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Tropical Architecture

PhD Studentships, Monsoon Assemblages

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July 24, 2016
Africa, British Colonial Architecture, Global Architecture, India, Tropical Architecture
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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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New Research: The architecture of the British Mandate in Iraq: nation-building and state creation

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May 17, 2016
British Colonial Architecture, Global Architecture, Middle East, Tropical Architecture
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I’ve recently published a paper in the Journal of Architecture entitled, ‘The architecture of the British Mandate in Iraq: nation-building and state creation’. You can read the full article here [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2016.1179662 ], and the abstract is below…

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Watercolour perspective of King Feisal’s Palace, Baghdad, designed by J. M. Wilson, courtesy of Wilson Mason LLP.

This paper seeks to examine and contextualise the architecture and infrastructure projects developed by the British during the occupation of Iraq in the First World War and the Mandate period that immediately followed. Relying heavily on military-political events for its structure and underlying narrative, the paper demonstrates how architecture, planning and ‘development’ were integral to the act of creating the new state and were very much part of the colonisers’ vision to create a nation in their own image. Works were deployed to imbue a sense of collective belonging and national identity through the creation of new town plans, as well as through institutions such as museums and universities. A certain dissonance emerges between the infrastructure and prestige projects, with the latter presenting an imagined and fabricated notion of Iraqi history, blended with a grandiose colonial style imported from India, and designed predominantly by James M. Wilson. The infrastructure projects began with sanitation improvements, road and rail installation, and expansion of the Basra docklands to attract international shipping and for the export of oil. Further building projects undertaken by the Public Works Department included a large number of administrative buildings called serais.

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Watercolour perspective of Basra Airport, designed by J. M. Wilson, courtesy of Wilson Mason LLP.

Built at strategic locations, they were deployed as multi-functional centres for justice, taxation and land registration as well as places where local devolved empowerment was instigated. Iraqi architecture from this period has been largely overlooked in the emerging global histories of architecture, yet it offers an important view of the quandaries that faced late British colonial architecture in its attempts to respond to, and reflect changing and hostile political conditions.

A quick tour of Dar es Salam

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April 7, 2016
Africa, British Colonial Architecture, Global Architecture, Tropical Architecture
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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 Report

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April 7, 2016
Africa, British Colonial Architecture, Global Architecture, Tropical Architecture
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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.

Call for Papers: Tropical Zone: people, practices and pedagogies in Fabrications

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March 21, 2016
Africa, British Colonial Architecture, Global Architecture, Historiography, Tropical Architecture
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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

Good bye Kumasi, Accra, Ghana….

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March 5, 2016
British Colonial Architecture, Ghana, Tropical Architecture
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Good bye Kumasi, Accra, Ghana….

We revisited the Manhyia Palace archives and made notes on the relevant documents to be consulted before dashing off to board the local propeller plane back to Accra. Gazing at the dusty spread of Kumasi – we wondered whether the current airport terminal was adjacent to the original Norman and Dawburn small airport project designed in the 1950s? Suggestions of an earlier architectural history seemed to be revealed in the present day profiles of the domestic airport buildings viewed as we taxied down the empty runway for takeoff.

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‘Tropical Modernism’ on the 10GHC note, The Bank of Ghana in Accra

Accra was in the grips of a major traffic jam, cooler and drier than Kumasi, it proved overbearingly hot to spend more than half an hour getting from the airport to Jamestown to see the exhibition of the Delft-Accra, urban transformation collaboration project we visited on our arrival in Ghana. We met a transformed space and were given a tour by curator and ArchiAfrika member Joe Addo. Joe also spoke of his further plans for the activation of various parts of the Jamestown neighbourhood. A further visit to the National Museum offices, and another slow trip on Accra’s congested highway to the international airport concluded the trip, with Ghana’s independence day holidays over the weekend we weren’t the only ones heading out of town.

Our project continues; the Ghanaian team (Prof. Rexford Assasie Oppong and Irene Appeaning Addo) will begin planning their research trip to the UK in the autumn, and we have considerable sources to continue consulting in the meantime.

 

Notes from Kumasi Part 3

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March 4, 2016
Africa, British Colonial Architecture, Fry & Drew, Ghana, Tropical Architecture
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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

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February 29, 2016
Africa, British Colonial Architecture, Ghana, Tropical Architecture
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Notes from Kumasi

Leaving Accra we departed for Kumasi– there was a change of pace in this dusty Ashanti city. Flying in, the low-rise collection of housing and settlements spreads across the horizon. The city has a hotter, inland climate, but the KNUST campus has this relieved somewhat by its lush mature vegetation. A visit to the recently restored KNUST Staff Club and walk around the campus to the ‘central area’, gave a good feel, and introduction to KNUST.

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KNUST Senior Staff Club House, designed by Cubitt

The following day united us with more visiting staff from University of Edinburgh and we set off on an extended excursion to various buildings in Kumasi city. Fry and Drew’s Prempeh College and Opoku Ware schools, are visited first and present us with a first hand view of this couples’ best exemplars of institutional tropical modernism. Visits followed to Nickson’s Anglican Cathedral, a towering structure, with less external architectural sophistication than F+D’s educational oeuvres, but provided interiors that successfully captured the spirit of high Anglicanism in its light-filled interior.

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Anglican Cathedral, Kumasi, designed by R. Nickson from 1950

A dusk-tinted view of the campus concluded the day’s visitations, its welcome calm was a good antidote to the ‘busy-ness’ of the town. The buildings at the ‘Tech’, as it is colloquially called, sat sedately in their lush tropical setting, showing off Scott and Cubitt’s earliest university campus in Africa.

The historic ‘central’ administrative area of Kumasi formed the focus of the next day. The post office and Ghana electricity building suggest they are examples of late ‘PWD’ post war architecture, whilst the historic memorial to the West Africa Frontier Force, soldiers who fell in WW1 in Abbysinia (Ethiopia) and Burma (Myamaar) give us pause for remembrance. Walking up towards the military museum we find that although it is closed, we can still pay officially for a visit and take the chance. More than an hour later, we are overwhelmed with the sheer military-related history this deceptively small former garrison fort contained. As a colleague commented, “this gave [me] the context” to this city.

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Kumasi GPO, designed by PWD?

Visits to the Asawasi and Fanti Town districts, the latter adjoining the Cathedral area, gave good examples of early housing layouts in Kumasi designs by known planners in some cases. At Fanti Town we inadvertently came across the’ coffin district’, and attempted a stop at the Bantana district of the town to photograph circular hut housing we had identified the day before. The military museum guide had confirmed that these historic huts still provided accommodation for the army. As the garrison was still camped at the site we could not investigate this much further.

Notes from Accra: Part 2

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February 28, 2016
Africa, British Colonial Architecture, Ghana, Tropical Architecture
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Notes from Accra Part 2

Our journey continued with visits to Tessano ‘East’ which had a few remnants of the original site and service planned estate, best exemplified by the police station and a few administrative blocks, which often defined the colonial housing plan layout. A visit to the University of Ghana, at Legon followed. Designed in the late 1940s by Harrison Barnes and Hubbard, the leafy campus sits upon on a hill, high above Central Accra. The campus architecture has a curious oriental aesthetic which defines the its identity, with a number of significant buildings including the Balme Library and the Main Hall. In the African Studies department we joined our British Academy project associate, Dr Irene Appeaning Addo, for a very productive meeting.

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Tisano East Police Quarters

 

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The Grand Hall and Tower at Legon University, Accra

A trip to the Korle Gonno Housing Estate followed, using then new drained highway over the Korle Bu inlet and past the University of Ghana Hospital. The Korle Gonno Estate demonstrated a very early example of decant housing as from conversations with an older resident of the estate it was found out that many of the original residents had been moved from the Jamestown area of Accra to Korle Gonnu, a few miles down the coast. The estate was more intact than Tessano, with a number of the original buildings still evident.

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Korle Gono Housing Estate: regulated street patterns and services

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Korle-Gono Model, c.1920? Photograph held in the National Archives, Kew, UK.

A walk around the “Ringway” estate ,where we resided took us to the “Osu” layout and a road which had a pair of suspected James Cubitt-designed residences . A second visit just before departure from Accra confirmed this, although their external facades had been significantly altered. The pair of residences are now in use by the diplomatic corps.