OMA: White Cube

Located in the heart of a plantation system, the research center designed by OMA in Congo aims to become a vector for a social and ecological shift.

OMA, The White Cube, Lusanga, Congo, 2017

Designed by the OMA, this White Cube is a central element of the Lusanga International Research Centre for Art and Economic Inequality (LIRCAEI). Located in the heart of the plantation system and at the crossroads of global inequality and climatological change, the research center aims to become a vector for a social and ecological shift. The festive and solemn inauguration of the White Cube marked the launch of the five-year research program of LIRCAEI. In Lusanga, the White Cube will attract both the capital and the visibility needed for plantations workers to buy back land and develop a new economic and ecological model on-site: the post-plantation.

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OMA, The White Cube, Lusanga, Congo, 2017

OMA, The White Cube, under construction.

CATPC member Mulela Mabamba's performance celebrating the repatriation of the White Cube in a traditional Bapende Mugangi.

A visitor seeing Luc Tuymans' Mwana Kitoko through Carsten Holler's Upside Down Goggles in one of the Kisendus. © Thomas Nolf

Collective cartograpy. © Léonard Pongo

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OMA, The White Cube, exterior rendering. Courtesy LIRCAEI and OMA

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OMA, The White Cube, interior rendering. Courtesy LIRCAEI and OMA

The White Cube will include an internet platform that connects its research to plantations and museums worldwide. Plugged into these international networks, the White Cube will transform the former palm oil plantation of Lusanga into a legitimization machine, investigating and relaying the strategies of resistance alongside visions for the future of plantation workers globally. Within five years, LIRCAEI seeks to have designed the blueprint for a new economic model in which art serves as an engine to start inclusive and ecological post-plantations throughout the Congo.

Lusanga's authorities discussing a sculpture with members of the artists' cooperative.

The White Cube, Lusanga, Congo
Program: research centre
Architect: OMA
Design team: David Gianotten (managing Partner – architect) Max Scherer, Adrian Subagyo
Executive architects: Bureau d’étude Ijambo, Arsène Ijambo Kambaza
Construction: Copirec, John Kayamba Mafunkolo
Year: 2017

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