Asmara

"Asmara, the capital of the small east African country of Eritrea, bordering the Red Sea, is one of the most important and exciting architectural 'discoveries' of recent years. Built almost entirely in the 1930s by the Italians, Asmara has one of the highest concentrations of Modernist architecture anywhere in the world, and has been evocatively described as "the Miami of Africa." Desperate to build quickly, the colonial government of the time allowed radical architectural experimentation that would not have found favour in the more conservative European environment. Asmara therefore became…