Architecture & Design: Zanzibar and the Swahili coast

Students will be able to:

• Explain how trade and cultural exchange shaped the architecture of the East African coast
• Recognise and document heritage buildings
• Discuss practical conservation choices and their trade-offs
• Read Swahili urban form, from street pattern to courtyard house
• Describe how language and identity show up in the built environment

Itinerary

10 days at a glance

1. Stop 1

   Mombasa: coastal conservation and materials

   Traditional Swahili construction, coral stone architecture and timber carving, material preservation, and how mangrove forests and coastal ecosystems shape settlement design.

2. Stop 2

   Tanga: trade architecture and cultural exchange

   How industrial growth and global trade shaped coastal urban form, with artefacts at the Tanga Museum showing the influence of Indian, Arab and Portuguese presence.

3. Stop 3

   Bagamoyo: colonial architecture and memory

   Preserved German colonial architecture and adaptive reuse at the Customs House, and a guided visit to the Bagamoyo Slave Trade Museum.

4. Stop 4

   Dar es Salaam: contemporary East African design

   Design firms, university architecture studios, and urban development, regional planning and infrastructure projects.

5. Stop 5

   Zanzibar: Swahili architecture in practice

   Documenting Stone Town's carved wooden doors, coral rag masonry and street patterns, ending with a collaborative conservation workshop.