively photographed this architecture, from the Friday Mosque at Djenne - the largest mud building in the world - to small houses in remote animist communities. Butabu shows these works as both aesthetic treasures and as structures with contemporary relevance. These are no museum pieces but buildings that continue to be constructed and maintained. Text by Suzanne Preston Blier covers the history, technology, and symbolism of earthen architecture. Together with Morris's photographs, it shows the powerful influence of material and imagination in creating built form.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
The British photographer James Morris easily takes the palm for the year's most haunting architectural images with this album of the baked mud buildings of Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. These sensuously hand-modeled and boldly painted structures -- incorporating distantly perceived elements from Islamic and European traditions along with wholly spontaneous outbursts of indigenous invention -- mix the raw vitality of folk art with the mad flights of imagination generally ascribed to high-style mavericks like Gaudi or Gehry. — Martin Filler
The Washington Post
What's startling is the beauty and scale of the buildings, their range (from modest huts to the massive Friday mosque at Djenne) and the inventive complexity of the Gaudi-esque interior and exterior detail that these vernacular architects were able to achieve using only mud.
— Francine Prose
Library Journal
This volume offers a sampling of West African earthen architecture, photographed by Morris (See-Through Houses) and covering Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Togo. Together with the residences and places of worship that are his primary focus, Morris's pictures capture a stark reality of poverty and want. The calm demeanors, dusty bare feet, and humble clothing of inhabitants, pictured alongside majestic architectural structures made of transient material, bespeak a proud past, humble present, and the paradoxical story that is Africa-a story of grace and resiliency with limited resources in an environment that is constantly and rapidly deteriorating. The 70 color and 110 black-and-white reproductions are of fine quality and speak vividly of the photographer's mastery. Blier (fine arts & Afro-American studies, Harvard) complements Morris's effort with insightful cultural and historical context. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries.-Edward K. Owusu-Ansah, Coll. of Staten Island Lib., CUNY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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