Mariam Kamara, the rising star of architecture in Africa

The wooden model representing the city center of Niamey, in 3D, on a surface the size of a ping-pong table, has just returned from the Venice Architecture Biennale in early July. She now sits prominently in Atelier Masomi, the agency created in 2014 by Mariam Kamara in the Nigerien capital. In the center of the model is the latest project of the mistress of the place: a cultural center in this city which has hardly any.

The location of the building was not chosen at random: housed in the hollow of the Gounti Yenna valley, it spans the river which cuts the city in two, from north to south, before flowing into the meanders languishing from the Niger River. The place is a sociological and historical marker, a natural border in the heart of the capital. To the west, a plateau overlooks the river and the lower town which unfolds towards the east. The French settlers lived in the upper part, from where they watched the native areas in case of an uprising.

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Sixty years after independence, the division continues. “The wealthy and the ministries are on the plateau which still dominates the popular and underprivileged part of the city”, explains Mariam Kamara. As an architect, she wonders what to do with this heritage, a city built in 1926 by settlers on inequalities? The cultural center would provide the beginning of a response designed “to be an integral part of the city, accessible to all, and a natural gathering point for the population. » Both a bridge and a gathering point. “Niamey is an interesting animal, everything remains to be done and I am only at the beginning of my reflection”she adds.

This project harbors a part of the soul breathed into Atelier Masomi by Mariam Kamara. “Where other firms express their difference through the use of innovative materials, our particularity lies in our cultural approach, it’s unusual”, she explains. The design of each project begins long before the first shot is drawn. There are several months of historical, cultural, economic and sociological research upstream so that the realization fits perfectly into its environment.

Political approach

The approach is also political: “80% of the planet lives under the dictatorship of Western culture wrongly assimilated to modernismdenounces the architect. Words are strong, but this reality presupposes an absence of culture outside the Western world. We end up with a homogeneous world, with a single aesthetic that has nothing universal about it. It is a dictatorship that is neither wanted nor planned but very real. » His approach therefore takes the opposite view of this imposed globalization. “What works in housing design in Niamey may not work in Tillabéri”, only 110 km away. A fortiori in the countries of the Gulf, in Liberia, in Senegal or in Belo Horizonte in Brazil, so many countries where Atelier Masoni is active, most of whose activity takes place outside Niger.

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