Western Africa sits off the Atlantic coast and is home to many indigenous cultures. Many of these cultures, in turn, were joined by other peoples who migrated into the region from other parts of Africa and European powers seeking to establish colonies. African buildings, whether in West Africa or other regions of the continent, are an eclectic mix of these cultures and their customs, traditions, and religions. Vernacular architecture is a locally designed architecture that that uses local resources, such as mud, clay, wood, and stone, as well as vegetation for thatch. European colonists added architectural features that sometimes clashed with indigenous styles, but oftentimes were a blend of styles that allowed the newcomers to adapt to West African climates.
There are two subregions in West Africa that highlight the architectural heritage of the region: The Sahel and the Forest Zone. The Sahel is heavily influenced by Islamic traditions, while the Forest Zone is home to more indigenous, native architectural features. Colonial and modern architecture can be found in both subregion
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana embarked on a vigorous program of nation-building, employing Modernist architecture to express political and cultural ambitions and concretize Nkrumah’s vision of a Pan-African future. A decade earlier, India had finally achieved independence and its first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was equally eager to modernize, commissioning Le Corbusier to design the new city of Chandigarh.
“The wind of change is blowing through this continent,” declared British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in the Ghanaian capital Accra in 1960. “Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.” Formerly the Gold Coast, its shoreline dotted with the relics of forts from the transatlantic slave trade, Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain its sovereignty in 1957.
Developed from an exhibition first shown at the 2023 Venice Biennale, Tropical Modernism—on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in South Kensington, London—deftly unpicks the threads and experiences of the postwar era to show how Modernism took root in Ghana and India following independence from Britain. Through a compelling array of drawings, models, photographs, films, and ephemera, it examines how Western ideas were reimagined as a form of post-colonial nationhood that combined European practice with indigenous traditions of making and design, while valorizing the contributions of historically neglected figures.
Among them are the Sikh draughtsman and model maker Giani Rattan Singh, who worked closely with Le Corbusier, and Ghanaian architects John Owusu Addo and Victor Adegbite. Adegbite became the country’s chief architect, designing Black Star Square in Accra, the civic centerpiece of Ghana’s independence celebrations. The scheme encompassed a dramatic, double-arched gate framing the sea, conceived as an “arch of return” as opposed to the “door of no return” in colonial forts through which Africans were forced during the slave trade.
Underpinning the narrative is the influence of more familiar characters, notably English architects Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew. In the late 1940s, their research into generic forms of climate-tempered modern architecture suitable for the “humid zone,” featuring perforated screens, deep shading, and natural ventilation, impelled a lavishly funded postwar pacification program of schools, hospitals, and infrastructure in British West Africa (latter day Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Gambia). A Tropical School was established at London’s Architectural Association to train architects for practice in the colonies; John Owusu Addo was one of its alumni.
for more information please visit: https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/16804-tropical-modernism-surveys-climate-responsive-architecture-in-post-colonial-west-africa-and-india
