1st Edition
Colonial Architecture and Urbanism in Africa Intertwined and Contested Histories
Colonial architecture and urbanism carved its way through space: ordering and classifying the built environment, while projecting the authority of European powers across Africa in the name of science and progress. The built urban fabric left by colonial powers attests to its lingering impacts in shaping the present and the future trajectory of postcolonial cities in Africa. Colonial Architecture and Urbanism explores the intersection between architecture and urbanism as discursive cultural projects in Africa. Like other colonial institutions such as the courts, police, prisons, and schools, that were crucial in establishing and maintaining political domination, colonial architecture and urbanism played s pivotal role in shaping the spatial and social structures of African cities during the 19th and 20th centuries. Indeed, it is the cultural destination of colonial architecture and urbanism and the connection between them and colonialism that the volume seeks to critically address. The contributions drawn from different interdisciplinary fields map the historical processes of colonial architecture and urbanism and bring into sharp focus the dynamic conditions in which colonial states, officials, architects, planners, medical doctors and missionaries mutually constructed a hierarchical and exclusionary built environment that served the wider colonial project in Africa.
Biography
Dr Fassil Demissie, Associate Professor, Department of Public Policy Studies, DePaul University, USA
'This valuable collection of scholarly articles has significantly broadened and deepened our understanding of colonial architecture and urban transformation in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Africa. The contributors to this volume have masterfully unpacked simplistic arguments that have failed to grasp the complex dynamics that shaped the relationship between colonial rule and city building in Africa. This book marks a significant advance in scholarship in the disparate fields of architectural history, urban studies, and city planning.' Martin J. Murray, University of Michigan, USA 'From the States, Africa and architecture operate as isolated symbolic territories. Attempts made to understand one often negate the other. Colonial Architecture and Urbanism in Africa demonstrates this mode of understanding is historically obsolete. This phenomenal collection of essays depicts the self-conscious inscription of the West's architectural/urban identities (eg. English, French, German) on to Africa. Such practices, usually taken as benign styles or formal technique, are meticulously analyzed for ideological content and political discourses. Within these details Africa, architecture, and urbanism represent the interrelated means to impose, manage, and defy complex aesthetic regimes. Indeed, the collection itself signifies the resistance to pervasive, colonial machineries and their claim on modernity and history.' Darell W. Fields, University of California Berkeley, USA and author of Architecture in Black '... the book is certainly to be acquired for its independent research and ’archival’ value of many of the chapters - and will make an important addition to any library with an interest in longer term urban and architectural development worldwide, especially focussed on African studies.' Newsletter of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain '... the 16 essays included in this collection are undoubtedly a positive and very important addit
