Product Description

Many think that sub-Saharan African architecture is little more than mud huts. Mud, yes - but certainly not huts. Instead, these adobe buildings, many of them enormous, show sublime sculptural beauty, variety, ingenuity, and originality. In the Sahal region of western Africa - Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso - people have been constructing earthen buildings for centuries. But they remain unknown to most of the Western world. Their plastic forms - from simple stairways, to ornamented domes, to complex arches - are highlighted by subtle painting and intricate grillwork. James Morris spent four months photographing these hidden jewels, from the great mosque at Djenne - the largest mud building in the world - to small houses in remote animist communities. Butabu shows these works as both aesthetic treasures and as architecture with contemporary relevance. These are no museum pieces, but rather buildings that continue to be maintained and built, even as they are threatened by the uncertainties of weather and the encroachment of Western technology. Text by Suzanne Preston Blier covers the history of earthen architecture, the technology that creates it, and the symbolism of its form.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1126224 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 216 pages

Review
...hauntingly beautiful. -- Icon, March 2004

...the dun, buff and biege of BUTABU...is a revelation. -- New York Newsday, November 11, 2003

A beautiful and finely printed book...It is a handsome and scholarly addition to the literature on adobe architecture. -- The Irish Catholic, 10/27/05

James Morris easily takes the palm for the year's most haunting architectural images...breathtaking. -- The New York Times Book Review, December 7, 2003

James's photographs map out that rare experience, a journey into entirely unknown architectural territory. -- The World of Interiors, December 2003

This might be the most important book on vernacular architecture since Bernard Rudofsky's 1964 Architecture Without Architects. -- The Architects Newspaper, December 8, 2003

About the Author
James Morris is an architectural photographer who founded Axiom Photographic Agency in London. Suzanne Preston Blier is Professor of African Art and Architecture, Harvard University.

Customer Reviews

Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa
The soft folds and highly textured surfaces of Mali mosques, Niger chiefs' houses and other examples of the African adobe vernacular have lured a succession of hippies with a wobbly sense of focus. So it's a delight to see a photographer who has chronicled the sharp-edged structures of Norman Foster and Richard Rogers bring clarity to such a picturesque subject, and to read such an illuminating essay on its cultural roots. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)

beautiful pictures to have around
Butabu is a beautifully designed book. It mainly consists of wonderful photographs of delicate buildings and their details. This book is not only a very attractive picture art book but also a study book on West African culture. The clear text in the second part of the book is followed by an extended list of references. Ineke Freudenthal, The Netherlands.

Reality-warping done humbly and well. Thank you Mr. Morris.
Stunning. After picture book after picture book on 20th century architecture, this book rocketed me out of the modern Western world and deposited me gently within the expressive caress of this timeless adobe architecture of africa. This is a sort of architecture I have NEVER seen in books before. A genuine addition to the vernacular of modern architecture and possibly, a firefly of inspiration for those of us living in empty hard, static and meaningless shells. How to bring the heart and handiwork back into the technological universe?