{"id":714100,"date":"2026-01-22T23:43:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T23:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/714100\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T23:43:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T23:43:21","slug":"ethiopias-africa-hall-wins-modernist-conservation-award-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/714100\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia\u2019s Africa Hall wins Modernist conservation award – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

World Monuments Fund and the furniture designer Knoll have announced the winner of their annual prize for the conservation of an historic Modernist building. The 2026 World Monuments Fund\/Knoll Modernism Prize goes to the Australia-based architecture firm Architectus<\/a> for its work on the historic Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u200b\u201cAfrica Hall stands as one of the most important expressions of Modern architecture on the continent, a building that brought together international ideas and local identity at a pivotal moment in the region\u2019s history of decolonisation and national autonomy,\u201d Barry Bergdoll, the prize\u2019s jury chair and a professor at New York\u2019s Columbia University, said in a statement. \u201cFrom its placement at one of the most prominent sites in the capital of Ethiopia (the only African country never to have been colonised), the architecture combined a functionalist rationality of structure and purpose with the aura of Modernism’s optimism in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Inside Africa Hall after conservation Photo: Rory Gardiner, Courtesy World Monuments Fund<\/p>\n

Africa Hall, the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, was designed by the Italian architect Arturo Mezzedimi. Completed in 1961, it was commissioned by the last emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. In 1963, the precursor to the African Union\u2014the Organisation of African Unity\u2014was founded inside. Africa Hall was constructed partially using local stone, and it incorporates a triptych of stained-glass windows by the artist Afewerk Tekle (1932-2012). (The contemporary artist Julie Mehretu took inspiration from these particular windows<\/a> for her own monumental stained-glass project at the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.)<\/p>\n

The award-winning conservation project on the building began in 2014 and took ten years and $57m to complete. Balancing the architect\u2019s original vision with contemporary technology and accessibility requirements, Architectus worked with local experts on the building\u2019s concrete structure and restoring millions of tiles in its mosaics and hundreds of pieces of original Mezzedimi-designed furniture. The architects teamed up with Mezzedimi\u2019s grandson (also an architect) on historical design research and with Tekle\u2019s grandson (an artist as well) on carefully replacing all the pieces of the stained-glass windows. Outside, the fountains, gardens and stairs were also restored. The completed project was officially inaugurated in October 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recent restoration has allowed the clarity of Messedimi\u2019s design to speak again,\u201d Bergdoll said in a statement, \u201crevealing the ambition, craftsmanship and symbolic power that have made the building a landmark of Modernism and a continuing stage for African diplomacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Afewerk Tekle\u2019s Total Liberation of Africa (1958) Photo: Rory Gardiner, Courtesy World Monuments Fund<\/p>\n

In addition to the Modernism Prize, the jury awarded its first Stewardship Award for Modernist Homes to the Umbrella House<\/a> in Sarasota, Florida. The new award honours \u201cthoughtful conservation projects” that preserve the architectural significance of private residences. The Umbrella House, designed by the architect Paul Rudolph in 1953, is exemplary of Sarasota Modernism\u2014melding the international style with the local aesthetic and regional climate concerns. Its Hall Architects-led project reconstructed the house\u2019s iconic roof shade, which had blown off in a hurricane in 1966. The Umbrella House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s World Monuments Fund\/Knoll Modernism Prize was chosen from a pool of 73 submissions from 28 countries around the world. This is the first time that an African project has won since the award was founded in 2008. An award ceremony<\/a> will take place on 18 February in Palm Springs, California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Monuments Fund and the furniture designer Knoll have announced the winner of their annual prize for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4023,4021,4020,4022,77,52294,5724,4842,19799,16,15,213707],"class_list":{"0":"post-714100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-architecture","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ethiopia","14":"tag-modernism","15":"tag-museums-heritage","16":"tag-prizes","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-world-monuments-fund-wmf"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115941409051063333","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}