POLITICS + HISTORY + THEORY of ARCHITECTURE of AFRICA
SESSION CHAIR: Kuukuwa Manful Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Panel:
Manlio Michieletto; Genta Kokubu,Yoshiyuki Yamana;
Zainab Murtadhawi; Rabab Kazem; Laurent Duport
Kuukuwa Manful, Ph.D., assistant professor of architecture at Taubman College, has been awarded a grant from UCLA’s Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) for her project to digitize architecture archives in Ghana.
This article argues that the "soft" power of Western education in Ghana is undergirded by historical hard power, exercised through and reinforced by the architecture of schools.
Today on #Springboard, Your #VirtualUniversity we continue our anniversary series, Thinkathon with Dr. Kuukuwa Manful, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan. She shares groundbreaking ideas on redefining African architecture, building sustainably, and protecting Africa’s heritage for generations to come. Her insights will change the way you think about our spaces and our history.
This article - based on an African Studies Association Graduate Student Paper award-winning paper - establishes and investigates connections between the physical & sociopolitical architecture of school buildings and social class/ status in Ghana.
A Day in Ann Arbor with Taubman College's Assistant Professor of Architecture Kuukuwa Manful
Initially overlooked by many historians of modernism, these ‘informal’ settlements have recently been examined by certain historians with calls for their inclusion in the historical heritage of modernism. Some have asserted that, given the striking commonality (some might even say universality) of their material and spatial strategies, these should be included in the ‘international style’(Elleh, 2011, p. 59; 2014). How can we understand these ‘city doubles’ (Murray, 2015, p. 92) – one group designed from scratch and built primarily according to a master plan and the other challenging the master plan? Or how might we complicate hegemonic narratives of new cities and modernist master planning through multidisciplinary approaches, and creative uses of sources? How have these projects addressed social disparities, or otherwise? And how might re-examining histories and narratives inform the continued quest for sustainable and equitable cities?
But what is generalised as informal architecture and urbanism includes not just marginal constructions such as ‘slums’, ‘kiosks’, and ‘shacks’ but also a vast assortment of carefully constructed and capital-intensive buildings created outside the purview of professional institutions and governments such as shopping complexes, factories, and mansions. Indeed, I contend that this latter group makes up a significant proportion of this informal category and, thus, a substantial portion of the African built environment. Focusing on the case of present-day Ghana, in this essay, I show how a significant proportion of the African built environment has been misunderstood in academic research and overlooked as ‘informal’, distorting research and policies around architecture and urbanism on the continent.
Kuukuwa Manful has won a Learning and Teaching Award at The University of Michigan for her course “History of Architecture I: The Architecture of Africa and African Diasporas”
“Invented Modernism: Getting to Grips with Modernity in Three African State Buildings” by Manful, Batsani-Ncube & Gallagher, was recognised as one of the top read articles in the first year of publication by Wiley.
"Building Africa" tells compelling stories about political institutions and identities across the continent, using architectural landmarks such as presidential palaces, courts, parliaments, schools, sports stadiums, airports, and the African Union building.
In this talk, Kuukuwa puts forward the construction of social class hierarchies as an ironic and unexpected outcome of the post-independence nation-building in Ghana…
Panel discussion about the interaction of citizens with state buildings at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale curated by Prof Lesley Lokko.
Kuukuwa Manful has won the 2023 African Studies Association Graduate Student Paper Prize for her article titled “Building Classes: Secondary Schools and Sociopolitical Stratification in Ghana”
The creators of museum envision it as “a uniquely curated virtual and physical space located in Ghana which is dedicated to sharing the true story of Africa and its people under the watchful eye of the world’s most noted scholars from the birth of civilization to present day.
Location: Benin-City, Nigeria
The Edo Museum of West Africa Art (EMOWAA) is a museum project designed by Adjaye Associates in collaboration with Nigerian professionals, with the main aim of housing (restituted) West African art and artefacts.
Location: Cape Coast, Ghana. A new proposed “smart city” project for Cape Coast in the Central Region of Ghana. The “City of Cape Coast” is reported to have “signed a memorandum of understanding with the African Diaspora Development Institute (ADDI) and two local companies, to pave way for the creation of an Ultra-Modern Smart City christened, the Wakanda City Of Return”
Scholars have tended to focus on a small number of UK- and US-trained architects as the first Ghanaian architects. But should the claim that there were “no formally qualified West African architects… available” (Turner, 2024) in the country be taken at face value, be accepted uncritically, and be repeated?
I am making a series of posts on this blog about overlooked African and African-descended architects and architecture before the mind-twentieth century. I focus on the geographical area that is now Ghana, but due to pre-colonial configurations I will occasionally discuss people and work in other countries.
Long long long before my Accra Archive project, before Judith Opoku-Boateng set out on her career path in archival studies, before Anita Afonu was inspired to preserve Ghanaian film archives, and before all of us Ghanaian archivists, historians, and memory workers were even a twinkle in our mothers’ eyes, John Mensah Sarbah lamented on the loss of West African historical records.
As scholars, practitioners and visitors from around the world turn to architecture on the African continent, they must be careful not to treat it as a blank slate in the way previous generations did. Africans have been creating, studying, teaching, and documenting architecture in Africa since time immemorial. Their work matters.