A Talk & Book Release with Peter Rich

Join us for a Talk & Book Release with Peter Rich this Sunday, 06 November 2022 at 6.30 pm.

About Peter Rich:

Peter Rich is a Johannesburg-based architect who attributes his learning to African space-making as being central to his career. In 2009 he was awarded the World Building of the Year 2009 by the World Architecture Festival Barcelona for the Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre in Limpopo, South Africa. For his extensive African and global portfolio of built work, Peter has received numerous awards and prizes. In 2013, he was shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award. Peter’s work was displayed at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018 as part of the Arsenale Curators Choice Exhibition. In all of this, Peter finds time to teach and develop new curricula in Africa, India, Europe, and the US.

About the book:

‘The Architecture of Peter Rich: Conversations with Africa’ follows the chronology of his work which emerges from a fascination with African indigenous settlements, including his documentation, publication, and exhibition of Ndebele art and architecture, and his friendship with sculptor Jackson Hlungwani. It explores what Rich calls ‘African Space Making’ and its forms of complex symmetry; various collaborative community-oriented designs of the Apartheid and post-Apartheid period, especially Mandela’s Yard in Alexandra township; and finally, his more recent timbrel vaulted structures, constructed from low-tech hand-pressed soil tiles derived from his highly innovative and award-winning work at Mapungubwe. The book shows how Rich combines African influences with an environmental awareness aligned with Modernist principles.