URBAN RENEWAL


URBAN RENEWAL

The Piassa area in Addis Abeba is undergoing a major transformation. The once-vibrant neighborhood has been demolished to make way for new development projects. In its place, a large construction site has sprung up, with excavators and dump trucks towing the land. The Grand Palace, where the Prime Minister resides, stands prominently in the background. The area, located near the Adwa Victory Memorial Museum, is next to Eri Bekentu and Qey Bahir condominium. Now a prime location for development, the city administration auctioned off land in the area in May, with Awash Bank securing a plot of 977 square metres for 311,000 Br per square metre.


In-Picture

URBAN STROKES

A vibrant painting of a monkey clings to a roadside wall in Megenagna square, within Addis Ababa's burgeoning concrete landscape. New buildings rise daily, crowding the cityscape like trees in a dense forest. Yet, these bursts of graffiti and mural art appearing in the city's most bustling areas offer glimpses of the "Africa" held in our imaginations. They also serve as unexpected flourishes, breathing life into old walls that once displayed only the slow creep of vines for passersby...


In-Picture

SHAPE SHIFTERS

A floating spiral staircase statue with a lion at the end of it, stands tall at Addis Ababa University's Sidist Kilo campus, as one of the old statues that exist within the compound. The statues are not just monuments – they're relics of a former era. The university, established in 1934 as Haile Selassie's Grand Palace, holds the title of Ethiopia's oldest. It's a place that shaped Ethiopian history, producing figures like Aklilu Lemma (PhD) Today, the same grounds where emperors once walked,...


In-Picture

MARKET ROULETTE

In Merkato's Menyalesh Tera, an Isuzu truck briefly pauses as a towering pile of goods is loaded for its next journey. A steady flow of pedestrians weaves through the bustling crowd, while mobile merchants momentarily seek refuge from the sun in the truck's shadow before resuming their rounds, pushing wooden wheelbarrows baring fruits and vegetables across the city. Merkato, established in the 1930s under Italian rule as a segregated trading area, now thrives as the largest open-air market in Af...