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Built from Dust – Earth, Soil and the Modern Afropolis

Built from Dust

Earth, Soil and the Modern Afropolis

26 February – 9 May 2025
Opening: 25 February, 5 – 8 pm
10 am – 4 pm
: Engaging with Modern Afropoli Colloquium (details below)

With artworks by Younes Benslimane, M'barek Bouhchichi, Lungiswa Gqunta and Alexander Cyrus Poulikakos

Contributions by Tom Avermaete, Kenny Cupers, Madeleine de Colnet, Lahbib El Moumni, Sara Frikech, David Grandorge, Hannah le Roux, Morad Montazami, Salima Naji, Nadya Rouizem Labied, Giulia Scotto, Ola Uduku and Maxime Zaugg

A collaboration with the Chair of History and Theory of Urban Design (gta), Institute of Urban Landscape (IUL), ZHAW School of Architecture, Design and Civil Engineering, MAMMA Memory of Modern Moroccan Architects and Zamân Books & Curating

On 29 February 1960, a catastrophic earthquake devastated the Moroccan coastal city of Agadir, erasing it almost entirely and killing a third of its population. The world was shocked, and international aid quickly poured in. Following an emotional speech by King Mohammed V, the reconstruction of Agadir became a project of global solidarity. A new and unprecedented urban planning process was developed, allowing many architects – both national and international – to design the new city simultaneously.

The result of this joint effort was astounding. In a very short time, the new Agadir rose from the ashes. Moroccan and international architects experimented with new types of housing, mediating between ultramodern and traditional forms of living, complemented by innovative public structures such as schools, health centres and cinemas. The reconstruction of Agadir became a showcase for the aspirations, potentials and capacities of post-independence Morocco. All this combined to create an original urban reality: a new African city, a modern Afropolis. As part of nation-building and world-making efforts, many modern cities were born in post-independence Africa; Agadir was no exception.

The approaches of architects and urbanists to design within these diverse urban conditions, the effects of these urban constructs on local territories, and the tactics residents used to inhabit them are the subjects of new research. Starting from the Moroccan city of Agadir, a unique showcase of modern architecture and urban design, this exhibition brings together the research of a new generation of scholars and artists who have engaged with the Afropolis of the twentieth century.

The exhibition Built from Dust – Earth, Soil and the Modern Afropolis will serve as a forum for discussing the capacities and challenges of the Afropolis, reflecting not only on the often untold history of these African cities, but also holding up a mirror to the complex and frequently contested urban realities they have created.

Researchers and artists working on African cities as diverse as Casablanca, Algiers, Addis Ababa, Kinshasa and Accra will explore how urbanisation in Africa, sparked by colonialism in the nineteenth century and accelerated by industrialisation and modernisation in the twentieth century, has led to the rise of large urban centres in a decolonising world. It will challenge the notion that urbanisation and urban design are exclusively Western concepts, highlighting the essential role of cities like Agadir in decentering contemporary historiographies of architecture and urbanism.

Zamân Books & Curating Curatorial Statement

Younes Benslimane, All Come From Dust, 2018
M’barek Bouhchichi, Terra, 2025
Lungiswa Gqunta, Assemble the Disappearing, Site Unseen, 2025

Through their multimedia works and installations, the contemporary guest artists from Moroccan, Tunisian and South African backgrounds will stimulate a thought-provoking dialogue around the archival landscape of the exhibition Built From Dust and the concept of the modern Afropolis. Can the city be modern and vernacular at the same time, rooted in both the past and the present? Furthermore, can it be a sustainable city in terms of an architecture of common good and shared space? How can contemporary art practices contribute to the conceptual flexibility of the modern Afropolis, turning it into a site of exchange to reconsider the universality and functionality of modernist architecture on the African continent?

The artists involved all have a special interest in rethinking the models and symbols of modernist and postcolonial architecture through a new ecological lens. They have created a platform for reviving contested spaces of derived, but still colonial, modernity and for exploring local architectural technologies that are often linked to wood, earth, natural soils and fibers. These spaces extend the modernist industrialized landscape through ancient oases, citadels, attics and furnaces.

While ecological impacts and implications are clearly of concern, the omnipresence and overwhelming use of concrete in capitals of the Global South and Africa should not be seen solely in terms of pros and cons. Eventually, modernist aesthetics will engage in a dialogue with ancient and even sacred architecture, while ecological and resilient architecture, made of earth and stones, will still be able to integrate concrete as part of a hybrid and sustainable mix.

The artworks on display present earth architecture as an anti-fragile and resilient environmental art form, emancipated from the realm of the vernacular and activating potentialities for the future. Earth and soil become forms of healing knowledge tied to the preservation of the ecosystem. These artists appear to advocate for a critical reassessment of the legacy of modernist architecture. They help us to seek broader cohabitation strategies or philosophies between humans, the biosphere and, ultimately, the soil.

Younes Benslimane, All Come From Dust, 2018

Younes Benslimane sets up his camera in Tozeur, in the south of Tunisia, where traditional brickmaking has been practiced since ancient times. In a nighttime desert landscape stretching to the edge of the Sahara, the eye struggles to find its way between the ashes, the stone, the wind, the water and the fire... A release of cosmic forces initiates an alchemical process: mud turns into clay, fired clay turns into brick, the bricks form an impressive handmade tower. In a metaphysical, visual intercourse, All Come From Dust unveils the construction of a brick kiln through gestures of unearthing and, eventually, healing. The work becomes a site for meditation on the millennium-age resilience of certain vernacular architectures – and a tribute to the human hand.

M’barek Bouhchichi, Terra, 2025

The Terra series is a continuation of Bouhchichi’s broader exploration of long-forgotten connections linking Southeastern Morocco with Northeastern Mali, including architectural and landscape patterns reminiscent of Amazigh and Saharan ecosystems and peoples. Produced in collaboration with communities of women weavers from the same area as the artist, these tapestries are made from traditionally handwoven wool fabric stained with henna. The use of natural colors and material, in harmony with the ecosystem of the Atlas Mountains, enhances the allegoric and abstract landscape seemingly depicted. These fluid and absorbing compositions, mounted on wooden stretchers like paintings on canvas, also engage in a specific dialogue with modernist shapes and architecture.

Lungiswa Gqunta, Assemble the Disappearing, Site Unseen, 2025

Assemble the Disappearing, Site Unseen is a formal set of sculptural works by Lungiswa Gqunta that explores its own multidimensional and environmental territory. Using mainly wood and glass as proxies for neglected, dispossessed or disappearing lands and vegetations, the work is a testimony to invisible forms of torture and violence imposed both on humans and landscapes. Colonial conquest and occupation not only deprive humans of their rights, but also entail soil contamination and toxicity, in parallel with natural erosion and geological life – another theme addressed by these sculptural convulsions and mazes. Drawing on Amilcar Cabral’s radical notions on soil and revolutionary struggle, Gqunta insists on the land’s capacity to bear witness to grief, trauma and colonial extractivism.

Opening event: Colloquium Built from Dust. Engaging with Modern Afropoli
25 February, 10 am – 4 pm, ETH Zurich, Hönggerberg, gta exhibitions

On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Built from Dust, a group of scholars and artists will meet the curators to critically discuss the past, present and future of various Afropoli.

10 am Welcome

Nadya Rouizem Labied, Sara Frikech, Hannah le Roux

11 am Coffee break

Kenny Cupers, Ola Uduku, Giulia Scotto

Each speaker will present for approximately 15 minutes, followed by a 10-minute discussion.

1 – 2 pm Lunch break

2.30 – 4 pm Roundtable with the artists M'barek Bouhchichi, Lungiswa Gqunta, Alexander Cyrus Poulikakos and the curator Morad Montazami

The exhibition is supported by the Embassy of Switzerland in Morocco, Embassy of Morocco in Switzerland and the Swiss Red Cross.