A few years ago, I came across an architectural rendering of a rather unusual building.

Eight enormous, earth-coloured structures, somewhere between traditional African granaries and futuristic monuments. They looked ancient and modern at the same time, as though someone had dug up an archaeological site from the future.

Then, while running through Johannesburg recently, I passed a construction site and recognised the project.

Someone was actually building it.

The building is the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Centre, in Riviera, Johannesburg.

Designed by the Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye’s practice in collaboration with South Africa’s MMA Design Studio, it promises to be something rather unusual: a library, museum, archive and public institution dedicated not only to one former president, but to the history and future of an entire continent.

That is an ambitious brief for any building.

But it raises an even more ambitious question.

Can you build an African Renaissance?

A Man who Wanted to Change How Africa Saw Itself

In 1996, as South Africa adopted its new Constitution, Thabo Mbeki stood before the Constitutional Assembly and delivered a speech that would become one of the defining expressions of the country’s new democracy.

He began with four words.

I am an African.

What followed was an attempt to describe an identity that extended beyond race, language, and national borders.

Mbeki spoke of landscapes, histories, peoples, and the complicated inheritance of a continent.

Two years later, in a speech at the United Nations University in Japan, he developed the idea of an African Renaissance.

The term borrowed from European history, but its ambition was distinctly African.

The European Renaissance had produced extraordinary changes in art, science, philosophy, and the ways people understood the world.

Why should Africa not experience its own intellectual and cultural renewal?

For Mbeki, this was not simply about economic development. It was also about challenging the idea that Africa’s history consisted mainly of poverty, colonisation, and conflict.

Africa had produced scholars, kingdoms, trade networks, architecture, art, and systems of knowledge long before European colonialism.

The continent was not waiting for somebody else to give it a history.

It already had one.

But having a history and controlling how that history is told are different things.

And that distinction brings us back to the building.

Image: Exterior view from the street with earth-coloured granary forms. Architectural rendering: Adjaye Associates. Image via Arquitectura Viva.

Why a Granary?

For much of human history, survival depended on a simple architectural invention.

A place to store food.

A farmer could harvest enough grain to feed a family for a season. But without somewhere to protect that harvest, much of it could be lost before the next planting.

A granary made it possible to preserve the abundance of the present for an uncertain future.

It was an ordinary structure performing an extraordinary function.

Across Africa, granaries took many forms, responding to local climates, materials, and agricultural practices.

Some were raised above the ground. Others were cylindrical or built from earth. Their forms varied, but their purpose was shared.

To preserve something valuable for people who would need it later.

Now replace grain with knowledge.

That is the central metaphor behind the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Centre.

The architects have arranged eight large, cylindrical structures around a shared public interior. Their curved roofs contain openings that bring daylight into the spaces below.

The proposed programme includes archives, exhibition spaces, reading rooms, research facilities, an auditorium, and places for public discussion.

The scheme also proposes rammed earth, locally sourced materials, and environmental systems intended to reduce its operational impact.

It is not simply a collection of books placed inside an unusual building.

It is an attempt to give architectural form to the idea that knowledge sustains a civilisation.

And that is where the design becomes interesting.

Because the choice to reference traditional African architecture is not as straightforward as it first appears.

When African Architecture was Considered Backward

In the late 1940s, a housing scheme in Mamelodi used rondavel forms associated with traditional African architecture.

Residents strongly rejected the scheme.

Decades later, a presidential library drawing inspiration from similar architectural traditions has received international attention and praise.

In a 2022 academic paper, Edwin T Smith examined this contrast.

Why might architectural forms associated with tradition be rejected in one generation and celebrated in another?

It would be tempting to present this as a simple story of cultural progress.

Perhaps South Africans have developed a greater appreciation for indigenous architecture.

Perhaps we are finally beginning to value what earlier generations dismissed.

But that explanation is too easy.

Consider what the rondavel might have represented to a family living under apartheid.

If white South Africans could aspire to conventional suburban houses while black South Africans were offered housing designed around a supposedly traditional African identity, the architecture could carry an uncomfortable political message.

Something presented by planners as culturally appropriate might be experienced by residents as a restriction on their aspirations.

The same form can carry very different meanings depending on who chooses it, who lives in it, and who has the power to refuse it.

A rondavel imposed on a family is not necessarily the same thing as a rondavel celebrated in a cultural institution.

One may represent control.

The other may represent self-definition.

Or perhaps the difference is not quite so simple.

That is what makes architecture fascinating.

Buildings do not merely contain culture. They can reveal the assumptions of the people who commission, design, and occupy them.

Which raises a difficult question for the new presidential library.

Is borrowing the form of a granary enough to make a building African?

Who Gets to Design Africa?

David Adjaye was born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents and built an international architectural career from Britain.

His portfolio includes the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, a project that explores history and identity through an architectural language drawing on African and African-American references.

For the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Centre, his practice has collaborated with Johannesburg-based MMA Design Studio, founded by South African architect Mphethi Morojele.

This is an important partnership.

A Ghanaian-British architect working with a South African practice to design an institution dedicated to African identity is, in one sense, an expression of the continental exchange Mbeki advocated.

It rejects the idea that African culture must remain confined within national borders.

But it also raises questions about how architectural authorship works.

Why do important cultural buildings so often become associated with one internationally famous architect?

Who develops the project locally? Who understands the municipal systems, climate, construction industry, and everyday life of the city?

And whose name will ordinary people remember when the building is complete?

These questions are not arguments against international collaboration.

Quite the opposite.

Perhaps African architecture becomes richer when knowledge, ideas, and expertise move between countries.

But collaboration should mean more than importing a recognisable architectural signature.

If this centre is intended to celebrate African knowledge, the way it is designed and constructed should also create opportunities for African knowledge to grow.

That includes the engineers, artisans, material specialists, and contractors who must translate an ambitious drawing into an actual building.

An African Renaissance should not exist only in the renderings.

It should also exist in the people who make them real.

A Colonial House and an African Future

There is another remarkable detail about the site.

The Thabo Mbeki Foundation’s property includes a house dating from 1905, designed by Herbert Baker.

Baker was one of the most influential architects of South Africa’s colonial and Union-era architectural landscape.

His work includes the Union Buildings in Pretoria, perhaps the country’s most recognisable architectural expression of state power.

Now, at the Mbeki site, an early twentieth-century building associated with that architectural history is to be preserved alongside a new institution dedicated to Africa’s cultural future.

The contrast is almost too perfect.

One building comes from an era in which the architecture of power was strongly shaped by British imperial ambitions.

The other seeks to express a continent defining itself on its own terms.

Yet both belong to the same place.

And perhaps that is appropriate.

An African Renaissance should not require pretending that the past never happened.

The continent’s history includes extraordinary achievements, but also colonialism, exploitation, conflict, and political failure.

Preserving an old building does not mean celebrating everything associated with the period in which it was built.

Sometimes preservation allows us to confront history rather than erase it.

The relationship between these two buildings could become one of the most interesting parts of the project.

Not because one represents everything wrong with the past and the other everything right with the future.

But because they demonstrate that history rarely divides itself so neatly.

Image: Sectional architectural rendering showing the proposed spaces. Architectural rendering: Adjaye Associates. Image via METALOCUS.

Why Do Presidents Build Libraries?

There is something peculiar about presidential libraries.

Most people leave behind photographs, possessions, and perhaps a collection of books.

Presidents leave behind entire institutions.

In the United States, presidential libraries have become an established means of preserving records and interpreting political legacies.

Franklin D Roosevelt helped establish the modern tradition. Subsequent presidents developed institutions that combine archives, museums, and public engagement in different ways.

In June 2026, the Obama Presidential Center opened on Chicago’s South Side.

Designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, in collaboration with local architects, its campus includes a museum, public spaces, gardens, educational facilities, and a branch of the Chicago Public Library.

The building is clearly associated with Barack Obama.

But much of the campus is intended for the surrounding community.

This distinction matters.

A presidential institution can become a monument that asks people to admire someone.

Or it can become a place that allows people to learn, question, disagree, and participate.

Ideally, it should do more than one of these things.

The Thabo Mbeki Presidential Centre faces the same challenge.

Mbeki’s political legacy is complicated.

His government was associated with important developments in South Africa’s democratic and economic history, but also with profound controversies, including its response to HIV/AIDS.

An institution dedicated to his legacy cannot be intellectually serious if it preserves only the achievements and ignores the failures.

History is not public relations.

A library intended to advance African scholarship must create room for difficult questions, including questions about the people whose names appear above its doors.

That may be the difference between a presidential monument and a genuinely valuable public institution.

One tells you what to remember.

The other gives you the resources to investigate for yourself.

Image: Proposed reading room illuminated by a large circular roof opening. Architectural rendering: Adjaye Associates. Image via New Atlas.

The Most Important Room Might Not Be the Most Beautiful One

Architectural projects are often judged by their appearance.

The photographs, the materials, the dramatic spaces, and the carefully controlled light.

And the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Centre certainly promises plenty of those.

But imagine two possible futures.

In the first, the building becomes an internationally admired architectural destination.

It appears in magazines, wins awards, and attracts visitors who come to photograph the monumental granaries.

Yet its archives remain difficult to access, its public programmes are limited, and the surrounding community rarely uses it.

In the second, the architecture receives less attention.

But a university student can access documents that were previously unavailable.

A researcher can study African political history through original records.

A schoolchild can attend a lecture, explore an exhibition, or discover a part of the continent’s history they were never taught.

Which of these would represent the greater achievement?

Of course, the two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

A beautiful building can also be an extraordinary public institution.

But architecture should be judged by more than its ability to attract attention.

The real test will be what happens inside it.

Will the collections be accessible?

Will the research be independent?

Will the programmes reach young people who cannot afford expensive cultural experiences?

Will ordinary Johannesburg residents feel that the institution belongs to them?

And perhaps most importantly, will people be allowed to question the version of history it presents?

Those questions cannot be answered by an architectural rendering.

They will only be answered once the building begins to operate.

Johannesburg Could Use Something to Believe in

There is something encouraging about seeing a cultural building rise in Johannesburg.

So much discussion about the city focuses on what is failing.

Infrastructure. Municipal finances. Safety. Services. Maintenance.

These are real problems, and they deserve attention.

But a city cannot define its entire future around repairing what has broken.

It also needs places that express what it hopes to become.

Libraries, museums, universities, and cultural institutions are investments in a future that cannot always be measured through immediate financial returns.

Their benefits may emerge slowly, over decades.

A child inspired by an exhibition may become a historian.

A student given access to an archive may produce research that changes how we understand our past.

An ordinary conversation in a public space may introduce somebody to an idea they would otherwise never encounter.

These outcomes are difficult to predict.

That does not make them unimportant.

Still, the symbolism of a new public institution should not distract from its responsibilities to the city around it.

A grand building that remains isolated from everyday urban life would be a missed opportunity.

The centre must become somewhere people actually want to go.

Somewhere they can spend time without feeling they need a formal invitation.

Somewhere the ambition of an African Renaissance becomes an ordinary part of public life.

Can You Build an African Renaissance?

The answer, of course, is no.

Not literally.

You cannot construct intellectual freedom out of rammed earth.

You cannot guarantee cultural confidence with an impressive roof.

And you cannot create a more prosperous continent simply by building a monument to the possibility.

But perhaps buildings can do something smaller, and in some ways more important.

They can make an idea visible.

They can give people somewhere to gather around it.

They can preserve the work of those who came before, while making space for those who have not yet arrived.

A granary cannot grow the grain it stores.

It can only protect the harvest so that someone else may plant again.

Perhaps the same is true of this library.

Thabo Mbeki spent much of his political career speaking about the rebirth of Africa.

Now, a building in Johannesburg is attempting to give that ambition a physical home.

Whether it succeeds will not ultimately depend on how closely its architecture resembles a traditional African granary, how famous its architect is, or how often it appears in international publications.

It will depend on what future generations are able to take from it.

You cannot build an African Renaissance. But you might build a place where one can grow.

Gustav Lambrechts is a professionally registered architect based in Johannesburg and the founder of SpecBase. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of the Free State, with interests in architecture, urbanism, history, culture and technology.