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2016 Grantees for Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative Announced

TAG is delighted that the Getty Foundation has awarded a ‘Keeping it Modern’ heritage grant to the Children’s Library in Accra, Ghana – the first time this prestigious award has been made to a building in Africa. This will fund building research into the material fabric of the library, as well as programme of events to keep the space activated and enjoyed.

The library was designed by Nickson and Borys (see Notes from Accra ) in late 1950s / early 1960s (the building appears in J. M. Richard’s New Buildings of the Commonwealth, 1961) and has already received some sympathetic restoration in more recent times, as well as some less fortunate interventions (such as the aluminium front door).

The latest project will be in safe hands under the leadership of the ArkiAfrica team, http://archiafrika.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/march-13-invite.jpg  and we will post updates on the project here.

Getty press release and information on the other awards here: http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/2016-grantees-for-conserving-modern-architecture-initiative-announced/

 

Oxford University Press will publish ‘Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire’ on 7th October 2016. Below is a brief synopsis from the publishers website.

9780198713326

Throughout today’s postcolonial world, buildings, monuments, parks, streets, avenues, entire cities even, remain as witness to Britain’s once impressive if troubled imperial past. These structures are a conspicuous and near inescapable reminder of that past, and therefore, the built heritage of Britain’s former colonial empire is a fundamental part of how we negotiate our postcolonial identities, often lying at the heart of social tension and debate over how that identity is best represented.

This volume provides an overview of the architectural and urban transformations that took place across the British Empire between the seventeenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Although much research has been carried out on architecture and urban planning in Britain’s empire in recent decades, no single, comprehensive reference source exists. The essays compiled here remedy this deficiency. With its extensive chronological and regional coverage by leading scholars in the field, this volume will quickly become a seminal text for those who study, teach, and research the relationship between empire and the built environment in the British context. It provides an up-to-date account of past and current historiographical approaches toward the study of British imperial and colonial architecture and urbanism, and will prove equally useful to those who study architecture and urbanism in other European imperial and transnational contexts.

The volume is divided in two main sections. The first section deals with overarching thematic issues, including building typologies, major genres and periods of activity, networks of expertise and the transmission of ideas, the intersection between planning and politics, as well as the architectural impact of empire on Britain itself. The second section builds on the first by discussing these themes in relation to specific geographical regions, teasing out the variations and continuities observable in context, both practical and theoretical.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Architecture, Urbanism, and British Imperial Studies, G. A. Bremner
PART I: Themes in British Imperial and Colonial Architecture and Urbanism
1: Beginnings: Early Colonial Architecture, Daniel Maudlin
2: Urbanism and Master Planning: Configuring the Colonial City, Robert Home and Anthony D. King
3: Stones of Empire: Monuments, Memorials, and Manifest Authority, G. A. Bremner
4: The Metropolis: Imperial Buildings and Landscapes in Britain, G. A. Bremner
5: Propagating Ideas and Institutions: Religious and Educational Architecture, G. A. Bremner and Louis P. Nelson
6: Imperial Modernism, Mark Crinson
Part II Regional Continuity, Divergence, and Variation in the British World
7: British North America and the West Indies, Harold Kalman and Louis P. Nelson
8: South and Southeast Asia, Preeti Chopra
9: The Australian Colonies, Stuart King and Julie Willis
10: New Zealand and the Pacific, Ian Lochhead and Paul Walker
11: Sub-Saharan Africa, Iain Jackson and Ola Uduku
12: Egypt and Mandatory Palestine and Iraq, Samuel D. Albert

Further details here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/architecture-and-urbanism-in-the-british-empire-9780198713326?cc=ro&lang=en&# 

cleoroberts's avatarEnvisioning the Indian City

Announcement

Four-year PhD Studentships

Location: University of Westminster

Deadline: 26th August 2016

Two x four-year, full time PhD studentships in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment as part of ERC grant funded project Monsoon Assemblages.

Stipend of £16,000 p.a. and Tuition Fees (Home/EU fees only).

Full article

Two x four-year, full time PhD studentships

Monsoon Assemblages is a five-year long research project funded by the European Research Council (Starting Grant no. 679873) with the ambition of confronting challenges of urban climate change through novel, inter-disciplinary research in three of South Asia’s rapidly growing cities: Chennai, Delhi and Dhaka. It is driven by questions of how these cities might be transformed if no longer thought of as exclusive products of human agency, but as co-designed by the material energies of earth systems.

PhD applications are invited from the spatial design and/or environmental humanities disciplines to engage with these questions. The exact areas of…

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In between improvisation, compensation and negotiation: a socio-spatial analysis of Kariakoo market (Dar es Salaam) dynamics under British colonial rule (1919–1961), by L Beekmans and J. R. Brennan, published in History of Retailing and Consumption, vol2, issue 1, 2016.

Abstract.

“This article examines the socio-spatial history of the central market of a colonial African city. Colonial policies of racial segregation created obstacles to commerce, which in turn generated a local strategy of improvisational planning to placate various urban actors with a host of often contradictory concessions to ameliorate dislocation. These contradictions of colonial governance played out most visibly in the struggles over Kariakoo market, which became the city’s primary market after its construction in 1923.

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Kariakoo Market, March 2016

By focusing on contests over the spatial ordering of commerce and residence in a multi-racial city ruled by Europeans, commercially dominated by Indians but overwhelmingly populated by Africans, this article demonstrates how the production of certain types of urban space creates unforeseen leverage for local actors, which simultaneously entrenches wider patterns of obstinate racialization despite the ubiquity of planning concessions. Using deeply researched archival evidence as well as a rich secondary literature, the authors argue that the city market best illustrates the racially contradictory impact of the colonial state on an urban landscape.”

Full article available here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/vGx4RCbCui3cBncBNP8h/full 

TAG also included recent posts on Dar es Salam here: A quick tour of Dar es Salam and here: Urban Narratives (Simulizi Mijini) Symposium Report

Dar es Salam Tour

Annika Seifert kindly took a group from the Urban Narratives (Simulizi Mijini) Symposium on a walking tour of the city. We met at the Old Boma and after a briefing on the history of the city plan we set off taking in the Post Office, and Anthony Almeida’s modernist St. Joseph’s school and the colonial White Fathers’ house.

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L: St Joseph’s School. R: White Fathers’ House

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National Bank of Commerce

Further along the dock road is the National Bank of Commerce designed by Charles Alfred Bransgrove (who also designed the British Legion Offices in Dar, 1952). From here we visited Walter Bgoya’s wonderful book shop (picking up a copy of Dar es Salaam. Histories from an Emerging African Metropolis, Mkuki Na Nyota Publishers,2007) and then venturing into the wonderful commercial district that contains outstanding architecture from the inter-war period. Some of the buildings display hints of Indian influence, others definitely deco, sweep around the corner sites with great confidence.

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From the city centre we crossed the old colonial cordon sanitaire (now an ‘open space’) to venture into the Kariakoo district to take in the brutalist market designed by Beda Amuli.

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Inside Kariakoo Market

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Exterior of Kariakoo Market

Many thanks to Rachel Lee and Diane Barbé from The Habitat Unit at TU Berlin for organising this event. Great Job!

Urban Narratives (Simulizi Mijini) Symposium

Urban Narratives (Simulizi Mijini) Symposium was held at the British Council building in downtown Dar es Salam on 1st April. Accompanying the event was a small exhibition of short stories – compiled by Masters students from TU Berlin and Ardhi University. During the past four weeks the students have been exploring and mapping the city as well as interviewing and recording the everyday and extra-ordinary narratives of life in the city. The result is a very special collection with some insightful, and often deeply moving, recollections. The stories should be on-line soon and we’ll post a link to them.

The symposium was arranged in 15-minute presentation slots, so the pace was fast and varied, starting with the international perspective (Jackson on India and Ghana, Lagae on curating an open air architecture museum in Lumbumbashi, Adanali offering a wonderful but at times disturbing insight into the plight of Istanbul, see http://reclaimistanbul.com).

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Yasar Adanali presentation

Part 2 considered the Eastern and Southern African context with Hannah Le Roux considering the notion of movement and heritage in South Africa and Johannesburg in particular. She also shared a wonderful image from the South African Automobile Association revealing the road networks that traversed the continent in the 1950s. Joy Mboya spoke about a festival created by local communities called Nai ni Who http://nainiwho.co.ke. This was followed by a discussion of the neighboring island of Zanzibar by Muhammad Juma, and the problems of preserving and building, in and around the historical context of Stonetown. Zanzibar was explored further after lunch with a project that is seeking to catalogue and document the built fabric of stonetown as well as associated memories and stories.

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Colonial Road Networks of Africa

Annika Seifert shared the vision for the new DARCH building and exhibition spaces located in The Old Boma, including how the material was selected and curated (https://www.facebook.com/DARCHTZ/). The new museum located in a historical colonial building, located opposite the Zanzibar ferry terminal, will be a great resource for the city with its roof top café and ‘public space’.

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The Old Boma

The session and roundtable was wrapped up by Walter Bgoya, who kept things lively, very entertaining and sharply to the point. It was a very enjoyable day and stoked lots of ideas for future research as well as fuelling the desire to take action. As Muhammad Juma reminded us, it is never too late to start campaigning for heritage and making the case to protect and preserve our built environment.

INVITATION – International Symposium on Urban Heritage: Simulizi Mijini/Urban Narratives

The Dar Centre for Architectural Heritage (DARCH) in collaboration with the Technical University Berlin and the Architects Association of Tanzania have the pleasure of inviting you to participate in the:

International Symposium “Simulizi Mijini/Urban Narratives“

1 April 2016, 9:00 – 17:00 hrs
@ The British Council, Samora Avenue
urban narratives
Urban Heritage: What is it? Whose is it? Who defines it?
How can it build inclusive cities?
We will look at international examples of inclusive heritage practices and discuss their relevance for the context of Dar es Salaam.
The detailed programme will follow soon, kindly share with your network and RSVP to darch.tz@gmail.com
We will be delighted to welcome you to the event!
Sincere regards,
Aida Mulokozi
CEO DARCH

Fabrications Journal: Tropical Zone: people, practices and pedagogies (27:2)

Two decades of architectural debate on environmental issues have cast new light on climatic responses, with very different interpretations of the meanings and constructions of the ‘tropical’ zone. Colonial, modernist and regional responses have been scrutinised as genealogically linked. Scientific discourses, cultural prejudices and social approaches intertwined to produce a resilient dialectic that has been reproduced, augmented or interrogated in research. This issue of Fabrications invites contributors to address the theme of the tropical zone as an architectural construct created and disseminated by a range of actors including educators, practitioners and their clientele, and state and institutional networks. Who were they/what were these and how did they approach this subject? What was their contribution to architectural production? How was that contribution received? How is it viewed retroactively in the light of new scholarship?

This issue anticipates papers that interrogate the term, its application and its imprint in regional histories, during the colonial and modern periods and after decolonisation in environments identified by the descriptor ‘tropical’. However, it also seeks new definitions of the term and its usage, in the context of contemporary environmental debates. It looks for new analyses of discursive trends from metropolitan centres of imperialism, from former colonies and from regions that regard themselves as climatically distinct. This issue is also open to papers that discuss how an understanding of the tropical zone relates to green architecture and new techno-scientific building processes, both in terms of aesthetics and politics.

Guidelines for Authors

Papers should be submitted online at  www.edmgr.com/rfab  by 10 October 2016, 6-9000 words, full details at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rfab20/current

Notes from Kumasi Part 3

At the KNUST campus the library and Great Hall complex work very well within their elevated landscape setting. The Gerlach and Gillies-Reyburn’s muscular grey abstract ‘kente’ cloth brutalist hall and library extension is arranged in a ‘quad’. The complex overlooks the campus, facing a formal axis that leads to the administrative and teaching blocks. The composition is completed on its south flank by an architectural gem, which we discovered is the original KNUST library block. Is this James Cubitt’s riposte to Fry and Drew’s Ibadan Library?

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The Old Library Block

The ‘old’ KNUST library presents an essay in tropical architectural design. Still sitting on its cast, fluted piloti this four storey structure employs screen walling, operable louver windows, and shading devices to both demonstrate and celebrate the possibilities of creating a successful architectural resolution to the needs of passive design. Its forlorn main entrance, clad in travertine, and superseded by the Gerlach and Gillies-Reyburn entrance to the East, shows the quality of materials employed in specific areas of its design.

 

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Administration Offices and Meeting Room

Inside, much of the Library building seems frozen in time. Reading carrels lie empty whilst the daylight filled reading spaces, with custom built, empty journal shelves have few readers, and ageing academic book collections. The e-resource room however has been kitted out with desktop computers and seems to be the most used student space in the building. A second “IT” floor was being planned, and the new desktop computers were just being commissioned, in spaces flooded with artificial light, closed to the exterior with floor to ceiling fabric curtains – only this space in the building needed fans for cooling. Meanwhile the offices at the top floor with their no longer used spiral staircase took one to another world of naturally cross ventilated office space, and custom designed insect screens – demonstrating that climate responsive design in the tropics still works. One hopes its on-going transformation doesn’t forget this idea.

Notes from Kumasi Part 2

The KNUST campus continued to delight as we explored its many building types, landscape and wildlife. The staff housing [over twenty different types], is generally low density bungalows generously positioned along the sweeping roads to the west of the campus. The Vice-Chancellor’s lodge is also set amongst the staff housing, its pierced screen providing shading to the verandah-cum-corridor behind.

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Vice-Chancellor’s Lodge

At Unity Hall, the two high-rise accommodation blocks dominate the arrangement, but they also frame the quadrangle that contains badminton courts, refectory and other social spaces. The space is also commandeered for laundry drying and we observed architecture students surveying the landscaped elements with their drawing boards set up under the shade of the loggia. Just a short walk from Unity is the sports track and Paa Joe Stadium. The seating is set within the raked landscape and the grandstand has a graceful concertinaed concrete roof that reduces in depth as it cantilevers over the seating.

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Unity Hall

We were fortunate enough to view the architectural drawings of these buildings – but sadly, the climate has rendered them in a poor state and plans for digitization must be urgently progressed to preserve this important archive of material.

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Paa Joe Stadium

Off campus we visited the Manhyia Palace built in 1925. Upon returning from exile the Ashantehene Nana Prempeh 1 was offered the building by the British (the former palace having been destroyed in the ‘War of the Golden Stool’ in 1900). The palace is now a museum with some excellent artifacts and collections. The palace grounds also contain the Manhyia archives, managed by the West African Studies department of Legon University. The archives contain records dating back to 1926 including many documents on land development, sanitation, state buildings and town planning. We’re looking forward to seeing what this archive holds – an initial inspection revealed many plans and previously untapped material!

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Manhyia Palace Museum