AIA International Uganda - African Architectural Semiotics: The Untapped Pan-African Architects’ Treasure Trove for Storytelling
Photo Credit: Africa Heritage House
Event Description
Architectural training exceeds creating firm, functional and beautiful buildings, to include designing masterpieces of poetry and storytelling the socio-cultural, political, and economic being of their localities. That competence for buildings to tell stories is what draws architecture into the field of semiotics, and entire phenomenology of architectural semiotics. Whereas it is not that Africa should not partake of other traditions, it is now common knowledge that African architects appear not to have fully exploited African architectural semiotics to turn their building designs into storytellers and orchestras of Afrocentricity. Hence, the presentation is on this situation and an interventionist way forward.
CES: Estimated 1 LU for AIA Members
Speaker
Dr. Allan K. Birabi, Grantsman and Head of Heritage Studies Program, Islamic University In Uganda
Moderator: Lanre Olusola, Int’l Assoc. AIA, FNIA, FNIM, FIMC, At-Large Director and Nigeria Country Representative, AIA International
Birabi Allan Kenneth was born on 6th February 1961 in a Ugandan family of educationists in Sironko, eastern Uganda. His wife, Olive Birabi is a fellow academic and they possess four children. Birabi’s line of career growth is an intriguing lifetime inter-disciplinarity of the fine arts, crafts, education, architecture, and heritage conservation. With a PhD in architectural conservation, Birabi lectured in Makerere University’s Department of Architecture and Physical Planning from 1990 till January 2023. While at Makerere University, he also won the 2008/09 Fulbright Fellowship for Conservation Management Planning Education at Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, USA. Thereafter, Birabi joined the African pool of UNESCO Cultural Heritage Experts in 2012 and on numerous occasions, he represented Uganda at the UNESCO Executive Board from 2013 to 2017 in matters of technical cultural heritage expertise and on the World Heritage Committee from 2017 to 2022. His scholarly distinction often earned him a number of international fellowships alongside being a fervent speaker at conferences. Furthermore, he is an advocate of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and Universal Design (UD). This made him win the 2013/2014 first-time Berkeley Prize Teaching Fellowship of the International Undergraduate Teaching Prize for Architectural Design Excellence of the University of California with four other awardees. He now lectures in Heritage Studies at the Islamic University In Uganda (IUIU) in Mbale, Uganda where he also doubles as its Grantsman. Within architectural perspectives, Birabi exhibits research interests in indigenous architecture, education and architectural semiotics.
Moderator: Born in Lagos, Southwest Nigeria, Olanrewaju Olusola is a registered architect and a project management consultant.
With over 30 years of professional experience, Olusola has served as project management consultant in the past 18 years to significant construction companies and corporate organisations in various parts of Nigeria as well as the United States of America, managing projects that have ranged from a small maintenance job to multi-billion Naira building assignments.
A Registered Architect, Certified Management Consultant and an active member of several professional bodies such as the Project Management Institute PMI Nigerian Institute of Architects NIA, American Institute of Architects AIA IR Association of Consulting Architects Nigeria ACAN.
A Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects NIA, Institute of Management Consultants IMC Nigeria and Nigerian Institute of Management (Chartered) NIM.
He has actively participated in various local and international workshops and conferences on architecture, construction, leadership, investment and project management in the UK, the Middle East, Africa and North America.
He is the CEO of Creation Consult Group and currently serves on the following Executive Councils: Association of Professional Bodies of Nigeria APBN, The Nigerian Institute of Architects NIA.
