Venice architecture biennale: how pioneering Ghanaian architects reckoned with tropical modernism by Kuukuwa Manful
Owusu Addo Residence by John Owusu Addo.
Kuukuwa Manful, CC BY-NC-NDKuukuwa Manful, SOAS, University of London
But as well as looking at the future of architecture on the continent, visitors will also be able to explore its history, through an exhibition at the Arsenale, entitled Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Power in West Africa.
Early 20th-century modernism in Europe saw architects using large expanses of unshaded glass and flat roofs. Practitioners in warmer, humid climates, such as in Africa and Asia, meanwhile, had to adapt their designs to withstand heavier rainfall and warmer temperatures. In late colonial Africa and during the independence era, this style became known as “tropical modernism” or “tropical architecture”.
In the African context, this is possibly the best researched and well-documented architectural movement. When people discuss it further afield, however, it is mostly through a white lens. The focus is on what European architects practising in these regions were doing – African architects of the same era are largely overlooked.
Putting Europe at the centre of African stories is a choice that echoes the very colonial histories it seeks to elucidate, where European architects operated as though the continent were a blank slate, devoid of pre-existing architecture worthy of note.
My research shows how architects in Ghana in particular aligned with, adapted, or rejected Western colonial ideas. They created modernist buildings that reflected their visions for their nation, their experiences and their global outlook.
Ghanaian expertise
John Owusu Addo, the first black head of department of Ghana’s first architecture school, and Samuel Opare Larbi, another prominent educator and architect, embodied what I term the dominant Ghanaian tropical modernism. Their practice was most similar to, and aligned with, the practice of the white British tropical modernists.
The former Department of Tropical Architecture was established at the Architectural Association (AA) in London in 1954 by the British wife and husband duo Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, and James Cubbitt. Although Fry described the city of Kano, in present day Nigeria, as a “complete realisation of urban harmony”, he and Drew nonetheless declared having “invented” architecture in West Africa. Their work was coloured by the imperial, racist and sexist notions of the time.
Owusu Addo and Larbi both trained at the AA. They counted among their contemporaries the German architect Otto Koenisberger and the Australian-born British architect Kenneth Mackensie Scott. Although they faced racial discrimination in Europe and back home, their UK education put them in a position of relative privilege in Ghana.
From the outside, many of the institutional and corporate buildings they designed, including Cedi House in Accra (a high-rise tower that now houses the Ghana Stock Exchange) featured elements of tropical modernism: solar shading devices, rhythmic facades, breeze blocks, cross ventilation and east-west orientation.
But it is in the interiors of their domestic architecture that their keen understanding of the people for whom they were designing becomes most apparent. When I interviewed Owusu Addo and Larbi in 2015, they recounted how they took Ghanaian societies into account. And they spoke of the pride they felt at being African architects.
For the Unity Hall student accommodation at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Owusu Addo created shaded outdoor space, with courtyards and verandas. As he put it: “Rarely do we stay in our rooms in the daytime. If in the daytime anyone was in the room, then he was sick.”
Unity Hall, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi.Łukasz Stanek, CC BY-NC-ND
Creative dissent
Other architects sought to establish an aesthetic that was visually distinct from European-driven tropical modernism. They accepted the climatic control and other technological and material aspects of the style. However, in the aesthetics they pursued, they were decidedly expressive.
Anyako-born architect Daniel Sydney Kpodo-Tay’s confidence was grounded in his centuries-long family history of building design and construction. Together with his anti-colonial politics and a desire for recognition, this informed an approach that the Ghana Institute of Architects termed “revolutionary”, upon his death in 2018.
Kpodo-Tay was fascinated by symbolism. His designs rejected ornamentation. Instead, he sought to make the buildings themselves sculptural. His projects that were built were often not as bold as his proposals – a compromise he put down to the limited finances and conservatism of clients in Ghana.
When a competition was held, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to design the headquarters for the Economic Community of West African States organisation, Kpodo-Tay’s proposal drew on the form of a bowl as symbolic of communality and unity. His design for the complex, which was to house offices, a bank and a conference venue, featured bold inverted conical forms with internal spaces arrayed radially.
Daniel Sydney Kpodo-Tay’s proposal for the ECOWAS headquarters.Kuukuwa Manful, Author provided
Owusu Addo, Kpodo-Tay, and Larbi are not the only Ghanaian architects of their generations whose practice was informed by tropical modernism. Many stories are yet to be brought to light, especially those of the women.
Only a few women were trained at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science’s architecture school. Sexism in the industry saw some leave. But others, including the late Alero Olympio who designed Accra’s Kokrobitey Institute, struck out in bold new ways. These visionaries challenged the Euro-centric assumptions of what tropical modernism was, in particular through their use of materials.
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.
The Transnational Architecture Group is 10 year’s old this year. Thank you for supporting the blog and to all of our excellent contributors over the years for enriching the content and generously sharing their work. We’d also like to thank the communities in the places in which we work, the archivists and librarians for making material available to us and sharing their expertise, our respective institutions for supporting our research, and to the research funders who make travel, time, and resources available to us.
The blog started as a means to share our work-in-progress ideas and to promote events – and that is still at the core of what we do. We continue to add updates from our ventures into the archives, travel reports, and to share interesting events and innovative papers. These small reports and updates have compounded into something of a large resource and repository, and we’re delighted so many people have been able to make good use of (and to correct and expand upon) our work and attempts at writing these histories.
To celebrate the 10 year anniversary we held a small gathering at the Liverpool School of Architecture on Wednesday 8th March, curated and organised by Dr Alistair Cartwright. Our speakers were all PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and research associates at the school. You may watch the proceedings here:
The speakers and titles of the presentations are below, with timings if you’d like to skip to a particular talk:
Rixt Woudstra, “Sapele and Samreboi: Building Company Towns in British West Africa” 5:25
Excy Hansda, “Indigenous Modernities in the Twentieth Century Architecture of Bombay” 20:00
Adefola Toye, “Tropical Modernism in Nigeria’s First Universities: Accessing Sources Beyond the Archives.” 37:00
Ewan Harrison, “Planning for Post/Neo Coloniality: the Paramount Hotel in Freetown” 1:11
Iain Jackson, “Erhabor Emokae and the curious case of the UAC Mural: tropical modernism and decorative arts” 1:31
Daneel Starr, “How and why has the vernacular architecture and intangible cultural heritage of the Akha people changed in the face of globalization: Using the village of A Lu Lao Zhai, Xishuangbanna (sipsongpanna) China, as a case study.” 1:50
Paul Robinson, “Freetown, the UAC and urban design” 2:20
Alistair Cartwright, “Ecologies of Vulnerability: Post-Cyclone Reconstruction in Mauritius, c. 1945” 2:35
We also heard an excellent paper from Razan Simbawa, “The Effects of Demolish-based Urban Regeneration on Displaced Residents in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia” – which cannot be shared on the video recording at the moment.
Thank you again to all of the speakers for their wonderful talks, presentations, and work-in-progress. There was such variety and richness in the topics and methods, and at the same time numerous connections and cross-overs between the work.
Please do get in touch if you’d like to know more, or to share your work on the blog.
Indeed the city of a million hills, the views, wherever one looks show the hilly topography as 360 degree panorama all around. This is an efficient, exceptionally clean and organised African city, words that rarely roll off the tongue in relation to the continent.
For Kigali this however is happily true. Approaching this city of 3 million from its friendly and speedy immigration formalities at its small airport, one meets with Kigali’s symbolic moniker, the lit up Kigali Conference centre globe, set on one of the city’s highest hills, it acts as a waymarker into Kigali city.
Unsurprising for a hilly city, poor drainage and standing water is not a problem, a usual feature in large urban areas of Africa. Kigali’s arteries are its well-designed and maintained, roads and its taxi and motorcycle public transport network. Yellow motorcycles, with red-helmeted drivers and their pillion passengers swarm the roads like bees, dodging in and out of traffic including the Yego taxicabs which are ubiquitous forms of transport for more well-off Kigalites.
Meanwhile the roads are designed with both clearly marked out zebra crossings which drivers observe. This includes well-defined cycle lanes despite bicycles being rather rare, they have clearly been planned for. The central pedestrianised area also has had detailed attention to planting and urban infrastructure such as seating areas and shelters. This attention to city thoroughfares by Kigali’s planners gives the city its deserved moniker as Africa’s most well-planned city.
A visit to the University of Rwanda also gave an interesting view of the different architectural and design influences to be found in Rwanda. The striking Rwanda School of Architecture displayed its vibrant colours and materiality in its external form, whilst the volumetric flexibility of these spaces internally was demonstrated as we held successful if slightly challenged acoustically, talks and workshops, concluding with an informal review session in two of these spaces.
Central Kigali has a distinct historic colonial – mission informed central spine. A Catholic convent, a church, and a school complex delivering kindergarten and primary education feature on one axis. The characteristic use of locally made clay bricks and historical clay tiling give these buildings their historic identity. Whilst the 20th century designed embassies of Belgium and France, with their national flags flying, dominate nearby.
Colonial Kigali then blends into an interesting newly repurposed space, courtesy of MASS design. The old Belgian school in downtown Kigali has now become home for the first Norskka startup campus. Classrooms have been recreated as meetings spaces, and the brand new central entrance meeting space doubles as free to walk into café certainly serving the best coffee this side of Africa.
The MASS Design-landscape team collaboration in design has resulted in a totally new and climatologically excellent marriage of landscape with environment. A successful contemporary case study on how this can be achieved for all working in sub-tropical environments such as Kigali. The third and final phase of this development is just going on site involving a local Architecture practice this has got to be a project to watch.
Downtown commercial Kigali, which formed the centre of the historic commercial town, comprises the usual mix of trading units, former mercantile company warehouses and post and telecommunications infrastructure. A pedestrian mall which features Kigali’s new post-modern banking office towers, connects to this downtown area.
A visit to the Kigali Cricket Pavilion, the result of Peter Rich and Michael Ramage’s 2017 architecture-engineering collaboration, was pure visual joy to behold. The eight mile drive out of Kigali to find the pavilion was an adventure in itself as there were few signposts or digital map directions to follow. A well-judged turn off the main road, however resulted in an initial view of the structure. Built in 2017 it has weathered extremely well, with the quaternary arch form clearly expressed internally, and the local material cladding in superb condition. The three domes amply fulfil their basic programme of shelter and a viewing space for members of the Rwandan Cricket Association.
At our visit we were also able to drink great Ugandan coffee and access fast internet access as we sat down to admire the structure and the pavilion view. Unfortunately, no games were being played nor was there any cricket practice on our Saturday trip out to the pavilion, however the grounds were in perfect condition and we were informed that the Rwanda girls cricket team had recently beat their Ugandan counterparts in a regional match, having a home pavilion like Kigali’s must be a source of inspiration for Kigali’s youth cricketers.
Back into the leafy former colonial government suburbs of Kigali, only one hill away from Kigali’s commercial hub a visit to the Kandt house took us straight back to colonial times,. This is the preserved home of Kigali’s first German governor now provides an extensive history of Kigali and Rwanda’s early mission and colonial history and heritage. A reptile zoo complete with crocodile was the bonus attraction to view.
Back into the leafy former colonial government suburbs of Kigali, only one hill away from Kigali’s commercial hub a visit to the Kandt house took us straight back to colonial times,. This is the preserved home of Kigali’s first German governor now provides an extensive history of Kigali and Rwanda’s early mission and colonial history and heritage. A reptile zoo complete with crocodile was the bonus attraction to view.
No trip to Kigali, should omit a visit to the genocide museum, this is a deeply emotional and heart-breaking site, which comprises both burial grounds and a landscaped garden of remembrance and also the Genocide memorial now connected to a genocide archive which may be visited on week days. The landscaping of the memorial garden allows for quiet contemplation and reflection, whilst the museum, assisted by the Aegis Trust, to the people of Rwanda tells the story of the 1994 genocide to the world, in the hope that we may all strive for peace and reconciliation. It was masterplanned by John McAslan and partners, and completed in 2014. Kigali Genocide Memorial Amphitheatre in a circular void, by WALL Corporation / Selim Senin remains unbuilt, and is still work in progress.
You might also catch a view of the remains of Rwanda’s central prison in Kigali, which is on another hill nearby. It is a large colonial jail which unfortunately is scheduled for erasure if future plans are put in place. Currently however with some persistence you can get in and view the structure which only closed in the early 2010s.
Finally, a visit to the now called ‘Hotel Milles Collines’, the true site of the Hotel Rwanda, takes one back to halcyon days of the modern intercontinental tropical hotel. Copies of this hotel style grace most of the globe’s tropical locations, with the swimming pool, bar area and tennis courts to view. This is a definite contrast to the boutique hotel we stayed in with its contemporary reinterpretation of space, complete with mosquito nets, and open-air dining.
A great way to end a trip would be to have dinner at Kigali’s latest dining venue, just opened in time for the Commonwealth Governors and Heads of state meeting (CHOGUM) that took place in Kigali last autumn. It’s fine dining, interior decoration, and panoramic view of this city of hills is a great way to conclude a trip.
As the posters across this city proclaim, “Visit Rwanda”!
This edited collection of essays and image-driven pieces by anthropologists, archaeologists, architects, and historians examines the legacies of African architecture from around the time of independence through examples from different countries. Drawing on ethnography, archival research, and careful observation of buildings, remains, and people, the case studies seek to connect the colonial and postcolonial origins of modernist architecture, the historical processes they underwent, and their present use and habitation, adaptation, and decay.
Deriving from a workshop in connection with the 2015 exhibition “Forms of Freedom” at the National Museum in Oslo and the Venice Biennale, the volume combines recent developments in architectural history, the anthropology of modernism and of material culture, and contemporary archaeology to move beyond the admiration or preservation of prized architectural “heritage” and to complicate the contemplation—or critique—of “ruins” and “ruination.”
As part of our project to research the architecture of the United Africa Company (UAC) we’re visiting Freetown in Sierra Leone.
We spent the first day looking around the commercial business area wrapped around the giant cotton tree. The city grid was set out by the Sierra Leone Company surveyors in the 1790s and its wide streets and blocks are largely intact. Interspersed among the commercial properties are churches, houses, and schools, some dating back to the 19th Century.
The Cotton Tree, central Freetown
Adjacent to the Cotton Tree are the municipal offices, post office and former telephone exchange, and the major bank branches. Nickson and Borys designed a major branch for Barclays DCO and Ronald Ward for British Bank of West Africa (more on these by Ewan Harrison shortly). The Sierra Leone Central Bank is also located here – now refurbished and with its concrete mural sadly covered over with signage (designed by Ministry of Works in 1964).
GPO and Telephone Exchange, Nickson and BorysMunicipal Offices, Nickson and BorysBank of British West Africa, Ronald WardBank of Sierra Leone, Ministry of WorksBarclays DCO Bank, Nickson and Borys
Further downhill, towards the old railway station and harbour, are the major merchant stores and retailers.
We visited the old Kingsway Stores – now a bank – but still with its deco-inspired flourishes at each end of the facade. The CFAO is still clearly recognisable, and several other stores display strong characteristics of GB Ollivant and Leventis properties we’ve seen elsewhere in Western Africa.
Former Kingsway Department StoreRetail: architect unknownLuvian Building, architect unknownFormer CFAO Building
Heading further eastwards beyond the older city grid is ‘PZ Roundabout’ named after trading company Patterson Zochonis. Here the formality of the central business area gives way to more lively street markets and less formal city planning.
Further along Fourah Bay Road is the old Fourah Bay College building. The College was founded in 1827 in association with Durham University and was the first western style educational establishment in West Africa. It was mainly focused on missionary training. The delicate front verandah is formed with steel members bolted together and the ruinous state of the building has further exposed the steel structure inside. The beams were made by Glengarnock Iron and Steel Co in Ayrshire, Scotland and shipped out to Sierra Leone during the construction of the college building in the 1840s.
Old Fourah Bay College, founded in 1827, with construction starting in 1845, work supervised by Rev Edward Jones.
The college is located just a short distance from the sea, and what is now the busy port of Cline Town. Here the major shipping company Elder Dempster had their offices. They commissioned James Cubitt to design their premises in 1958. Cubitt also designed the Elder Dempster tower in Lagos, Nigeria, but rather than a dramatic tower overlooking the marina, here there is a more restrained horizontal solution with projecting concrete brise soleil and a porte-cochère. Inside the booking hall is a dramatic spiral staircase that wraps around what resembles a ship’s funnel. Warehouses and storage sheds dominate the area, including the former UAC stores opposite the National Railway Museum.
Former Elder Dempster Offices, James CubittInside Elder Dempster: waffle ceiling and spiral staircasedetail of the exteriorUAC warehouse Cline Town
There’s an impressive collection of architecture in this historic port city. In the UAC archive there are extensive photographic albums from 1915 through the 1960s documenting many of the streets and buildings we visited. Our task now is to identify more of these structures, and to research the history that resulted in their commissioning, design, and wider significance.
The Architectural History and Urbanism Research centre for Western Africa, AHUWA, was launched on Tuesday 13th December at the School of the Arts at the University of Liverpool. The launch involved a presentation of the research centre by the co-directors Professors Iain Jackson and Ola Uduku, about the key research themes, aims and ambitions of the AHUWA research centre followed by a short networking session over refreshments during the event. In attendance were invited members of the Liverpool university faculty and departments who had interests or links to West African Architecture and Urbanism history research, members of the local Liverpool community with African links, and a number of Architecture staff and post-graduate students. We were also pleased to welcome a representative from the Andrew Walls Centre from Liverpool Hope University and a host of academics who logged in online from the UK, West Africa, the USA and farther afield.
The key themes which AHUWA will focus on are:
Architectural and Urban History
West African Coastal Heritage
Sustainable and Healthy Cities [SDGs 11 and
Research outreach and collaboration via
Trans-national university collaborations
Writing workshops
Public outreach and engagement activities
Our aims and objectives are:
To be a repository and hub to consult for links to researchers and research collections pertaining to West Africa in North West England
To host and develop links with researchers in the North West of England and West Africa in order to promote future collaborative research links
Ultimately and importantly to strengthen research networks and institutions in West Africa through their collaboration with UK institutions from PG research and teaching opportunities to the collaboration and co-production of major research consultancy, and other potential outputs.
We are working in association with several collaborators including:
UCL and UCT (Modernist Heritage of Africa Project)
ACRC (University of Manchester) – the African Cities Research Consortium
DOCOMOMO International. (Shared Heritage Project)
ASAUK – Curating the proceedings and publication of the Online ASAUK Biennial conference 2022
UNILEVER – on the United Africa Company archive
We are in the process of undertaking the following:
Setting up MoU’s and working relations with colleagues at the IADS University of Lagos and IAAS University of Ghana, Legon.
Production of the first AHUWA newsletter in March/April 2023
Establishing links with the School of Architecture, Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone
Undertaking scoping research in Freetown Sierra Leone
Working towards developing collaborative research grants within the scope of AHUWA’s research thematic areas.
We have recently established a new research centre, based at the Liverpool School of Architecture called Architecture, Heritage, and Urbanism, in West Africa (AHUWA): https://ahuwa.org/ We’re hosting a launch event and would be honoured if you could join us on Tuesday 13th December, 3-5pm at the Arts Library, 19-23 Abercromby Square, Liverpool University for tea and cake.
Friends and colleagues from all of the North-West’s major collections, repositories, and archives with material on West Africa have been invited, and we’re excited to share ideas and build up new networks across the region and beyond.
If you could register here we’d appreciate it, and look forward to seeing you on the 13th. We’ll have an informal presentation at 3:30pm – please do come along and stay as long as you’re able. We’ll be on Zoom too from 3:30-4:00pm if you’d like to join us virtually for the presentation.
In 1925, the Central Market of Rabat was built at the outskirt of the medina (the old city) by French Colonial powers (1912-1956). Despite being the only element displayed in colonial maps of the medina, and one of Rabat’s current landmarks, the history of the market is still unknown. Drawing on the National Moroccan archives and on colonial postcards, the article explores the historical and urban significance of the Central Market for Rabat colonial and postcolonial history. It argues that the market constitutes a unique architectural and urban case for Rabat as it both challenged and reinforced the colonial agenda. Planning principles like the policy of association, the ‘image of the city’ and the ‘dual city’ were not only defied by the market, but also by the demolition of the part of the wall in front of it. This revealed the inconsistencies and lack of homogeneity of the colonial approach. Moreover, without the wall, the medina became penetrable by the ‘Ville Nouvelle‘ (New Town). Engaging with the Central Market is significant for the history of colonial planning, but also for today’s Rabat identity construction, inscribed in 2012 in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites and elected cultural capital in 2022.
An annotated diary of my visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo: a brief stop in Kinshasa before flying to Kisangani and then, following the Congo River, a preliminary exploration of one the regions where the Huileries du Congo Belge – HCB had established its oil palm plantations.
This trip would have not been possible without the help of >>Istituto per la Bioeconomia – CNR and Forets (Formation et Recherche dans le Tshopo) – >>Cifor (Centre for International Forestry Research).
May 2022
Kinshasa — Me and Ottaviano landed in Kinshasa on a Monday morning. I had never crossed the Equator before.
Papa Victor is waiting for us outside on a white Toyota jeep with a EU flag on the door and dents and scratches on all sides. A description that would fit most of the vehicles I travelled in during this trip and, as I came to discover, a stereotype for Westerners in this country. Victor is a tall, pleasant man who talk and laugh quietly even when we plunge into the suffocating traffic of Kinshasa. The 25 kilometers between the airport and my hotel in Gombe are an endless sequence of taxis, yellow Wokswagen vans running with the doors open to bring some air to the passengers squeezed inside, a multitude of weva moto-taxis, and trucks covered in sticky black dust.
The two days in Kinshasa are chaotic. We meet with some people and don’t see much. I watch street scenes, buildings, and billboards passing by from the window of Victor’s car.
During the last night in the city, I meet my old friends and former colleagues Raphael, Paul, and Pietro – who became a real Kinois in the meanwhile. From the hall of my overpriced hotel Raphael, tells me with his usually sharp irony: “Il faut que tu sors de cette Leopoldville”. And so we drive away, leaving Gombe behind us. Paul, who has a thing for infrastructures, gives us a lecture from behind the wheel of his car while we cross the city. Boulevard du 30 Juin, which originally connected the two Stanley’s times settlements of Kintambo Ngaliema and Nshasha, and later became the first of the large avenues of the colonial capital [>>Kinshasa Then and Now]. Avenue des Huileries, pointing to the area formerly occupied by the Huileries du Congo Belge, now hosting its successor Marsavco.. And then, Matonge, the neighborhooud that everyone here calls the musical capital of the DRC. After having lived for years few hundred meters from Matonge (Brussels) – a product of Congolese diaspora in Belgium – I finally get to see its original counterpart.
It’s early in the morning when we leave again for the airport but the city is well awake.
Congo River — After landing in Kisangani we are brought directly to the dock on the Tshopo river. The beach, as docks are locally called borrowing the word from English, is just a sandy stretch where dugout canoes and boats come ashore. We get on board of the canot rapide that Cifor made available for us and, following the Tshopo and Lindi rivers, we finally reach the Congo. Few kilometres upriver, the Wagenia/Boyoma falls, a one-hundred kilometres long sequence of cataracts, make the river impossible to navigate. After the falls, the Congo begins its ‘quiet’ descent of the 1,700 navigable kilometers dividing the place where we are navigating now from Kinshasa’s Pool Malebo before rushing again, through impressive rapids, up to Matadi and to the Ocean.
From this moment on, this broad, magnificient river, with its banks covered in thick vegetation, becomes the silent protagonist of the travel.
Moving along the river coast, the canot go past busy docks where pirogues – simple boats built by carving a single tree trunk and manouvred by one or two rowers – carry large, white sacks of coal to sell. Apart from our boat and the infrequent barges, the river is populated by these small crafts and by the noisy baleinières (‘whaler’), a wooden boat used for goods transport. Besides being painfully slow, the two half-sunken relics I could spot along the way, testify the scarce reliabilty of these bizarrely named boats.
From the canot, on the right bank, flanked by colonial villas, I spot the prominent facade of the Yakusu hospital, a now run-down gem of the Baptist Missionary Society in the Belgian Congo and an important institution for the educational and medical history of the country [Nancy Rose Hunt,>>Colonial lexicon: of birth ritual, medicalization, and mobility in the Congo].
Further down the river, the Belgika, a private island owned by the heirs of a high-rank military chief under Mobutu dictatorship. Our boat speeds close to the coast; the waves agitate the fishermen’s pirogues moving under the branches of leaning trees. The shape of old buildings with porches facing the river vanishes rapidly behind the vegetation. >>During the colonial time, the island was a coffee and rubber plantation owned by the Comptoir Colonial Belgika. The company realised barracks for the workers and villas for the European technicians and now, half a century after it abrupty left the island, those buildings are occupied by the few hundred people still living on the island or are left in disrepair.
Yanonge — 50 kilometers downriver to Kisangani, we disembark in Yanonge, a small town built around a river dock and its market; a commercial gate to the river for the backland Opala territory and the Turumbu people. Up from the dock, over the steep river banks, I can read dates and names of European firms inscribed on the front of wharehouses now surrounded by the wooden stands of the weekly market. Along the riverfront, the traders’ villas and shops are almost untouched. Guélor, who shows me the place, lives in one of them with his family of five. The rest of the town is made of single-floor brick houses – the construction material coming from the local furnaces – and by simple clay, wood and straw houses. Outside the busy market area and the two main roads, people walk calmly in the shade of the many acacia and palm trees.
Since few years, Cifor established one of its bases in the town and carries our reforestation, agricultural and local development projects. Silvia, among the many other things, coordinates the construction of a small sawmill. A solar drying kiln is close to completion and an oddly sorted team of Congolese and Italians welds metal, cuts wood boards, make electrical and hydraulic connections, rushing to complete it before our departure. (My contribution to the works is barely symbolic). The aim is to prepare the way for a locally managed, and economically sustainable activity which, allowing to meet the quality standards required for exporting wood, would eventually offer a credible alternative to illegal logging [>>Forets]
Fabrice lighting a cigarette with a welded piece / Vittorio at work: photos O.A.
During our days in Yanonge we stay at the local Catholic mission. Outside cities, missions often offers one of the few reasonably comfortable accommodations and in Yanonge, the Comboni community also gives the occasion for some peculiar encounters. Our early equatorial evenings are filled by the accounts of Father Vittorio, a truly remarkable character who spent 50 years in the Congolese rainforest, has unlimited energies, and a passion for >>improbable projects. When sitting in front of the usual plate of rice, pondu and tilapia, he starts talking and so I put my recorder on the table. I collect hours and hours of his improvised local history monologues in which he mixes personal memories with the accounts of the people among whom he have lived. “There weren’t many books in the places I have lived – he keeps saying, not without theatricality – but people love to talk to good listeners.”
Here, the buildings have stories to tell too. The religious mission was established in the early days of the Belgian Congo and abandoned for decades after the brutal incursion in the convent by the Simba rebels in 1964. The concrete lintel mounted on rounded jambs – a motive that many times I saw in Brussels – at the entrance of what was the mission’s carpentry school is marked with the date ‘1944’. Behind the art-deco facade, a large room covered with an overly complex wooden trusses system. The three wings with porches on both sides form a courtyard and are in ruin. Part of the high-pitched roofs – a large ventilated chamber was originally left on top of classrooms to protect them from the heat – had been replaced; the rest had crumbled. Kids are everywhere, playing among the teetering walls. Our not so credible recommendations to stay away from the crumbling structures are (quite understandably) ignored. The mostly disappeared wood worshop is now a favourite spot for discreet nocturnal encounters and Paolo says that the large wood cutting machine built in Belgium in the 1940s was still bolted to the floor until not so long ago.
Private archive Vittorio Farronato
Next to this complex, the church and the old convent – now used as a school. The convent has a familiar shape that I had never had the chance to look closely before. A single-floor building – despite what the view from the outside may suggest – with a central corridor cutting longitudinally, facade-to-facade, through the building and rooms on both sides. Seen in cross-section, the corridor with openings placed at the ceiling level was meant to extract the hot air through natural ventilation. Next to this group of buildings and most probably coeval, a structure carrying a sign MATERNITE’ and two groups of identical brick houses which once hosted the school’s teachers.
The few days I planned on staying in this small town became more than a week as I’m stuck in bed, ill. “The full tropical experience” Iain writes me from Liverpool. I missed the boat for my next destination and I look for an alternative.
Yangambi — Sitting on the backseat of a motorbike running on a rutted dirt road, the lacking comfort is compensated by the view of riverine villages plunged in the luxuriant vegetation and by the glimpses of open horizon on the Congo river. When approaching the Yangambi reserve, the red brick walls of large villas appears on the side of the road, half concealed by the foliage of large ferns. The 250 villas built between 1933 and 1960 scattered across the reserve once housed the scientists and technicians of what was one of the largest ecological, biological, and agricultural research hubs in Africa, the >>Institut National pour les Etudes Agronomiques du Congo Belge – INEAC, later renamed INERA. The derelict storage tanks and the broken windows of the two large buildings facing the river port are the first visible signs of the now partly lost thriving life of this centre. But some sections of the research hub are >>still active.
During the few days I spend in Yangambi, Dorcas drive me from one section to the other of the reserve The library, inside the recently restored administrative building, has a large collection of magazines and publications dating back both to the colonial and Mobuto’s regimes as well as reports and correspondence documenting the exchanges that the institution had established with private companies such as the Huileries du Congo Belge and Lever Brothers. Even today, the centre carries out agronomic research and provide the germinated seeds of oil palm trees to smaller and larger >> Elaeis plantations in the country. The number of houses, communal facilites, and buildings dedicated to the different research sectors that I could brielfy see from the car or from the photographic albums stored in the library would definetely deserve to be explored with more attention but I’ve run out of time. The boat is waiting.
Kisangani — I’m already on the way back to Kinshasa when, during a two days stop in Kisangani that allows for a quick visit to the city, I find a piece of wax print fabric depicting the destination of my next trip to the DRC. In a small shop, one of the last selling locally produced Congolese wax fabric, among the most bizarelly decorated pieces of cloths, one is dedicated to the >>Plantation et Huileries du Congo, the company owning three of the former HCB plantation. Over a green background, the same palm tree and red oil palm bunch is repeated over and over. At the bottom, a sketched and colourful representation of the Congo River and its green banks along with some particularly >>optimistic mottoes of the company.
I greet the country carrying with me this small trace of the persisting signs of British-Belgian colonial capitalism in Congo. Lokutu (Elisabetha), Bumba (Alberta), and Lusanga (Leverville), three of the five company towns built by the Huileries du Congo Belge will be the subject of my next fieldwork in the coming months.
Transnational Architecture Group 
