Brutalism in Zambia

Zambia built confidently in concrete after independence in 1964, when copper revenues financed a new capital architecture for Lusaka: government headquarters, the university campus and commercial towers. The Bank of Zambia (1979) belongs to this programme, a robust concrete high-rise asserting the young state's financial institutions. Like much African modernism of the era, these buildings were designed for the climate, with deep shading, screens and heavy structure, and they are increasingly studied as part of the continent's independence-era architectural heritage.