Kuukuwa Manful is a trained architect and researcher from Ghana who creates, teaches, studies, and documents the history, theory and politics of architecture in Africa.
email: kmanful[@]umich.edu
I am currently an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan.
I’m working on a monograph titled ‘Building Nations, Building Classes: The Architecture of Education’ which examines nation-building, social class, and modernness through a longue durée analysis of the sociopolitical and physical architectures of secondary schools in Ghana. I’m also co-editing ‘Building African Futures: 11 Manifestos for Transformative Architecture and Urbanism’, a book of essays about architecture in Africa which will be published in August 2023 and launched at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in September 2023.
I was a visiting post-doctoral scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), Stanford University and a post-doctoral scholar on the African State Architecture Project at SOAS University of London in 2022/23.
My doctoral research at the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, University of London, examined nation-building, social class, and modernity in Ghana through a study of the sociopolitical and physical architectures of secondary schools
I have a PhD from SOAS, University of London, Master of Architecture and BSc Architecture degrees from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and an MSc in African Studies from The University of Oxford. My previous research has explored the positioning of Ghanaian architects in the modernist movement; Asante architectural identity; and social acceptance of earth building in urban areas.
My writing and creative outputs have been published on a number of platforms including Al Jazeera, African Affairs Journal, Burning House Press, Africa Is A Country, Curator: The Museum Journal, Triennial of Photography, Hamburg, and The Metropole
I curate adansisɛm - an architecture collective that documents Ghanaian architecture theory, research and practice, and run accra archive - a digital archive of Ghanaian architecture. I also co-founded and run sociarchi - a social architectural enterprise that advocates for, and provides architectural services to people who ordinarily cannot afford architects, and am the current president of the Docomomo Accra Chapter.