Professor Itohan Osayimwese was recently interviewed by Unfrozen, a podcast about architecture and urbanism hosted by Daniel Safarik, Director of Research and Thought Leadership at the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, and Greg Lindsay, journalist, urbanist, and co-author of Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next.  A growing movement in the art world has sought restitution and repatriation for the thousands of objects stolen from Africa during campaigns of colonialization. Her new book, “Africa’s Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage” provides another dimension of scholarship, asserting that these objects were often more than the modern, Euro-centric characterization as “art”: many were integral parts of buildings and thus should be understood as architecture. In Unfrozen's interview, the conversation delves into what this new understanding means for the practice of reconciliation with the past, but also for imagining a different future for material culture on the continent.

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