Uploaded on 2017-02-08 by Felix da Mata

I took this picture at construction site of a villa I was involved in "bringing to the world" in the outskirts of Luanda, Angola. Basically, the image shows three Vietnamese construction workers looking at a french pattern made with Lebanese stones on the floor of a Villa in Sub-saharan Africa built "mostly" with materials from China. Other than experts in global construction trends, no one, I would argue, would name sub-saharan Africa as the place where the picture was taken. That is precisely why I chose it for this task. Much like present workforce, not a single building material visibly used is of local origin (masonry of locally produced clay bricks is hidden). Even though cement production is technically enough to supply the market, Chinese imports where at the time the picture was taken, cheaper. The steel industry is nowhere near satisfying the market, and production costs along with low quality output, make it hard to compete with cheaper imports. Lastly, as already mentioned above, stones which can be seen forming the Versailles Pattern stem from Lebanon