Though born in Italy, Arturo Mezzedimi (1922–2010) moved with his family to Asmara at the age of eighteen. What was intended as a temporary stay became permanent after the upheavals of the Second World War prevented their return to Italy.
Unlike many prominent architects of his era, Mezzedimi had no formal architectural education. He trained as a technical surveyor at the Istituto Tecnico per Geometri Vittorio Bottego in Asmara, developing his architectural knowledge through practice, observation, and study. As architect and conservation specialist Ephrem Nigussei noted during the Urban Center discussion, he was “a self-taught architect” who consistently sought “to combine modern styles with that of traditional or regional influences.”
His relationship with Ethiopia began around 1950, when he came into contact with Emperor Haile Selassie. The emperor viewed architecture as central to modernization. Few architects became as closely associated with that vision as Mezzedimi.
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Throughout the 1950s, he designed a wide range of public institutions across Ethiopia and Eritrea, then federated under the Ethiopian Empire. These included Menen Hospital in Asmara, the General Hospitals of Massawa and Assab, the Navy Academy in Assab, St. Mariam Church in Massawa, St. Stephanos Church in Assab, St. Michael Church in Asmara, the mosque in Agordat, and numerous civic buildings intended to project state authority while delivering public services.
According to Galli’s research, Mezzedimi’s studio produced 1,624 designs during his career in Ethiopia and Eritrea, of which 281 were built. The figures underscore both the scale and consistency of his contribution to the built environment during the final decades of Haile Selassie’s reign.
Historians have described him as the semi-official architect of the Emperor, a designer entrusted with helping articulate the visual identity of a rapidly modernizing nation. While Haile Selassie embraced technological progress and international engagement, he did not seek a rupture with Ethiopia’s heritage. Instead, he pursued a balance between tradition and modernity.
Mezzedimi became one of the principal architects of that project.
As documented by architectural historian Jacopo Galli in Aspirations and Contradictions in Shaping a Cosmopolitan Africa: Arturo Mezzedimi in Imperial Ethiopia, one example is a chapel designed for the remote monastery of Debra Sina on the mountain outskirts of Addis Ababa. There, Mezzedimi placed a modern structure alongside an older rock-hewn sanctuary. Rather than replicating the historic form, he distinguished old from new while preserving a dialogue between them.
The Making of a Modern Capital
By the 1960s, Mezzedimi’s work had expanded beyond individual commissions into the shaping of Addis Ababa itself as a modern capital.
In the city, he designed key civic and administrative buildings, including the Finfinne Building, the Zewditu Building, and Addis Ababa City Hall.
When City Hall was inaugurated in 1965 in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II, Haile Selassie awarded Mezzedimi one of the highest honors of the Ethiopian Empire. According to Galli, the building’s central tower reflected Mezzedimi’s tendency to blend influences, drawing inspiration from Tuscan civic towers, Italian rationalist forms, and Ethiopia’s Aksumite obelisks.
His influence extended beyond architecture into urban planning. Between 1966 and 1968, Mezzedimi prepared twenty-two urban plans for Addis Ababa and other Ethiopian cities, shaping patterns of expansion during a period of rapid growth. From 1967 to 1972, he also designed twenty-eight schools financed by the United Nations. He also did the architectural design of the Tana Palace in Bahir Dar in 1967.
Taken together, these works reveal a practice operating across multiple scales, from buildings to institutions to urban systems, within a broader process of state formation.
This trajectory would culminate in his most consequential commission: Africa Hall.
The Race to Build Africa Hall
In 1958, Haile Selassie summoned Mezzedimi to undertake what would become the defining commission of his career: the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
The assignment carried significance far beyond architecture.
At a time when independence movements were reshaping the continent, Ethiopia occupied a unique position in the African imagination. Having largely avoided colonial rule, it represented continuity, sovereignty, and resistance. Pan-African leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah viewed Haile Selassie as a symbol of African independence.
The building intended for Addis Ababa therefore had to communicate more than institutional authority. It had to embody a continental aspiration.
The design process was far from straightforward.
In a 1979 interview cited by Galli, Mezzedimi recalled:
“Seven times the terrain on which I would have to build the building was changed and seven times I was forced to change my design.”
The pressure intensified when officials granted him only ninety-one days to complete the final project documentation required for an international tender.
“So, for 91 days, I worked from 9 am to 4 am.”
Before finalizing the design, Mezzedimi traveled to New York, Paris, Rome, and Strasbourg to study major international institutions. He concluded that many contemporary diplomatic buildings were excessively enclosed.
As Ephrem explained, Mezzedimi found them to be “very much too much closed buildings,” which were uncomfortable for assemblies and discouraged interaction.
His response was a concept he described as “continuous spaces.”
Rather than isolating conference halls from circulation areas, he designed a sequence of interconnected terraces, staircases, bridges, and lobbies that encouraged movement and visual connection. Visitors could remain engaged with the life of the building as they moved through it.
The result was architecture designed not for separation, but for encounter.
Visitors ascend a grand ceremonial staircase aligned with Jubilee Road before arriving at one of the building’s defining features: the monumental stained-glass mural by Afewerk Tekle, depicting Africa’s struggle against colonialism and its aspirations for freedom.
The story behind the artwork is itself revealing. During the Urban Center discussion, it was noted that the commission had initially been intended for European artists. Afewerk challenged the decision, a competition was organized, and he won.
Inside the plenary hall, his murals depicting African flora surround delegates, while carefully designed windows diffuse natural light throughout the interior. The assembly hall’s circular form, roof design, and passive lighting strategies reflected an advanced understanding of climate-responsive architecture.
Ephrem described these features as an “inspiration for sustainable design,” noting how they reduced dependence on artificial illumination.
The plenary hall required different kinds of adaptation. When the OAU was founded in 1963, it had 32 member states; the African Union now has 55. The original seating arrangement, in which each delegation was accompanied by four assistants, was reconfigured: delegate seating was replaced with new chairs, while the original assistant-delegate chairs were refurbished and retained.
On May 22, 1963, Africa Hall was inaugurated during the first meeting of the Organization of African Unity. Thirty-two heads of state gathered beneath Afewerk’s stained glass, including Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Julius Nyerere, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Ahmed Ben Bella.
When the founding charter was signed, only one European was permitted to witness the moment: Arturo Mezzedimi.
Restoring a Vision
Decades later, the restoration of Africa Hall offered an opportunity not only to conserve a landmark, but also to reassess the legacy of the architect who designed it.
For senior project architect Mewded Wolde, the effort was never simply about repairing an aging structure.
“To understand the restoration of Africa Hall,” she told the Urban Center audience, “we need to understand the spirit and soul of the place. Without honoring that spirit, we are not preserving anything.”
That principle guided the entire project.
The restoration team categorized building elements according to significance. Afewerk Tekle’s stained-glass mural, the Flora of Africa artworks, and original architectural finishes were considered untouchable except for careful conservation.
One of the most consequential decisions was the removal of a mezzanine floor added decades after construction. The insertion had disrupted Mezzedimi’s concept of continuous space and introduced structural complications.
Its removal restored one of the architect’s central ideas.
The restoration team was equally concerned with ensuring that Africa Hall remained a functioning building rather than a preserved artifact. “We cannot leave buildings to be museums,” Mewded told the audience. “Continued use and adaptive reuse of spaces is what keeps it going.” Upgrading conference facilities, accessibility systems, security infrastructure, and structural performance was therefore not simply a technical requirement. It was part of a broader effort to ensure that the building could continue serving contemporary institutions while retaining its historic character.
The project also relied heavily on archival research. Many original drawings preserved by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa were catalogued and studied. Produced entirely by hand, they documented everything from overall building composition to furniture and fittings.
Research even led conservation specialists to Asmara, where they located the factory that had produced Africa Hall’s distinctive tiles in the 1960s. Though no longer operational, the factory remained standing, providing a tangible link to the building’s material history.
The restoration of Afewerk’s stained-glass mural presented perhaps the greatest challenge. Covering approximately 150 square meters, the artwork was dismantled panel by panel for conservation.
“We all had many heart attacks,” Mewded recalled, describing the anxiety involved in removing each one-meter-by-one-meter panel for restoration.
The project ultimately benefited from collaboration with Atelier Thomas, the workshop originally involved in the artwork’s installation and which retained pieces of the original glass from the 1960s. Broken sections could therefore be repaired using materials directly connected to the mural’s creation.
The result was the recovery of one of Africa’s most significant artistic works.
For Mewded, conservation is ultimately about more than architecture. It is also about ownership of history and the right to define how it is remembered. “As long as we are not telling our history, somebody else is going to come and do it for us,” she said. The restoration of Africa Hall has therefore become more than the preservation of one of Africa’s most important diplomatic landmarks. It has reopened a wider conversation about how Ethiopia understands its modern heritage and about the enduring legacy of Arturo Mezzedimi, whose buildings continue to shape the physical and symbolic landscape of the capital more than six decades after they were conceived
