Cave Bureau recreates Kenya's volcanic caves for The Anthropocene Museum exhibition
Kenyan architectural studio Cave Bureau has examined points surrounding decolonialisation and decarbonisation by spotlighting the historical past and structure of Kenya’s volcanic caves.
The Anthropocene Museum exhibition, which is on present on the Louisiana Museum of Trendy Artwork in Denmark, options quite a few Cave Bureau’s initiatives that use pure structure to spotlight cultural and environmental points.
As a part of its analysis course of, the studio 3D-scanned the insides of Kenya’s million-year-old caves earlier than translating the buildings into installations and architectural initiatives.
Among the many installations within the exhibition is a recreation of the Shimoni caves by the Indian Ocean, which have been traditionally used as a ready pen for captured slaves.
Cave Bureau’s design of the caves was produced from light-weight mesh.
The challenge, made in collaboration with the Centre for Info Expertise and Structure on the Royal Danish Academy, was knowledgeable by pre-colonial constructing strategies and was handwoven on the museum.
This technique of scanning and translating caves’ buildings is a part of Cave Bureau’s overarching imaginative and prescient of exploring the connection between nature and structure.
The exhibition highlights how caves have been used as a shelter for refugees escaping slavery and oppression.
It additionally seems at how geothermal vitality extraction – which has a task within the international inexperienced vitality motion – can have a damaging affect on nature, animals and native communities.
The Maasai, an indigenous African neighborhood, is likely one of the communities affected by geothermal vitality extraction, in line with Cave Bureau.
“The inexperienced revolution is legitimised by its optimistic international narrative,” stated the Louisiana Museum of Artwork.
“This makes the wrestle for indigenous tradition tough, although these teams might very nicely be the people who find themselves residing most sustainably and consuming the bottom quantity of CO2.”
The exhibition additionally showcases what Cave Bureau’s founders Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi name “reversed futurism”, which mixes up to date structure with indigenous data to create sustainable options for the longer term.
An instance is the studio’s Cow Hall challenge, which goals to ascertain the Maasai’s grazing routes by way of Nairobi, “which has been forbidden territory for cows for the reason that British partition of the nation”, stated the museum.
Additionally featured as a part of the exhibition is The Door of No Return – a model of the gate that enslaved West Africans handed underneath earlier than being shipped to the Danish West Indies.
Right here, Cave Bureau has elevated the gate’s dimension and remodeled it into an set up that includes limestone stalactites.
“By utilizing crucial architectural acts and propositions of resistance we handle previous traumas to generate initiatives of therapeutic which might be inclusive for all life on earth to thrive,” stated Karanja and Mutegi.
Cave Bureau’s exhibition at Louisiana Museum of Trendy Artwork is the sixth and last exhibition of The Architect’s Studio sequence happening on the museum.
The primary exhibition of The Architect’s Studio sequence opened in 2017 and targeted on Novice Structure Studio in China, which is led by architects Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu.
Different exhibitions included the work of Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena and the Elemental studio; initiatives by Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao, and Indian architect Anupama Kundoo.
The Anthropocene Museum exhibition is on show at Louisiana from 29 June to 26 November 2023. See Dezeen Occasions Information for an up-to-date record of structure and design occasions happening around the globe.
