Architect Frank Mbanefo and Michael Olutusen in the CCA Archive

Two fascinating articles and resources have been shared on the CCA website recently – Abigail Duke explores the architecture of Frank Mbanefo in ‘Weaving Modernity and Tradition’ and Asuru Lutherking Petercan examines the legacy and design philosophies of one of Nigeria’s first architects, Onafowokan Michael Olutusen

Duke writes, “In 1960, the same year that the nation gained Independence and after ten years of studying in the UK and working in the offices of Fry, Drew and Partners, Ronald Ward and Partners, and John Burnet, Tait and Partners in London, Mbanefo was invited by Godwin & Hopwood to join their office in Lagos.”

After working at Godwin and Hopwood for four years (the first Nigerian architect to do so) Mbanefo set up his own practice in 1964.

“…the Nigerian Government proposed establishing museums in four capitals—Sokoto, Maiduguri, Ibadan, and Enugu—to promote unity and establish reconciliation among the heterogeneous cultural groups across the country. While the museums in Sokoto and Maiduguri never went ahead, the National Museum in Ibadan, designed by Mbanefo, was completed in 1992. Today, it is a prominent institution and plays a vital role in promoting cultural awareness, education, and preservation for the region through showcasing the country’s rich cultural heritage. Similarly to the government’s development of architecture around the time of Independence, projects such as these museums were again tools for unification. Both the function of the museum and the style of the architecture were important.”

Petercan writes: “Onafowokan attended the Public Works Department Technical School in Lagos from 1933 to 1937—a time of questioning of the dominant colonial conventions—and went on to work as a junior technical staff member in many Nigerian and Cameroonian regions before moving to Scotland in 1946 to pursue his studies at the Royal Technical College and the University of Glasgow.

Returning to Nigeria in 1953, Onafowokan started working as a town planning officer in the Old Western Region. His knowledge and experience made a lasting impression as he moved through the departments of the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Lands and Housing in Ibadan. After retiring as the Regional Chief Architect in 1968, he went into private practice under the name of Onafowokan Cityscape Group.”

Over 500 architectural drawings made by Onafowokan and his practice have been scanned and made available by Creative Commons here https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Buildings_by_Michael_Olutusen_Onafowokan

Section Only for Ikorodu Lagos State Town Hall By Onafowokan Michael Olutusen – Find & Tell Elsewhere is an initiative of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal that uses a post-custodial approach to make visible and available for research previously inaccessible architectural archives and to support local historians and researchers in sharing their work globally. The Nigeria project is a collaboration with Heritage Conservation Integration (Prof. Warebi Gabriel Brisibe, Dr EO Ola-Adisa, Arc. Yinka Williams, Abigail S. Duke, Asuru Lutherking Petercan) to curate and digitize the architectural drawings of first-generation Nigerian architects, celebrating their foundational contributions to the architectural landscape.Access to drawings of Chief Arc. Michael Olutusen Onafowokan was provided by Onafowokan Cityscape Limited, who are the custodians of his work.For more information: CCA Find and Tell Elsewhere, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151642567

You may read the articles here:

https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/95183/onafowokan-michael-olutusens-vision-of-tropical-modernism

https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/99051/weaving-modernity-and-tradition