ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA + DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANI Two Markets

Two Markets proposes an examination of two urban marketplaces in sub-Saharan Africa: Kariakoo in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Merkato in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Contemporary architectural discourse on the African continent tends to either celebrate mid-century European interventions or exoticize notions of ‘informality’ within rapidly transforming urban contexts. Two Markets, instead, proposes to analyze buildings and urban formations in their own mutable terms, giving equal importance to people, spaces, objects, and rituals. In addition to being sites of local economic trade, both markets have served as sites of nation building, colonial control, Cold War politics, and neoliberalism. We are interested in the magical narratives that have been superimposed on everyday environments by ordinary people, developed against and outside of oppressive regimes. A framework of Animist Materialism, defined by Harry Garuba as “a continual re-enchantment of the world,” expands our understanding of these marketplaces beyond what is possible via Western architectural discourse. It forces a reckoning with our disciplinary structures and tools while exploding the singular vantage point of the foreign elite into a collection of relationally-ascribed subjectivities. Eschewing a linear Darwinian narrative, Two Markets examines these sites as reflexive spaces that simultaneously recreate their histories and pre-possess their futures.