Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Meier, Prita, author.

Title Swahili port cities : the architecture of elsewhere / Prita Meier
Published Bloomington ; Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, 2016

Copies

Description 1 online resource
Series African expressive cultures
African expressive cultures.
Contents Introduction: the place in-between -- Difference set in stone: place and race in Mombasa -- A "curious" minaret: sacred place and the politics of Islam -- Architecture out of place: the politics of style in Zanzibar -- At home in the world: living with transoceanic things -- Conclusion: trading places
Summary On the Swahili coast of East Africa, monumental stone houses, tombs, and mosques mark the border zone between the interior of the African continent and the Indian Ocean. Prita Meier explores this coastal environment and shows how an African mercantile society created a place of cosmopolitan longing. Meier understands architecture as more than a way to remake local space. Rather, the architecture of this liminal zone was an expression of the desire of coastal inhabitants to belong to places beyond their homeports. Here architecture embodies modern ideas and social identities engendered by the encounter of Africans with others in the Indian Ocean world
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Architecture and society -- Africa, East
Stone buildings -- Africa, East
Port cities -- Africa, East
Islamic architecture -- Africa, East
ARCHITECTURE -- Adaptive Reuse & Renovation.
ARCHITECTURE -- Buildings -- Landmarks & Monuments.
ARCHITECTURE -- Professional Practice.
ARCHITECTURE -- Reference.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
Architecture and society
Islamic architecture
Port cities
Stone buildings
Africa, East
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780253019172
0253019176