A large portion of the work we present here is linked to Liverpool and the Liverpool School of Architecture – and we’ve set about consolidating and developing these findings into an exhibition. Timed to coincide with the opening of our new building, designed by O’Donnell and Tuomey the exhibition presents the school’s 130+year history with a major focus on ‘the tropics’ and Middle East, as well as the Polish School, and contemporary works. The exhibition is arranged around five pavilions that a thematically and geographically arranged, and there’s a timeline of events and major collection of contemporary models too.
We’ve commissioned a major monograph to present the work in greater detail with excellent entries from leading architects and historians, including:
Shama Anbrine, Tadeusz Barucki, Richard Brook, Joy Burgess, Emma Curtin, Richard Dod, Martin Dodge, Chomchon Fusinpaiboon, Jocelyn Froimovich, Marco Iuliano, Juliana Yat Shun Kei, Kyna Leski, Daniel Naegele, Simon Pepper, Alan Powers, Peter Richmond, Michelangelo Sabatino, Joseph Sharples, Michael Shippobottom, Matthew Steele, Adam Voelcker, Mercedes Volait, Dominic Wilkinson, Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, Rixt Woudstra, Junjie Xi, Patrick Zamarian, Yulun Zheng.
As well essays from the contributors we’ve produced a series of reflective articles, chronologies, biographies, and thematic chapters that cover Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, Poland, West Africa, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, and the school’s connection to the British School in Rome.
The book will be available shortly as a 560page hardback, and of course you’ll be able to download a free PDF copy here and from Liverpool University website in due course. We will update with a link and upload an exhibition walkthrough here.
If you’re in Liverpool on Thursday 1st October 6pm , please come to the opening of the exhibition at the Liverpool School of Architecture. The show runs until the 18th December and you are welcome to drop in anytime.
Call for Papers: Beyond Colonial Narratives: Methods for Studying Colonial Built Environments in the Global South
Date: 9th December 2026 Location: School Of The Arts Old Library, University of Liverpool, Abercromby Square
The Heritage Institute at the University of Liverpool are pleased to announce a PGR Conference on Colonial and Postcolonial Architectural History, to take place at the University of Liverpool, 09 December 2026. The conference is an excellent opportunity for postgraduate research students and graduates to present papers and receive critical feedback from peers and experts in the field.
Conference theme/scope
Recent scholarship on colonial architecture and planning in the Global South has increasingly examined the politics of colonial power, imperial narratives, and their enduring legacies in the built environment.
Such studies have moved beyond simplistic centre-periphery models to explore how local actors engaged with, contested, appropriated, and redefined colonial projects in domestic, infrastructural, and urban contexts.
Methodologically, such works have drawn on approaches ranging from reading against the grain of colonial archives to examining non-official records and period literature that better represent the experiences of colonial societies. Scholars have also turned to alternative sources like oral histories, social practices, visual and material culture, and media to recover the voices and experiences of colonial subjects that are often absent from official archives.
This conference aims to further explore the diverse methodologies available for studying colonial built environments beyond colonial narratives and perspectives. It seeks to expand existing historiography by focusing on contributors who remain marginal or obscured within conventional architectural and planning histories, such as local professionals, artisans, labourers/workers, and inhabitants.
More broadly, the conference invites reflections on how approaches from architecture, urban planning, history, social sciences, and the humanities can deepen our understanding of the relationships between colonial administrations and local societies.
We invite paper proposals from postgraduate students working on Colonial and Postcolonial Architectural History, broadly defined. Of particular interest are papers that employ primary sources and non-traditional methodologies. We particularly welcome contributions that:
Focus on local professionals, artisans, labourers/workers, and inhabitants and other contributors who remain marginal or obscured within conventional architectural and planning histories.
Reflect on how methodological approaches from architecture, urban planning, history, social sciences, and the humanities can deepen our understanding of the relationships between colonial administrations and local societies.
Reveal processes of negotiation, adaptation, resistance, and collaboration between colonial and local authorities and building professionals, labourers/artisans, and everyday users of built environments.
Apply archival records produced by colonial subjects and non-state actors, as well as ethnography, oral history, participatory research, and critical analyses of popular culture, media, and material practices.
We encourage potential participants to interpret these themes broadly. Presentations should be made for 10-minute presentations. We especially welcome submissions from speakers with limited conference experience.
To be considered, each prospective participant should submit a 250-word abstract to heritage@liverpool.ac.uk by 23rd September 2026
The African Architectural and Urban History Network (AFRAUHN), in collaboration with the Department of Architecture at the University of Nairobi, invites proposals for papers about emerging discourses and themes in African architectural and urban practices for a major international conference being held at the University of Nairobi from 8th September – 10th September 2026.
It will be the second AFRAUHN bi-annual conference, the first having taken place at the Wits School of Architecture and Planning in South Africa in July 2024. Recognizing that discourses about African architecture and urban planning are more complex than the bifurcated ‘traditional’/‘colonial’ or ‘African’/‘Western’ models which still tend to dominate the research, writing, environmental design and spatial design practices in the continent, this conference instead welcomes contributions that critically examine the status quo(s) of these models and disciplines – be that in terms of academic, practice, national institutions or regulatory bodies, or as are imagined by policy-makers in forms of urban development which are then disseminated to the public.
This second AFRAUHN bi-annual conference is organized to coincide with the inaugural Pan-African Biennale of Architecture, curated by Omar Degan and team, and which is also being held in September 2026 in Nairobi, Kenya
SESSION 1: 10.00–12.30 – Reclaiming Regional Identity in Kenyan Architecture [4 papers x 20minutes each]
Chair: Prof Robert Rukwaro
This session explores the intellectual and philosophical foundations of Kenyan architectural identity through the lens of vernacular knowledge systems, material intelligence, and spatial order. The presentation argues that traditional architecture in Kenya is not merely heritage to be preserved, but a living epistemic framework capable of informing contemporary design practice. Indigenous construction logics across Kenya’s diverse communities, ecological adaptation strategies, and collective spatial memory are examined as repositories of theory rather than cultural artefacts.
The discussion interrogates the tension between global architectural visibility and regional authenticity within the Kenyan context. If international planning and design models and homogenised aesthetics have shaped much of contemporary built production in Nairobi and other urban centres, what would it mean to design from within Kenyan ontologies rather than around them? How can architectural historiography and design research reposition Kenyan spatial traditions as generative rather than derivative?
Given that this platform seeks to advance scholarly and professional debate on Kenyan architectural identity, we welcome papers from researchers, practitioners, and emerging scholars working on vernacular knowledge, regional historiography, climatic adaptation, material culture, and contemporary reinterpretations of indigenous spatial systems. Papers may engage historical case studies, theoretical reflections, built work, or methodological innovations. As this convening includes significant time for dialogue and exchange, participants interested in contributing to the discussion are strongly encouraged to take part.
Lunch: 12:30–14:00
SESSION 2: 14.00–16.30 – Architectural Education in Africa: When the Curriculum Leans Towards a Eurocentric Body of Knowledge [4 papers x 20minutes each]
Chair: Arch. Erastus Abonyo
This discussion critically examines the structural imbalance in architectural education in Africa, where curricular frameworks often privilege Euro-American canons while local knowledge systems remain marginalised. The presentation interrogates how epistemic hierarchies are reproduced through studio culture, citation practices, accreditation standards, and benchmarking systems, questioning how legitimacy in architectural scholarship is constructed within African institutions.
The conversation explores the professional and intellectual consequences of this imbalance. How can architectural education in African prepare students for contexts defined by informality, hybrid land regimes, climate vulnerability, and postcolonial spatial inequality characteristic of African cities and towns? In what ways can indigenous material intelligence, oral archives, and community spatial governance be integrated as methodological frameworks rather than aesthetic references?
This convening especially welcomes papers that reflect upon the following pedagogical and methodological questions:
• How have architectural curricula in Africa been shaped by inherited colonial academic models, and what remains structurally embedded? • What knowledge systems and epistemologies construct ideas of “architecture” within African institutions, and what forms of knowledge are excluded? • How do accreditation standards, benchmarking systems, and global validation mechanisms influence curricular design and research priorities? • In what ways can studio culture, critique language, and research training be recalibrated to centre African socio-spatial realities?
Contributions that critically engage these questions—through empirical research, curriculum analysis, policy review, or pedagogical experimentation—are particularly encouraged.
Coffee/tea break: 16.30–17.00
CONFERENCE KEYNOTE LECTURE:19.00
OMAR DEGAN, Curating the Pan-African Biennale of Architecture: From Fragility to Resilience
This session will provide a forum for discussion amongst early career researchers involved in the recently concluded and British Academy-funded ‘Writing Campus Modernisms’ project. This project engaged a number of academic institutions and scholars/students across Africa in the creation of an open-source working collection of fiches documenting campus design in three African countries: Ghana, Nigeria and Rwanda. Whilst the personal experiences of each speaker will be the focus of the four contributions, the challenges, connections and opportunities that this project produced will form the background to the discussion which the speakers will deliver.
Given that this panel is framed around the reflections of Early Career Researchers who were involved in the ‘Writing Campus Modernisms’ research project – with four such ECR presenters already identified – we welcome a maximum of two further short paper contributions from Africa-based ECRs with experience related to research writing focused specifically on post-Second World War campus architecture in Africa. As this session also includes a significant slot for audience participation and discussion, we thus welcome all participants who are interested in contributing to take part.
Lunch: 12:30–14:00
SESSION 4: 14.00–16.30 – Shifting the Ground for Thinking the Historiographies of African Architecture and Urbanism [4 papers x 20minutes each]
Chair: Prof Ikem Okoye
Does the Africa-focused historian’s familiar distrust of the archive and its orientation extend to the built environments that form a structural, symbolic, and representational knowledge apparatus? Should it? An archive implies more than a physical repository of knowledge; it also reflects a value system. Histories of built environments intervene in both. They provide tangible and knowledge-related custodianship of documentary records that confer the legitimacy of governing bodies, and they also suggest alternate archival evidence and forms of authority.
This session invites papers, especially from early-career scholars, addressing any of these issues and or questions. The aim is to bring together senior scholars and those yet at the beginning of their professional careers as architectural or art historians and/or architectural or art critics, to create a discussion in a dialogical format.
Coffee/tea break: 16.30–17.00
Plenary Discussion: 17.00–18.30
This session will include short presentations and a roundtable discussion among some specially invited speakers from among the participants who are presenting their work in the Pan-African Biennale of Architecture at the same time as the AFRAUHN conference. The session will then lead into the main keynote lecture.
Chair: Prof Ola Uduku
Conference dinner: 20.30–22.00
THURSDAY, 10th SEPTEMBER 2026: CONFERENCE DAY 3
SESSION 5: 10.00–12.30 – What happened to Tropical Architecture? [4 papers x 20 minutes each]
Chair: Prof Nnamdi Elleh
What happened to tropical architecture that is adapted to the regional climates of Africa?
In Africa’s cities, we live, socialize and work in large buildings. Each day, these buildings are confronted with needs for heating, cooling, dust protection, daylighting, maintenance etc to provide conducive environments that function well for users. The cadence of life in these large African buildings suggests there is nothing nostalgic in questioning what happened to the concept of tropical architecture? We acknowledge the work of architects like Francis Kere and Nina Maritz in providing natural cooling, daylighting, and an appropriate use of materials and construction technology.
However, in cities as diverse as Cape Town, Abidjan, Cairo, Djibouti, Luanda or Casablanca, the bourgeoning African built environment is increasingly dominated by high- and medium-rise crystalline structures that are sealed as if built in a climate zone that fluctuates seasonally between extreme cold and heat. In a period when sustainable environmental design is a buzzword, it is baffling that architects still design structures which need artificial heating/cooling.
This session welcomes papers that explore how clients and designers can become re-sensitized to by taking advantage of natural African environments.
Lunch: 12.30–14.00
SESSION 6: 14.00–16.30 – Constructing Coloniality: Nodes of Imperialism and the East African Built Environment [4 papers x 20 minutes each]
Chair: Prof Eva Branscome
This session focuses on the coloniality of architecture and heritage of East Africa in relation to the diverse empires and trading networks which historically connected that region to peoples across the Arabian Sea and on associated islands in the Indian Ocean, as well as to Europe and the Indian subcontinent or further afield. The aim is to reassess East Africa’s built environment in wake of those former colonial systems.
Building types can include yet are not limited to the following:domestic environments; landscapes and agricultural production; urban environments such as streets, squares and gardens; factories and other sites of industrial production; sites of assembly, leisure and entertainment; places of worship; buildings for colonial administration; commercial infrastructure such as ports, waterways and railways; heritage sites and current conservation practices.
The session especially welcomes papers which reflect upon the following historiographical and methodological questions:
How have the professions, disciplines and discourses of architecture, design and heritage been shaped by and participated in imperialism, coloniality and racism?
What are the knowledge systems and epistemologies that construct ideas of ‘architecture’ and ‘heritage’, and what is excluded and why?
How do financial systems, supply chains and concepts of tenure and relations to the land shape the production of built environments?
How does the coloniality of architecture and built heritage relate to histories of extractivism and energy use?
Tea break: 16.30–17.00
SESSION 7: 17.00–18.00 – Design Research in African Architectural and Urban History [2 speakers x 20 minutes each]
Chair: Prof Murray Fraser
This final session offers a forum for those involved in designing for the African built environment to discuss the kinds of design research that they are engaged upon as a component of their built or unbuilt work. Particularly welcome are those proposals for presentations by up-and-coming architects/architectural practices who are currently designing innovative and anticipatory projects for villages, towns or cities on the African continent.
AFRAUHN FUTURE STEPS: 18.00–18.30
Discussion about future plans for the AFRAUHN research network.
FRIDAY, 11th SEPTEMBER 2026
TRAVEL TO MOMBASA
Conference participants/attendees are also invited to take the train to Mombasa for a specially organised architectural and urban tour of that coastal city. Early registration is required from those wanting to take part in this tour. Costs for this will be confirmed in due course.
Supporting institutions
Pan-African Biennale of Architecture
Architectural Association of Kenya
Campus Innovation Laboratory (CIL),University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
Department of Art History, University of Delaware, USA
Liverpool School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, UK
The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, UK.
Scientific Committee
Professor Irene Appeaning Addo, University of Ghana, Legon (Ghana)
George Arrabu Ndege, President of the Architectural Association of Kenya
Professor Eva Branscome, University College London (UK)
Dr Warebi Brisibe, Rivers State University of Science and Technology (Nigeria)
Professor Marshall Brown, Princeton University (USA)
Omar Degan, Pan-African Biennale of Architecture
Professor Nnamdi Elleh, University of Witwatersrand (South Africa)
Professor Murray Fraser, University College London (UK)
Prof Julia Gallagher, King’s College London (UK)
Jacqueline Khairu, Chairperson – Architects’ Chapter, Architectural Association of Kenya
Dr Linda Nkatha Gichuyia, University of Nairobi (Kenya)
Professor Ikem Stanley Okoye, University of Delaware (USA)
Prof Robert Rukwaro, University of Nairobi (Kenya)
Dr Anooradha Siddiqi, Barnard College, Columbia University (USA)
Stone Town: Beyond Tourism and Heritage by Maria Lookmanji
This dissertation investigates the Indo-Zanzibari community’s daily practices that shape belonging in the historic city of Stone Town, Zanzibar, and their methods of community-based, socio-spatial maintenance of space. To address this overlooked topic related to conservation, results from a participatory photography methodology are analysed. The remote, participatory image-based research (RPIBR) allows the Indo-Zanzibaris to document their under-researched spatial priorities and negotiations, giving them agency due to the insider knowledge and co-curated documentation.
The visual analysis across 64 images shows Indo-Zanzibari belonging grounded in routine trade-focused activity, improvised contemporary additions and wide networks of circulation beyond the heritage-inscribed boundaries of Stone Town. Practices interpreted as chaos or neglect, are reframed to show the collective community familiarity and responsive knowledge to contextual constraints and the complicated conditions of the country.
By focusing on evidence of everyday practice, Indo-Zanzibari presence is shown through urban responsibility and spatial negotiation rather than a curated display of performed heritage outside of lived necessity. The dissertation questions the nature of traditional conservation guidelines, emphasising the need to shift priority away from tourism and static heritage narratives, which aim to simply preserve the built environment, and instead draw attention to community and cultural survival.
How should we catalogue, describe, present, and interpret museum objects? These are never easy questions and even more difficult when they form part of an ‘ethnographic’ collection.
The @leverartgallery in Port Sunlight has a major collection gathered by industrialist William Lever from his sojourns to West and Central Africa – but very little is known about the objects, and they rarely get displayed because of this.
Together with colleagues from @liverpoolmuseums and AHUWA / Liverpool University we invited members of the Congolese Association to join us in a workshop and to rethink how we might begin to catalogue and understand the art, instruments, weapons, fabrics… We were delighted to be joined by Congolese Ambassador Ndolamb Ngokwey and to have expert facilitation from @bluesaint .
It was only a trial , but the proof of concept worked really well. Looking forward to seeing the other objects and learning more.3 d
The call to prayer echoes across the neighbourhood as people congregate under the sweeping domes and tall minarets of Ghana’s National Mosque in Accra. For many, it is a place of faith, community and national pride. Yet, few pause to consider that this landmark – now firmly part of Accra’s skyline – was funded and built by Turkey.
This detail points to a bigger story. Some of Ghana’s most important public buildings are shaped by global relationships as much as local needs. And those relationships are not just economic; they are deeply political.
Therefore buildings are not just functional. They are powerful expressions of political power, used to describe and project ideas about hierarchy, state authority, solidarity and modernity.
As a result, architecture can be used to explore the identity and ideology of African states and international partners who choose to finance or donate new buildings to Africa featuring western architectural aesthetics.
I am a scholar of African architecture. I collaborated with scholars from different areas of expertise, including political scientists, on a project that studied the connection between architecture and power in Africa. From Ghana, two projects were used to illustrate international relations in architecture, highlighting the interplay of power and agency. One was the National Mosque and the other was the seat of Ghana’s government, Jubilee House, an edifice funded by the government of India.
Ghana and India’s ties can be traced to their co-founding of the Non-Aligned Movement. These were a group of states not formally aligned with major power blocs during the cold war. Ghana and Turkey’s relationship goes as far back as 1957. Turkey is one of the leading investors in Ghana’s economy.
Our work established that when a country finances and constructs a major building abroad, it leaves a visible and lasting imprint on another nation’s landscape. The building becomes part of everyday life while reflecting the influence of its external sponsor. These buildings normalise the presence of the sponsoring nation and are a constant reminder of its political interests.
History written in buildings
Foreigners have been shaping Ghana’s built environment for centuries, from colonial forts along the coast to post-independence modernist projects designed by international architects.
Ghana’s architecture tells a layered story of power and exchange. During the colonial era, Europeans constructed forts and castles that dominated coastal landscapes. These were not just military structures; they were symbols of control and gateways to global trade networks, including the transatlantic slave trade. Sections of these buildings were later repurposed as schools, embedding education within spaces marked by violence and coercion.
This dual legacy highlights how architecture can carry multiple, often conflicting meanings over time.
After independence, Ghana sought to project a new national identity through modern architecture.
Foreign architects were commissioned to design housing, universities and civic buildings that would signal progress and global relevance. This moment reflected both aspiration and dependence: a desire to appear modern on the world stage, combined with reliance on external expertise and resources.
‘Soft power’
Today, Ghana continues to engage with global partners through architecture and infrastructure development. The National Mosque is one example. Backed by Turkey with the active involvement of Ghanaian Muslims, it represents both religious solidarity and diplomatic outreach underpinned by local agency.
Its scale, design and prominence make it a visible marker of Turkey’s presence in Ghana. The National Mosque Complex is modelled after the Ottoman-era Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. The national mosque in Accra features domes, semi-domes and arcaded porticos. These are the characteristics of Ottoman architecture, a predominant classical style for mosques in Turkey and the Islamic world.
Another example of political “gift” is Jubilee House, the seat of government. While financed and constructed with support from India, it incorporates the form of the Akan stool, a deeply significant symbol of authority in Ghanaian culture. This blending of external funding with local agency and symbolism shows that these projects are not simply imposed. They are shaped through negotiation.
Across the continent, similar patterns can be seen. China has funded major government buildings, including the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa and the Zimbabwe parliamentary complex. These projects are often described as “gifts”, but they also reflect strategic relationships and long-term influence. Political scientist Innocent Batsani-Ncube has illustrated how China’s large-scale investment in the Zimbabwe parliament is used as a proxy for its sustained activities in and around African parliamentary institutions.
Ghana’s case
It is easy to view foreign-funded infrastructure as purely beneficial, especially given Ghana’s development needs. But architecture is never neutral. Buildings embody power relationships in terms of the scale, materiality, the architectural features and the location in urban areas.
They reflect who has the resources to design, finance and construct, and whose ideas are ultimately realised in physical form. A mosque, a parliament or a presidential palace is not just a functional space; it is a statement about identity, legitimacy and global belonging of both the sponsor and the recipient country. In this sense, architecture becomes part of diplomacy. It is a way of making relationships visible – and durable.
Describing these projects simply as soft power, however, does not capture the full picture. Soft power theory often assumes that influence flows smoothly from powerful countries to less powerful ones.
Ghana’s experience suggests something more complex. Buildings cannot simply be “exported” like films or fashion. They are rooted in specific places, histories and communities. This creates friction.
For example, Ghana’s engagement with foreign-built projects often involves negotiation over design, symbolism and use. Local government officials, religious leaders and communities play a role in shaping outcomes.
In the case of the National Mosque, Ghanaian Muslim communities were not passive recipients. Their advocacy and social influence were crucial to the project’s realisation. Similarly, the incorporation of the Akan stool in Jubilee House reflects an effort to assert cultural identity. These examples show that foreign influence is most often mediated by local contexts.
Ghanaian actors’ agency in these processes has limits, however. Many decisions about large-scale projects are made by political elites. As a result, the interests reflected in these buildings may not represent the broader population.
These examples point to broader questions. Do foreign-funded buildings contribute to long-term development, or are they primarily symbolic? How can Ghana ensure that such projects reflect local priorities and needs? And what does it mean to build a national identity in a world shaped by global partnerships?
The links among soft power, public and cultural diplomacy, and development across the continent will continue to be subjects of research.
International relations scholars Joanne Tomkinson and Julia Gallagher contributed to the research that this article is derived from.
“Join us to celebrate the launch of a major digital platform which makes available over 4000 archival drawings, photographs and documents related to the AA’s Department of Tropical Architecture (1954–71) – a programme attended by a generation of architects and planners who would help to shape practice across the Global South. The platform maps the careers, experiences and legacies of over 550 alumni, across 82 countries – foregrounding previously hidden histories and revealing the transnational relationships and networks of practices, institutions and government bodies which interacted with and informed the pedagogy of the Department.
Students at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, constructing geodesic dome, 1964. Photograph: AA Archives
This project was generously supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.”
An interesting image of the Dome being built in Kumasi from 1964 above – a number of these were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s (and one was shown at the V&A Tropical Modernism exhibition too). It reminded me of the photo taken by Michael Hirst (also an AA Department of Tropical Architecture graduate) of the dome built by Fuller in Accra…
Image courtesy of Michael Hirst, 1958, Buckminster Fuller Dome built in front of Accra’s Law Courts, Ghana.
SAH Conference, Chicago, 2027: The call for papers has been announced – and there are some fascinating and timely panels planned. This one caught our eye….
Session Chairs: Zhijian Sun and Qingyun Lin
Session Title: Cooling the Tropical Built Environment: Discomfort, Decolonization, and
Decarbonization
Session Description:
Tropical climate and building problems related to heat and humidity have long troubled
professionals both within and beyond the tropics, who resorted to various climatic
techniques around (late-)colonial networks to tame the tropics. During the Cold War, the
tropical world became a contested arena in the name of development aid. Despite relying
on a globally circulated climatic knowledge, thermal comfort norms and cooling
technologies, these state and non-state actors from socialist, capitalist and non-aligned
countries who engaged in postcolonial development, often produced discourses of
“tropicality” that deviated from Euro-American templates.
The stakeholders in the Global South were never merely passive recipients of
technological expertise, however. Rather they were often active mediators of multi-
directional global exchanges of “architectural resources”, in Łukasz Stanek’s (2020) term.
We invite papers interrogating global, transnational and local dynamics through
marginalized cases in the long-twentieth centuries across any (sub-)tropical areas,
including Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East
and elsewhere. We particularly welcome the nuanced perspective of “seeing from the
South,” especially how Southern institutions and individuals negotiated external
interventions around “collaborative” frameworks filled with heterogeneity, competition and
contingency. By examining processes, consequences and legacy of local reimagination
and reinterpretation of climate, built spaces, thermal (dis)comfort, labor and body, this
panel speaks to what Daniel Barber (2019) calls “decarbonization as decolonization.”
Drawing on Nicole Starosielski’s (2021) critical temperature studies, we view tropical built
environment’s (uneven) management of heat and cold as means of “enacting racialized,
classed and gendered forms of power.” We encourage proposals that engage the
interdependence between architecture’s climatic techniques, human body, non-human
actors, and exercise of socio-political power, focusing on the underappreciated roles of
marginalized people, suppressed knowledge, neglected practices, or ignored things.
I’ve been visiting buildings in Accra that I don’t know much about today.
SSMIT Pension House: super bit of brutalism near the ministries. This building looks after the state pensions – but who designed it? Perhaps a forgotten Nickson & Borys? Rather nice open staircase and precise brise soleil…. I can’t find any references to it in my collections or at the RIBA library catalogue. I’ll have to check WABA Journal again, but don’t recall ever reading about this significant building?
Accra Technical Institute. My reliable sources say it’s designed by none other than James Cubitt. Could be – it resembles his early work at KNUST, Kumasi. OR should I have gone to the Accra Technical College? But the dates for that institution don’t seem to add up.
Then there’s a delightful commercial building in Jamestown. It resembles the UAC Kingsway Store in Sekondi. It definitely wasn’t a Kingsway, but perhaps was linked to the UAC?
Finally “Betty House”. A rather large house in what was a prestigious neighbourhood in Jamestown at Korle Wokon. Historically important as the residence of Nana Akufo-Addo’s father and served as HQ for Ghana’s first political party, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) after its formation in 1947.
Bringing the Kingsway Stores Home: Our Exhibition Opens in Accra15 Jan – Easter
On 15th January, we celebrated the opening of “Shopping Emporiums of West Africa: The Kingsway Stores” at Jamestown Cafe and Gallery in Accra, marking a significant milestone in our ongoing research into the architectural and commercial legacy of the United Africa Company. The launch evening brought together an engaged audience including President of the Ghana Institute of Architects Tony Asare, Dr Abena Busia, and Ronnie Micallef, the incoming High Commissioner of Malta in Accra, for what proved to be a thought-provoking discussion about retail modernism, colonial commerce, and architectural heritage in West Africa. David Kojo Derban gave a wonderful opening talk to contextualise the exhibition, along with a wider welcome from cafe and gallery owner architect Joe Owusu Addo.
The exhibition represents the culmination of over 5 years of collaborative research examining the Kingsway department store chain, which operated across West Africa throughout much of the twentieth century. Working alongside Unilever archivist Claire Tunstall and colleagues Ewan Harrison, Rixt Woudstra, Paul Robinson, and Michele Tenzon, we’ve traced the fascinating story of these iconic shopping emporiums from their inception through the independence periods of West Africa and beyond.
This work forms part of our broader investigation into the United Africa Company, published last year by Bloomsbury as “Architecture, Empire, Trade.” In our recent Journal of Design History article, co-authored with Ewan Harrison, Irene Appeaning Addo, and Oluwaseun Muraina, we wrote that “Kingsway responded to independence by instrumentalizing a particularly modernist domesticity through a series of didactic marketing efforts and the construction of boldly modernist new stores.” The article reveals how these stores weren’t simply places of commerce but architectural statements where “modernism is here revealed as complexly imbricated with colonial and neocolonial profit-seeking.”
The exhibition itself has journeyed from Liverpool to Ghana, carefully packed and stored at Jamestown Cafe before being installed in early January. Two freestanding pavilions display archival photographs from the Unilever Archive, accompanied by newly commissioned 3D-printed models created by Liverpool School of Architecture students and archival films that bring the stores’ bustling atmosphere to life. The pavilions themselves, fabricated using CNC routers by our expert technical team at Liverpool lead by James Galliford, echo the modernist architectural language of the stores they document.
What makes presenting this exhibition in Accra particularly meaningful is the opportunity to share this research in the very city where the first Kingsway store stood. The ruins stand next door to the gallery – a poignant reminder of this commercial and architectural heritage. Through collaboration with Allotey Bruce Konuah, we’ve extended the exhibition beyond the gallery walls with vinyl street banners installed on both the gallery exterior, creating a dialogue between past and present. The banners also contain QR codes so visitors and passers-by can freely download the catalogue.
Our commitment to sharing this research extends beyond this single exhibition. We were interviewed on Asaase Radio morning show and it was great to share our work with a broader audience across Ghana. Following the exhibitions run in Accra through to Easter, we hope to tour the exhibition to other venues, continuing the conversation about how retail modernism, colonial commerce, and architectural heritage intersect. This exhibition reminds us that architecture is never merely about buildings; it’s about the economic, social, and political systems that produce them.
