Jury
The Blueprints of Paradise jury
 Lesley Lokko |
Lesley Naa Norle Lokko is an architect, academic and novelist. She grew up in Ghana, West Africa and was educated in Ghana and the UK. She completed her architectural training at the ULC Bartlett School of Architecture and holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of London. She has taught in the UK, the USA and South Africa and is currently a Visiting Professor of Architecture at Westminster University. She has lectured and published widely on the subject of race, cultural identity and their relationship to architecture and is the editor of White Papers, Black Marks: Race, Culture, Architecture (University of Minnesota Press, 2000). Being the owner of a design firm, Lokko Associates in Accra, Ghana, she completed several residential projects in Accra and Akosombo, Ghana. She is currently a member of the African Centre for Cities, which looks critically at the challenges and opportunities facing African cities in the near and longterm future. Her second career, as a novelist, has seen the publication of five novels, three of which have been UK bestsellers. She currently divides her time between Johannesburg, South Africa; Accra, Ghana and London, UK. Visit also www.lesleylokko.com |
| Joe Osae – Addo was born in Ghana, West Africa, and was educated at the Architectural Association in London. He worked in Finland, the UK and the USA, setting up his practice in Los Angeles in 1991. His work has been influenced by ‘genus-loci’ and the role it pplayed in creating architecture. In his work, he searched for a way to create pieces which are site specific and at the same time meet the needs of people who will interact with it. He is a founding partner in the A + D Museum, Los Angeles, whose mission is to advance knowledge and to enable people to appreciate and understand architecture and design. He moved back to his native country Ghana in 2004 and is currently the CEO of Constructs LLC, an inno-native design firm based in Accra and Tamale in Ghana, West Africa.Joe Osae-Addo is a member of Jury Africa Middle East of the Holcim Awards for Sustainable Design and has been member of the World Economic Forum in 2009. He is, among many other projects, working on the Make It Right project in New Orleans, initiated by Brad Pitt after the Katrina disaster. He is also involved in a 1000 unit affordable housing project in Monrovia, Liberia. Since 2010 he has been chair of the Board of the ArchiAfrika foundation. |
 Joe Osae–Addo |
 Femke van Zeijl |
Femke van Zeijl is a Dutch freelance journalist and writer who focusses on Sub-Saharan Africa. She studied history at the University of Utrecht and then switched to the Academy for Journalism in Tilburg. She travels to the African continent several times a year, staying for prolonged periods of time in for instance the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Nigeria, Mozambique or Burkina Faso. From a socio- economic and cultural perspective she portrays people and their everyday lives, thus giving a human face to global developments. She writes for various Dutch newspapers and magazines and her work has been published in American, British and German media. The last three years she has been working on a book on city life in Sub-Saharan Africa, for which she stayed in six different cities all over the continent. This book Gin-tonic & Cholera will be presented in October 2010. In 2007 she published Een nacht in een vijzel, a book about the position of women in Africa. Visit also www.fvz-journaliste.nl |
| Manthia Diawara is chair of the Africana Studies Department of New York University and editor-in-chief of Black Renaissance / Renaissance Noire, a journal of arts, culture and politics, as well as an author and filmmaker whose areas of specialization include Africa, the United States, and the Black Diaspora in Europe.He has written more than fifty articles on Black film and culture and is the author of several highly acclaimed books. His published works include We Won’t Budge: An African Exile in the World In Search of Africa (1998), Black American Cinema (1993), and African Cinema: Politics and Culture (1992). His most recent book African Film: New Forms of Aesthetics and Politics has been launched earlier in 2010.His film credits include Bamako Sigi Kan (2002), Diaspora Conversation (2000), In Search of AfricaRouch in Reverse (1995), and Sembene Ousmane: The Making of African Cinema (1993, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Co-Director). Manthia Diaware has been a member of the Prins Claus Awards committee from 2007 until 2009. |
 Manthia Diawara |