This is not a Refugee Camp Exhibition

At a time when international borders are being violently redrawn, maintained and policed, and domestic territories are increasingly implicated with accelerated geo-political re-alignments and capitalist circuits of extraction, this exhibition seeks to explore how architecture responds to the complexity of African Mobilities - beyond the figure of the refugee. African cities are reconsidered as sites of innovation, rapid transformations, new architectural typologies, infrastructures and technologies.

African Mobilities is not concerned exclusively with the architecture of the refugee camp. Instead, it seeks to explore how cities and towns might become sites of refuge for African populations on the move, while simultaneously reckoning with the ways in which colonial geographies of extraction are enfolded within seemingly new zones of resource extraction.

The project aims to rethink the geography of African migrations and the challenges and opportunities they pose for doing architecture and urbanism differently: through an exploration of architectures at the intersection of migration, displacement and digital technology. The exhibition is conceptualized as a space, a conference, a digital publication/website and a mobile pedagogical platform that connects 14 diverse locations through workshops and master classes: Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Addis Ababa, Munich, Luanda, Abidjan, Lagos, New York, Dakar, Nairobi, London, Lubumbashi, and Praia.

African Mobilities proposes a trans-national and interdisciplinary approach to architectural research and design, showing both current work and creative research-driven work that offer future possible urban scenarios and architectural prototypes, brought about by a world in motion.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Architekturmuseum der TU München and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and is curated by Dr. Mpho Matsipa (Wits City Institute). This initiative is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. The project was developed with the support of the Goethe-Institut which will also aid the exhibition's planned tour on the African continent.

Curator | Mpho Matsipa
Project Manager | Teresa Fankhänel
Exhibition design | Wolff Architects, Cape Town
Graphic design | Bubblegum Club, Johannesburg
Sponsors | Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Förderverein des rchitekturmuseums der TU München, Goethe-Institut