Since the 1950s, much ink has been spilt praising or criticizing modernist architecture. The ink, however, has settled unevenly. We have learnt broadly about Brasília and Chandigarh, about Mies and Le Corbusier, but many other cases and contexts – sometimes spreading over entire continents – remain underexplored. Park Books has already published a number of compelling volumes on modernist architecture, but this, on African modernism, is groundbreaking. Not only has it collated and analysed (if superficially) a hundred architectural projects, stretching from Senegal, through Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, to Kenya and Zambia, but it also succeeds in highlighting some distinct features that each of these five countries possessed (for example, a Senghor-inspired ‘asymmetrical parallelism’ in Senegal versus a more strict application of theoretical principles of Tropical Modernism in Ghana). The authors emphasize that they do not aim at historicizing the transfer of western technology and ideas to African soil. Rather, they aspire to demonstrate ‘how the countries of sub-Saharan Africa adopted a mode of architectural expression – Modernism – and made it partially their own’ (p. 14). The book is divided into five chapters, each supported by an introductory note, a photographic essay, an overview of each country's modernist architecture and an essay dedicated to more specific issues related to the main topic.
African modernism was clearly ideological: it aspired to create architectural icons that would materialize the post-independence epoch, and, at the same time, provide symbols that would attract the attention of tourists and investors. Many of these projects, especially such emblematic ones as Hôtel Ivoire in Abidjan (displayed on the cover), were inspired or commissioned by charismatic post-independence presidents and realized by a handful of foreign architects, or local ones educated in the west.
Another important facet of African modernism was the building of schools and educational facilities. A substantial number of the projects depicted in the book are university campuses, dormitories, libraries and so on. This is not surprising as one of the core aspirations for many post-colonial countries was the creation of a more accessible and inclusive education. The architecture of education in Africa, however, did not operate on any universal design models. Chomette's modest human scale projects, which sought to make use of vernacular materials and crafts wherever possible, were in sharp contrast with the pronounced monumentality of Pottier's project for an engineering school in Yamoussoukro.
Not only did modernist architecture differ from country to country, it also declined for an assortment of reasons in various parts of the world. In Africa, these causes were neither aesthetic nor social, nor was it the lack of support from authorities and planners; rather, economic problems put an end to it. All five countries bore similarities. The economic crisis of the 1970s and the recession that followed through the 1980s diminished export revenues drastically. Without high export prices, these countries could not invest in expensive infrastructure projects anymore. Architects and developers left in search of better fortunes. A stagnating economy, coupled with senescent dictators, endless coups d’état and civil conflicts, gradually turned the landscape of an audacious utopia into a pile of crumbling concrete.
The introduction indicates that the authors are seeking to ‘normalize’ Africa by revealing that it possessed a modern urban landscape like many other countries in the 1960s. Through this exercise, the continent would no longer be associated exclusively with war and poverty, but also with progress and modernization. Whether the way to ‘normality’ lies through modernist architecture remains an open question. Nevertheless, historicizing African modernism is useful and necessary because many of the iconic structures that once provided postcard images for entire countries and gave hope to an unrealized middle class are now decaying or being destroyed. Some, like Olivieri's La Pyramide, in Abidjan, were not viable from the very beginning; others, like Chomette's Hotel Independence, in Dakar (now reduced to hosting a Chinese eatery), came to this fate over time. What unifies the majority of them is a lack of maintenance and repair: this, when added to the general disarray of a surrounding landscape that has been left to its own devices, reinforces the feeling of a slow catastrophe of meaningless, un-heroic times.
The photos, taken by Iwan Baan and Alexia Webster, deserve specific mention. Shot from a human standpoint, they do not offer an advantageous architectural perspective of the buildings, rather they document how real people live and appropriate them. For a book on architecture, such a technique is unusual and disturbing. People in the photos detract from the contemplation of the buildings. Dressed in wrinkled and shabby clothes, people are irritatingly imperfect when compared to their rigour and nobility. People haphazardly recline, squat or sit instead of featuring themselves against the manmade backdrop, which stands in complete indifference – not to say disdain – towards the surrounding landscape. Men, women and children are immersed in a multitude of repetitive, meaningless activities – cleaning, chatting, meandering chaotically, rather than walking in an organized and prescribed fashion. Instead of using ‘natural’ ventilation, apparently unsuccessful against the heat, and despite the theories of Tropical Modernism, they install private air-conditioners – an act of unilateral egoism caricaturing the monumentality of sculptural façades. In short, these photos reflect a fundamental contradiction of modernist architecture: a desire to create the best possible living conditions for human beings and the inability to take these beings as they are.
