Exploring Africa’s iconic buildings

“Advancements in reinforces concrete construction enabled the creation of this new style, and by 1926 Le Corbusier had christened the ‘Five points of a New Architecture,’ which were: the pilotis, the roof garden, the free plan, the free facade and ribon windows. Every modernist building has these elements, and as the style moved around the world it evolved into the international style and later on regionalism,” Adengo adds.

Another Ugandan architect Patricia Khayongo Rutiba, says: “The modernist architectural style is what generally characterised the new trend in architecture where classic historical forms of construction and aesthetic were abandoned for a new look. Buildings that could be put up in a short time, with few or no decorative details and
factory made elements that could be mass produced. This generated a universal architectural brand that could fit in any city in the world- modernist style.”

The National Museum in Accra was opened in March 1957, to coincide with the official declaration of Ghana’s independence. It was designed by Frey, Drew, Drake and Lasdun.
According to a book titled African Modernism: Architecture of Independence, authored by Manuel Herz, Hans Focketyn, Ingrid Schroder and Julia Jamrozi: “The project was critical to Kwame Nkrumah in terms of the symbolic emphasis that the museum would represent with regard to his own will to move beyond an independent Ghana towards a unified Africa and had seen significant collaboration between his new government and the remaining colonial authorities involved in the handover of power.”

“…The base of the building (National Museum Accra) is formed from a low, irregular hexagonal enclosure, capped by an eighty-foot diameter concrete dome. The relationship between the two volumes accommodates a strong central space and a raised mezzanine level as frame. The two levels are reached by two curving stairs, which encourage an open and radiating circulation through the building. This movement and the volumes that determine it bear echoes of Lasdun’s work on the Dome of Discovery. …,” Herz, Focketyn, Schroder and Jamrozi add.

According to lonelyplanet.com, La Pyramide, designed by the Italian architect Rinaldo Olivieri and built between 1970 and 1973, was the first daring structure and is considered a highlight of African modernism in architecture. A concrete pyramid striped horizontally with balconies, it rests upon a gigantic cubic pillar, lifting itself over the city’s skyline. The building housed expats and other Abidjan elite in the body of the pyramid, while the ground floor was reserved for commercial purposes. It deteriorated significantly in the 1990s, however, when it was deserted at the onset of political troubles. It is still waiting for renovation, lonelyplanet.
com adds.

Photography exhibition

La Pyramide and National Museum Accra are among the architectural gems in Africa that are part of the
travelling photography exhibition titled “African Modernism,” researched and curated by the German architect and author Manuel Herz.
The exhibition reflects the sociocultural ambivalence of African Modernism as an architectural ‘style’ in Sub- Saharan Africa, as it documents more than 80 buildings in Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Kenya, and Zambia.
The exhibition is accompanied by the 700-page publication African Modernism: Architecture of Independence published by Park Books in 2015.

The book and the exhibition consists of an archival section showing more than 80 buildings from the five African countries with commissioned photographs by Iwan Baan and Alexia Webster; a biographic section that narrates the historic and societal dimension of the selected buildings; and a timeline, contextualizing the architecture.

Baan and Webster’s photographs document the buildings in their present state. Among the photographic gems on display are the Wakulima Market in Nairobi, the Administration and Hyslop Buildings at the University of Nairobi in Kenya; the Bank of Zambia Branch in Ndola, the Maisonnettes for the Bank of Zambia in Lusaka, Public Library Lusaka, National Assembly of Zambia in Lusaka; from Ghana is the Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast, the Engineering School at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, US Embassy in Accra, Independence Square Accra, Community Centre Accra, and the Business School at the University of Ghana in Accra.

Others are: Hotel de Ville (today: Hotel du District) of Abidjan, La Pyramide and Hotel Ivoire in Ivory Coast; and Librarian’s School and Auditorium UCAD Dakar, and Universite Gaston Berger in St Louis, Senegal.
The Kampala chapter of the exhibition that opened on November 15 at Makerere Art Gallery, Makerere University, and will run until January 18, 2019, is hosted by Goethe-Zentrum Kampala/Ugandan German Cultural Society.

The Kampala chapter is co-curated by Adengo and Herz. The exhibition is complemented by the work of Ugandan independent photographer and designer Timothy Latim, who provides an additional insight into the
anchoring of African Modernism in Kampala.
The chapter has structures such as the Kampala Serena International Conference Centre, Uganda House, Mitchell, Mary Stuart, and Lumumba Halls at Makerere University, Coffee Marketing Board Complex, Cham Towers, Post Office, and Uganda Railways Offices.

The Mary Stuart Hall Tower at Makerere University was completed between 1965 and 1972. Peatfield and Bodgner designed the eight story tower with student rooms, common room and sanitary facilities.
The Mary Stuart Hall Tower is testament to the resilience of Brutalism as an architectural style and its structural accomplishments with its bare concrete finish and cantilever balconies that stand as a piece of architectural and engineering history in Uganda. The Uganda Railway Offices on Nasser Road were completed in 1964.
Designed by W. Fraser, the building’s envelope not only shades interior spaces with direct heat gain but also provides exterior shade public spaces that are used as waiting, parking, and meeting spaces by users.
The brightly lit office and circulation spaces, polished tiled floors, heavy wooden doors, handrails, and the furniture give the interior an amazing contemporary look due to a series of openings along the longer facades that invite in inadequate day light.

There were two guided exhibition walks as well as a panel discussion held under the theme “Modernist and Other Historic Buildings in Kampala: Rethinking Preservation” at Makerere Art Gallery.
“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 centres, 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,” Herz, Focketyn, Schroder and Jamrozi write in African Modernism: Architecture of Independence.

“Modern and futuristic architecture mirrored the aspirations and forward looking spirit that was dominant at that time. A coinciding period of economic boom made elaborate construction methods possible while the tropical climate allowed for an architecture that blended the inside and outside, focused on form and the expression of materiality. The architecture of countries such as Ghana, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya or Zambia still represents some of the best examples of 1960s and 1970s architecture worldwide. Nevertheless it has received little attention and still remains to be ‘rediscovered,’” Herz, Focketyn, Schroder and Jamrozi add.

The Engineering School at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana was completed in 1956 at what was then the Kumasi College of Technology.
Designed by James Cubit and Partners, it is a highly rational structure that derives much from the principles of natural lighting and ventilation espoused by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew. But the effect is expressive. Here the factory roof is inverted to pull air through the volume, reading as a set of wings fanning open above the grid structure and opening to the light.

The remaining structure beneath is then read as hung from the deep concrete beams that form the long drop of the “Y” of the roof structural, leaving the space beneath to function simply with a range of common screening and structural devices.

Evelyne Hone College

The Evelyn Hone College in Lusaka, Zambia was constructed just before independence in 1962. The main building is an eight-story volume that sits parallel to the street.
Its most distinguishing feature is a concrete screen on its northern façade consisting of oval elements that are slightly offset and separated from correspondingly shaped cutouts. Sunlight is filtered through the gaps of the screen and throws a distinct pattern of shadows on the floors and walls of the rooms behind.

The Evelyn Hone College abstract geometry of the screen runs uninterruptedly across all stories, thereby concealing the dimension and scale of the building. The rim and backside of the screen are painted in a range of different colours, producing a very subtle play of hues, as one moves across and through the building.
Initially intended as the KANU headquarters, the KICC tower for many years the tallest building in East Africa, dominates the Nairobi skyline. It was designed by the Norwegian architect Karl Henrik Nostivk and the Kenyan David Mutiso from 1966-1973.

Of the buildings built that time, the KICC is the most eco-friendly and most environment conscious structure; its main frame is constructed with locally available materials: gravel, sand, cement and wood, it has wide open spaces which allows for natural aeration and natural lighting.
Cuboids make up the plenary hall, the tower consists of a cylinder composed of several cuboids and the amphitheatre and helipad both resemble cones. The tower is built around a concrete core and it has no walls but glass windows which allow for maximum natural lighting. It has the largest halls in eastern and central Africa.

“The architecture of the independence era allows us to trace the specific nature of the different processes of decolonisation. …The architecture that we document…can act as witness and mirror of and commentary on the specific decolonisation processes that unfold in each country. By studying and analysing the buildings we can gain an understanding not only of the ambivalences of decolonization, its contradictions and inconsistences but also its ambitions, aims and aspirations,” Herz writes in African Modernism: Architecture of Independence.

“The differences between the buildings in terms of their architectural expressions, typologies and programmes are also an indication of the individual pathways and trajectories that each country of Sub-Saharan Africa took after decolonisation. Architecture has acted as a means of expression for this period of decolonisation and can be seen as its witness,” Herz adds.

THE CONTRADICTIONS AND INCONSISTENCES

According to Herz, Focketyn, Schroder and Jamrozi, “…in most cases, the architects were not local, but came from countries such as Poland, Yugoslavia, the Scandinavian nations, Israel, or even from the former colonial powers. Could the formation of a new national identity through architecture therefore be described as a projection from the outside?

Or does the international dimension rather represent the aspirations of the countries aiming for a cosmopolitan culture?”
“To what extent are projects such as the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in Nairobi, or the construction of Yamoussoukro as a new capitol of Côte d’Ivoire modernistic grand projects that propel a country forward, or instead vanity projects initiated by authoritarian ‘Big Man’- policies? The documentation of these buildings allows us to see architecture at a fascinating nexus of design and politics,” Herz, Focketyn, Schroder and Jamrozi add.

“The architects of these projects were not local and for the most part, they designed the buildings to adapt to the African climate and topography. However, they did not take into consideration the African culture,” Adengo observes. On her part Rutiba, argues: “It meant that the African cultural inputs were based on the perspective of Africa as perceived by the foreign architects. Their experience of Africa is what informed the spatial, functional and aesthetic aspects of the modern designs. As an African architect, those buildings became the reference point for many African architects as part of our heritage. It was mainly due to the significance of the period and the fact that it was symbolic of a break away from our limited past into a future of limitless possibilities.”
Adengo observes that Africa had an impact on the modernist style: “The modernist style had to adapt to the climate and terrain in Africa and new elements.”