About

Why

Every year, African schools of architecture, urbanism and landscape produce hundreds of finished studio projects. Once the jury is over, this work disappears: it stays in a personal folder, in a PDF too heavy to email, or in a social media feed where nobody looks for it.

These projects tackle questions few others treat with the same precision: building in great heat, absorbing a rainy season, densifying a neighbourhood that is already densifying on its own, repairing rather than replacing. African Cities Junior exists so that they stay searchable, viewable and citable, and so that the practices that are hiring find the students they need.

How

A student publishes a project, builds a portfolio, gains visibility, is discovered, then contacted. Every project is read by moderation before going online: the platform is not an automatic repository.

The schools

The list of institutions is not fixed in advance. When a student deposits a project and their school is not listed yet, they write its name and it is added. The administration then fixes the spelling and merges duplicates. The reach of the platform therefore follows that of its users, rather than a list drawn up from an office.

What the platform does not do

It does not grade projects, does not rank them by merit and publishes no marks. It sells no data and shows no advertising.

An African Cities initiative

African Cities Junior is part of the African Cities series, alongside the lab, the journal and the network of experts. “Junior” stands for the next generation: the students whose studio projects make up the body of this platform.