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City-Making in Ancient Kemet (Egypt)
Project Researcher: RRA
Collaborator: Adjaye Associates
The research on Kemet was an exemplary project that utilised a dynamic research process of looking at Egypt, or Kemet, from an African-centered approach. Through the lineage of Cheikh Anta Diop the work began as a cultural investigation of re-centering Egypt within a history of Africa as opposed to an ancient Roman or Greek connotation. The anthropological and ethnographic work led to a linguistic or literary discovery of the Kemetic-Egyptian mythologies which contained a plethora of characters but also how these characters are embedded within the built environment.
Temples were made to honor gods, shrines were created along the Nile river to give reverence and organize urban movement to and from in worship, and pyramids were constructed for the journey of the soul back to the world of divinity. Story and Structure were connected.
The research connected architecture as a divine revelation of the stories it was telling as well as how this architecture connected to the rise and creation of an agricultural system, one that connected the world to the stars.
“Ancient Egyptian Temples were built for the gods. One would go to a city based on which god it worshipped, and the temples were the dwelling spaces of those gods. Each temple in Egypt was a primordial home as well as the mythological origin point of the city’s founding — the city began at its temple and urban life was dispersed through a constructive sprawl from temple to residences.”