African Modernism: The Architecture of Independence. Ghana, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Zambia

by Manuel Herz (Editor)

The late 1950s and early 1960s saw a large number of central and sub-Saharan African countries gaining independence, and one of the key ways in which they expressed their newly established national identity was through distinctive architecture. Parliament buildings, stadiums, universities, central banks, convention centers, and other major public buildings and housing projects were built in daring, even heroic designs—markers of the bright future these nations envisioned after independence.
           
African Modernism is the first book to take a close look at the relationship between these cutting-edge architectural projects and the processes of nation building in Ghana, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Zambia. Presenting some seven hudnred color photographs by celebrated photographers Iwan Baan and Alexia Webster and insightful analyses of the interactions of architectural innovation and developing national political and social cultures, African Modernism will be of interest to historians of architecture and Africa alike.

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction, Africa

640 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2015

Reviews

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A huge and hugely expensive volume now out in a somewhat less expensive edition, photographing and analysing the post-fifties, pre-eighties architecture of five countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It's an absolutely fascinating thing, presenting a side of Brutalism and the International Style that does not, it's fair to say, usually appear in the histories of modern architecture - Denys Lasdun's extensive work in Ghana, for instance, doesn't get much discussion, although on this evidence it should. Unlike, say, the postcolonial architecture of Asia as discussed in the work of people like Lukasz Stanek and Esra Akcan, there's little sense of an obvious symbolic divide in aesthetics before and after independence; similar styles of 'tropical modernism' span the gap, as do the mainly European (British and French, less problematically Scandinavian and Yugoslav - but in some cases, rather bizarrely, Israeli) architects. Someone could easily make an argument for a lot of this stuff being neo- rather than post- or anti- colonial; occasionally one feels these were projects for countries that were expected to stay rural and undeveloped, as in Lasdun's tiny National Museum in Accra, which is on the sort of scale you'd expect from a Herts new town, not a capital city of millions.

It is also tough to identify much of this with a particular politics, with western-aligned, non-aligned and socialist countries all following similar methods, and it's difficult to identify particular 'schools', with the colonial powers' systematic underdevelopment of the countries in question being pretty obvious in their unwillingness to train African architects and technicians. Not knowing the area at all I wonder how much this all comes from the focus on these specific five countries, but there is plenty of variety here too, although it seems to come more from the idiosyncrasies of individual architects than from the scene itself. One notable commonality is that 'good taste' is largely very absent, meaning that some of the buildings are just outrageous and brilliant, such as the Kenyatta Conference Centre in Nairobi or the several examples of particularly audacious Brutalism in Zambia and Cote d'Ivoire. The chaotic and panoramic scene-setting photographs by Iwan Baan are ok if you like that sort of thing: Alexia Webster's more direct and informative photos remind me rather of Richard Pare's The Lost Vanguard in the extremely obvious neglect of the modernist environment, the informality that has overtaken it and the lack of much obvious new construction, which here is in a couple of cases owed to the terrible collapses that some of these countries (Zambia, Cote d'Ivoire) suffered in the debt crises of the 70s and 80s. In any case, there's an immense amount of interesting stuff here which modernist historiography hasn't really begun to assimilate.

[Velika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book on African Modernism. The essays illustrate all the history, struggle and interesting moments of the independence transition of 5 African countries. The illustrations and the chosen works are just incredible to look at as reference but also as a new additions to the classics of modern architecture.