‘The Influence of Fry and Drew’ Conference, Keynote 1

Hilde Heynen, ‘Modernism, colonialism and feminism. Theoretical reflections on the entanglements in the life and work of Jane Drew’.

The entanglement between modernism and colonialism has been a topic of serious consideration in recent decades. Following the lead of Edward Said, it is argued that colonial discourse was intrinsic to European self-understanding: it is through their conquest and their knowledge of foreign peoples and territories (two experiences which usually were intimately linked), that Europeans could position themselves as modern, as civilized, as superior, as developed and progressive vis-à-vis local populations that were none of that. The crucial – if often only implicit – role of colonial discourse in the endeavour of modernism thus has to be acknowledged. Likewise it seems that modernism and feminism are in some sort of entanglement: they share – at least – the ideals of emancipation and liberation for all, although it is also clear that modernist discourse favours male protagonists and masculine interests.

Jane Drew as a person and an architect found herself in the midst of these entanglements. As a committed participant in the Modern Movement, she was engaged in questions of housing in the UK as well as elsewhere, in British colonies or ex-colonies. Her commitment to the Modern Movement was not contradictory to, but rather continuous with, her service to the colonial state. Her involvement in the construction of Chandigarh was also consistent with the hegemonic position of modernism, criticized by later postcolonial thinkers. As one of the very few active woman architects of her generation, she must have encountered quite some antagonism and sexism from colleagues, clients and superiors.

This lecture will ponder these entanglements, inquiring about Jane Drew’s position as a woman architect in the tropics, investigating whether the ‘colonial’ conditions offered her a kind of laboratory for deploying her full capacities as an architect, which might have been more difficult in the more conventional environment of the UK. The lecture will not focus on the life and work of Jane Drew as such, but rather use these as a starting point for developing some theoretical reflections.

Hilde Heynen is Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning at the University of Leuven. Her research focuses on issues of modernity, modernism and gender in architecture. She is the author of Architecture and Modernity. A Critique (MIT Press, 1999) and the co-editor of Back from Utopia. The Challenge of the Modern Movement (with Hubert-Jan Henket, 010, 2001), Negotiating Domesticity. Spatial productions of gender in modern architecture (with Gulsum Baydar, Routledge, 2005) and The SAGE Handbook Architectural Theory (with Greig Crysler and Stephen Cairns, Sage, 2012). She regularly publishes in journals such as The Journal of Architecture and Home Cultures.

Fry and Drew: Conference

By Jessica Holland

July 10, 2013

Fry & Drew

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‘The Influence of Fry and Drew’ Conference, Abstract 5

Jacopo Galli, ‘Edwin Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew – Architecture as a Climatic Device’.

With their numerous designs in West Africa from 1949 to 1960 Edwin Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew established an innovative design system that was later conceptualized in their book Tropical Architecture in the Dry and Humid Tropics in 1964. What is now known as Tropical Architecture consisted in a process of transculturalization of European modernism that was heavily influenced by climatic and social concerns. This design system can been seen as the sum and intersection of different climatic devices that were specifically thought in order to respond to one or more climatic inputs. Otto Koenisberger saw African vernacular architecture as a pedagogic model for the design of climatic devices: materials and technologies were used in order to achieve a balance with the environment.

Fry & Drew applied this concept and generated an impressive amount of architectural devices that were modified and overlapped in an anti-vernacular way. This can be considered an embryonic step towards a quantitative architecture not solely based on the designer’s genius but on a set of scientific data that influenced and transformed architecture.

This assumption does not affect the audacity and boldness of design: the research on innovative building materials or the regeneration of historical building techniques. Every design choice in Tropical Architecture was taken respecting the concepts of convenience and opportunity, shading devices or breathing walls took form based solely on climate and are a great example of anti-vernacular regional modernism.

Through a critical redrawing of the buildings it is possible to comprehend design mechanisms in order to verify how the different devices were used in response to the different climatic conditions. The research does not intend to verify the technological functionality of the devices but the architectural coherence displayed in their use. Understanding this design system allows us to retrace how architectural design could be shaped by climatic factors and scientific data, in order to comprehend an important step in the history of transnational modernism.

Jacopo Galli is a PhD candidate at IUAV University in Venice. He holds a bachelor degree in Architecture from the University of Parma and a masters degree in Sustainable Architecture from IUAV University in Venice. He is currently working on a dissertation that investigates British Tropical architecture in West Africa of the 1940s and ’50s as an innovative design system representing an embryonic stage of climate responsive design. The dissertation is particularly focused on the book Tropical Architecture in the Dry and Humid Tropics seen as the masterpiece of Edwin Maxwell Fry’s and Jane Drew’s entire career. The analysis of the book will be carried out through an understanding of the main influences on Fry and Drew’s African designs such as Tropical Medicine and Colonial Technologies and through a critical redrawing and analysis of the buildings used as examples in the manual.

Fry and Drew: Conference

By Jessica Holland

July 5, 2013

Fry & Drew

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‘The Influence of Fry and Drew’ Conference, Abstract 4

Christine Hui Lan Manley, ‘Modern City versus Garden City: Housing at Harlow New Town’.

During post-war reconstruction debates, Garden City supporters promoted low-density housing, while modernist architects advocated high-density high-rise regional planning. As members of the MARS Group, E. Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew fell into the latter camp, with Fry playing a key role in the development of the MARS Plan for London. The post-war New Towns program provided the ideal opportunity to test these new planning concepts, especially since a number of MARS Group members were commissioned to design the towns. Gibberd was selected to plan Harlow and was determined to create a modernist town with an urban character. Naturally, he turned to fellow MARS Group member Fry to design housing in the first neighbourhood, Mark Hall North.

In partnership with Jane Drew, Maxwell Fry designed housing groups ‘Tanys Dell’ and ‘The Chantry’ at Harlow. However, hampered by the low density recommendations, the housing in Mark Hall North was considered a ‘failure’ in 1953 by The Architectural Review. This paper seeks to examine the process involved with the design of the neighbourhood to show that a modernist agenda was, in this instance, compromised by the overpowering influence of the Garden City model.

By analysing the distribution and layout of housing in Mark Hall North, this paper will reveal how Gibberd, Fry and Drew sought to create higher density housing groups in an attempt to orientate the New Town toward the modernist high-density vertical city paradigm and away from the low-density Garden City planning model. However, government design publications and Ministry officials had envisaged Garden City type planning for the New Towns. This paper will argue that despite the various strategies employed by Gibberd, Fry and Drew at Mark Hall North, ultimately, the prevailing inclination toward Garden City planning restricted the creation of a modern urban character at this first neighbourhood in Harlow.
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Christine Hui Lan Manley is currently completing her PhD at the Mackintosh School of Architecture. Her research centres on the concept of ‘urbanity’ – a notion which developed in Britain through architectural discourse during the 1940s and ’50s. Christine’s PhD research investigates how urbanity was defined and understood by the architectural avant-garde, and how the idea was applied to the design of housing in the Post-War New Towns.

Christine became interested in housing design whilst working for a London-based architectural practice, where she designed plans for high density sites and worked on innovative social housing schemes. Her interest in the development of housing in a historical context arose during research carried out during Diploma and Masters studies at the Mackintosh School. Christine is a member of the C20th Society and currently edits their ‘Building of the Month’ feature. Her PhD research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Fry and Drew: Conference

By Jessica Holland

July 2, 2013

Fry & Drew

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‘The Influence of Fry and Drew’ Conference, Abstract 3

Łukasz Stanek, ‘Tropical Architecture as Cold War Discourse in Post-Independence Ghana (1960–1966)’.

While scholars have convincingly linked the genealogy of tropical architecture to the colonial networks of the British Empire within the processes of decolonization, the role of Cold War dynamics in this genealogy has been much less recognized. This paper fills in this gap by discussing the cosmopolitan architectural practices in Ghana during the presidency of Kwame Nkrumah (1960–1966), with the specific focus on the Accra International Trade Fair. This ensemble was designed by architects and engineers from socialist Poland according to the principles of “tropical architecture” as advocated by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew: the translation of modernist architecture according to local climate, technology, and society. The construction of the Fair was a part of broader debates on “building in the tropics” in the Soviet Union and Poland, in response to the engagements of professionals from socialist countries in Europe in Africa and Asia since the late 1950s. Yet in spite of being one of the most prominent ensembles in Nkrumah’s Accra, the Trade Fair was never included to publications about “tropical architecture” nor was it presented in the journal “Western African Architect and Builder” which promoted “tropical architecture” well into the 1970s. This absence needs to be seen as expressing the “intellectual division of labor” specific for the Cold War that allowed acknowledging the work of architects from socialist countries as technological objects, but not as architectural ones.

Based on archival research and fieldwork in Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and Ghana, this talk will show how the discourse on “tropical architecture” offered a way for expressing ideological and economic antagonisms among architectural practices in mid-1960s Accra. At the same time, this paper will signal points of connection among practitioners from both sides of the Iron Curtain in early post-independence Ghana, including the School of Architecture in Kumasi, where Fry and Drew would discuss the principles of tropical architecture with colleagues from Hungary and Yugoslavia.

Łukasz Stanek is the 2011–2013 Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in Visual Arts (CASVA), National Gallery in Washington and Lecturer at the Manchester Architecture Research Centre, University of Manchester. Stanek authored Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and he is currently editing Lefebvre’s unpublished book about architecture, Vers une architecture de la jouissance (1973). Stanek’s second field of research is the transfer of architecture from socialist countries to Africa and the Middle East during the Cold War. On this topic, he published ‘Miastoprojekt Goes Abroad. Transfer of Architectural Labour from Socialist Poland to Iraq (1958–1989)’ in The Journal of Architecture (17:3, 2012) and the book Postmodernism Is Almost All Right. Polish Architecture After Socialist Globalization (Fundacja Bęc-Zmiana Warsaw, 2012). He has taught at the ETH Zurich and Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Fry and Drew: Conference

By Jessica Holland

June 27, 2013

Fry & Drew

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‘The Influence of Fry and Drew’ Conference, Abstract 2

Ana Tostões and Zara Ferreira, ‘How to be Modern and Design with Climate: Fry and Drew’s Legacy and the School Programme in Mozambique (1955-1975)’.

Maxwell Fry (1899-1987) and Jane Drew (1911-1996) headed an essential role on the design with climate issue. They contributed to reveal the possibility of a Modern Movement architecture applied to the tropics showing what was beyond the Brazilian Modern and its formal answer. An efficient and technical approach was achieved connecting design tools with sanitarian requirements, establishing a methodological and pedagogical brand disclosed by their research, lessons, publications (Fry; Drew, 1964) and buildings (Kultermann, 2000, 54).

Their action was reflected on the development of the Modern Movement architecture in the former African Portuguese colonies, throughout the ’50s and ’60s, namely in Mozambique: in the scope of the African investment overseas conducted by the “Estado Novo” dictatorship (1926-1974) the educational programme was the main focus following other African countries strategies, according to updated UNESCO policies.

Though, in the beginning the high schools buildings were designed in the metropolis, Lisbon, through the Colonial Urbanization Office (GUC), soon the role would be taken by the local offices receiving influences from the Tropical Architecture in Dry and Humid Zones at the Architectural Association course, in London, sponsored by GUC to their employees. At the same time, two facts come together: the wave of Portuguese architects’ emigration to African colonies and the increasing autonomy of these territories (Tostões; Oliveira, 2010). So, one may say that Fry and Drew prepared a whole generation of Portuguese architects skilled on tropical climates design methods.

In Mozambique, it gave rise to the development of the Public Works Department, where a school trail-blazer concept was developed by Mesquita (1919-?). Widely developed between 1955 and 1975 (the year of the colonies independence), seeking for an efficient energetic performance and comfort in a tropical climate, a modus operandi has been conceived and applied (Ferreira, 2012).

The paper aims to demonstrate how the Modern Movement ideology has been locally interpreted, following Fry and Drew knowledge and pedagogy. Their influence will be analyzed in order to enlighten the school building culture using some case studies.

References:

FERREIRA, Zara, O Moderno e o Clima na África Lusófona. Arquitectura escolar em Moçambique: o programa de Fernando Mesquita (1955-1975). Dissertation to obtain the degree of Master in Architecture. Lisbon: IST-UTL, 2012.

FRY, Maxwell, DREW, Jane, Tropical Architecture in the Dry and Humid Zones. London: BT Batsford, 1964.

KULTERMANN, Udo; FRAMPTON, Kenneth, World Architecture 1900-2000: A Critical Mosaic. Central and Southern Africa, Vol. 6, China Architecture & Building Press, Springer-Verlag Wien New York, 2000

TOSTÕES, Ana; OLIVEIRA, Maria Manuel, “Transcontinental Modernism. M&G as an Unité d’habitation and a factory complex in Mozambique”, DOCOMOMO International Journal 43 – 2010/2 Brasilia 1960-2010, Winter 2010, pp. 70-73.

Ana Tostões is an architect, architectural historian and chair of Docomomo International (www.docomomo.com). She is Associate Professor with Habilitation at IST-UTL, Lisbon, where she is in charge of the architectural PhD programme. Her research field is the history of architecture and the city of the twentieth century, in which she develops an operative view, oriented towards the conservation of modern architecture, focusing especially on post-war architectural culture and on the relations between European, African and American production. On these topics she has published books and scientific articles and curated exhibitions. She’s actually coordinating the research project (PTDC/AUR-AQI/103229/2008) EWV: Exchanging World Visions. The project aims to study Sub-Sahara African architecture and planning mostly built in Angola and Mozambique during the modern movement period.

Contact: ana.tostoes@ist.utl.pt

Zara Ferreira is an Intern Architect and Research Fellow at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST-UTL), Master in Architecture at IST-UTL with a dissertation entitled The Modern and the Climate in the Lusophone Africa. School buildings in Mozambique: the Fernando Mesquita concept (1955-1975). Based on the systematic analysis of case studies, on which she carries out the analysis and the interpretation of the systems and technologies designed to respond to specific levels of comfort for the tropical climate, along with the analysis of the organization of the built environment and the functional typology, the essay aims to contribute for the characterization of the school’s architectural program (developed under the scope of the research project EWV: Exchanging World Visions).

Contact: zara.c.ferreira@ist.utl.pt

Fry and Drew: Conference

By Jessica Holland

June 25, 2013

Fry & Drew

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‘The Influence of Fry and Drew’ Conference, Abstract 1

Christina Papadimitriou, ‘Houses of Chandigarh’.

“Birth is an impingement by an environment which insists on being important… To be born or to relive birth is to experience the feeling of being in the grips of something external.” Donald Winnicott

This paper will narrate the story of the housing schemes of Chandigarh built in a period of anxiety shortly after India’s independence in 1947. Following Nihal Perera’s argument that Chandigarh is a hybrid of imaginations negotiated between multiple agencies rather than a single author’s creation, the narrative will try to give an account of the different voices expressed and the different visions of modernity moving between individuals – as diverse as Otto Koenigsberger, Albert Mayer, Matthew Nowicki, Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret – and national and institutional platforms.

The main argument will be made in terms of international relationships, with major and minor players, as they manifest themselves in the building of the houses of Chandigarh and not in post-colonial terms since the latter frame of thought has the tendency to reduce the ex-colony to the role of a post-colony. Thus, by focusing on Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, this paper will compare their housing projects in Chandigarh not only to their work in West Africa or in the Middle East, as is usually the case, but also with their projects in Britain such as the two schemes designed for Harlow, the Tany’s Dell and Chantry housing groups. Since Fry and Drew were also responsible for the bye-laws provisioned for Chandigarh, similarities and differences between them and those of the London County Council will also be drawn. The paper’s aim is to demonstrate a process of modernization that affects everyone but where “effects” on a specific subject depend on the latter’s position in the instance of modernization.

Christina Papadimitriou is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University where she received her M.A. in 2011. She also holds an M.A. (Dist.) in Histories and Theories from the Architectural Association in London, a Diploma (Dist.) in Architecture from the University of Patras and a Diploma in Art and Archaeology (Dist.) from the University of Athens. Her dissertation studies the MARS Group in Britain from 1933 until 1957. Starting as a marginal architectural group, MARS acquired a preeminent position both in England and abroad after the Second World War and played an important role in the way the modern movement was perceived and disseminated globally. The dissertation takes on specific themes of shared interest as indicated by the group’s organized committees and narrates the MARS story through exemplary but formally diverse solutions to the obstacles the group had identified in Britain’s way to modernism.

Contact: cpapadim@princeton.edu

Tropical Architecture: Current Research

By tagguest

June 17, 2013

India, Tropical Architecture

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Designing Buildings in 15 Minutes: A day in the life of Otto Koenigsberger, Government Architect to the Govt. of H.H. the Maharaja of Mysore

by Rachel Lee

The following extract is from a private letter written by the architect, planner and educator Otto Koenigsberger (1908-1999) to his family in 1940. He probably typed it in his small room in the bungalow he shared with the Brinitzer family at 42 Infantry Road, Bangalore, India. Like the Brinitzers, Koenigsberger, a native Berliner with a Jewish background, was in exile.

Due to a fortuitous family connection, in 1939 Koenigsberger had been contracted to work as an architect in Princely Mysore, a South Indian state with a limited amount of independence from British colonial rule. Thus his boss was not a member of the British Raj, but the ambitious Dewan (Prime Minister) Mirza Ismail, whose favourite pastime was building. In November 1939 Koenigsberger was promoted to Government Architect, the highest position for an architect in the state. As the humorous extract reveals, although his job kept him very busy, it did not prevent Koenigsberger from trying to build up a private practice or enjoying himself in his new home . . .

“I shall give you a short review of one day in the life of the Government Architect to the Govt. of H.H. the Maharaja of Mysore.

My boy appears at 6:30 am in my room in order to wake me up. This has the result that I go on sleeping till quarter to or quarter past seven. Which of the two depends on the situation whether I must go and see the Dewan in his Bungalow or not. He belongs to those immorally hard working people whom I thoroughly dislike and has already one hour of hard work finished when I come to see him at 7:30. The next item is an enormous breakfast at 8 and instruction of my private draughtsman at 8:30 – Yes I have a private draughtsman and ‘secretary’. He is an Angloindian with the nice name Eric J. Crane, is rather shy, not too bright, and of course very unreliable. He comes for three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon and tries hard to learn how to do architectural drawings, so that I may be well armed and prepared when the great wave of private work comes of which I am daydreaming.

If there are no other inspections (on most days there are, my average is about 30 miles a day inside Bangalore only) I go to the office between 9 and 10 in order to have some quiet hours before my six men arrive at 11.

The morning post brings about 5 to 6 requests for designs per day, say one hospital, one bungalow for an officer, one railway station, one cinema, and a number of smaller tasks and alterations. In addition comes a tray full of files, for all building plans, small or big must go through my hands before they can be sanctioned by Govt. In Europe I would have worked about a week to design a hospital and about another week or fortnight to prepare the drawings. Here the main idea and the sketch must be ready in ten to fifteen minutes and then the assistant or draftsman must prepare the plans within two to four days. Of-course these designs cannot be so well worked out as mine were at home. To keep up at least a certain standard of exactness and efficiency I must permanently go round from one to the other to correct the plans and to tell them what they must do. In the intervals between my wanderings from one drawing board to another I try to attend to my files, to answer letters, and to make a number of sketches and small plans which I can finish myself in less time than it would need to explain to somebody else how to do them.

At 1:15pm I go home for lunch and for new instructions for my home-draftsman and back to the office at 2 or 2:15. The afternoon is usually filled with visitors who want all sorts of technical instructions or come discussing of new building schemes. Of-course only a very small percentage of our many designs will be built, and if they are it will take at least half a year or a year till they are started. That gives the Dewan who plays the role of ‘Bauherr’ [client] in this game ample time to ask for new schemes and accordingly revised designs.

Usually I am home at 6 in the afternoon. I sit down for a late but very big tea which usually takes about half an hour, not because I eat so much, but because I am just lazy and enjoy my rest. Every second day a Kanareese lesson follows from 6:45 to 8 or 8:15. If there is no lesson this time should be spent with learning what we had the day before, but so far I have always found an excuse not to learn so that the result of a fortnight of lessons with a very good teacher is very poor.

Dinner is celebrated from 8:30 to 9:30 when we hear the news from England. As it usually is a very good and rich dinner you can imagine that there is not much energy left for letterwriting in the evening.

This description of my life is unadequate in two points: (1) it sounds boasting and at the same time complaining. But it is certainly not meant to do so. I thoroughly enjoy my work. I only tried to explain that a day of permanent designing is somewhat exhausting. (2) It gives the picture of rather a dull and narrow (English for ‘spiessig’) life. But actually I am meeting interesting new people nearly every day, studying a most interesting country, reading a few good books (for instance the latest Aldous Huxley ‘After many a Summer,’ which I enjoyed very much), seeing a film once in a while and hearing a good deal of Indian and European (gramophone) music.”^{^[1]}

Note: Although Koenigsberger’s native language was German, the outbreak of World War II forced him to communicate with his family, who were by then living in the USA and UK, in English – letters in German were censored or confiscated.

The images are reproduced with the permission of the Koenigsberger family.

Email Contact: rachel.lee@gmx.net

[1] Koenigsberger Papers at the Jewish Museum Berlin: Extract from a letter from Otto Koenigsberger to Kaethe Koenigsberger dated 7 February 1940

Fry and Drew: From the Archives

By Jessica Holland

June 11, 2013

Fry & Drew

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The Bauhaus Effect

In late 1934 Walter Gropius left Nazi Germany with his wife, Ise. Taking up Jack and Molly Pritchard’s offer to stay in one of their Isokon flats, at Lawn Road in Hampstead, Gropius joined Maxwell Fry in a partnership that would last until his appointment at Harvard University in 1937.

Fry and Gropius worked with Jack Pritchard on a series of projects for Isokon buildings – at sites in Manchester, Windsor, and Birmingham – although all went unrealised. The ‘Isokon 3’ scheme at St. Leonard’s Hill on the outskirts of Windsor was the most developed of these and featured in a 1935 article entitled ‘Cry Stop to Havoc – or preservation by development’ by the Architectural Review. The article’s alarmist title reflects contemporary debate regarding the spoilation of the English countryside by suburban sprawl, which new organisations such as the Council for Preservation of Rural England sought to address. Fry and Pritchard were familiar with such ideas through their involvement with the Design and Industries Association, and used this debate to push forward their plans for a modernist development; as Pritchard wrote, Isokon aimed ‘to make a profit from building in the country without spoiling the countryside’.

Page showing ground floor plan of Isokon 3, from ‘Cry Stop to Havoc’, Architectural Review, 1935.

Situated amidst 33 acres of parkland of a ruined Elizabethan country house, the article demonstrates how the Isokon 3 development might preserve 32 acres of the park as open space. With the historic setting and views out towards Windsor Forest, the combination of English heritage and modern European architecture was promoted as unique. The AR article is full of photographs of existing camellia bushes and references to Eton and Windsor Castle, alongside seductive sketches of light, airy rooms with unobstructed views. Pritchard wrote: ‘The combination of Gropius and Fry should be important … Fry’s own very English point of view combined with Gropius’ experience should produce a fine scheme.’ This anglicization of Gropius’s Bauhaus ideas was a canny move and the scheme was given approval – unlike many modernist projects of the period. However the company was unable to raise the necessary funds, despite Pritchard’s best efforts, and Isokon 3 remained unbuilt.

Fry and Drew: Conference

By Jessica Holland

June 5, 2013

Fry & Drew

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CFP Deadline Extended

**ABSTRACT DEADLINE EXTENDED TO SUNDAY 9TH JUNE 2013**

Thanks for your great response to the call for papers.

We have received a few late entries this week, so if you’ve missed the 2nd June deadline but would like to submit a proposal, please send in your abstract by the 9th of June and we’ll add it to the pile… Thanks!

Notifications will be still sent out by mid-June, with details of speakers and a conference programme to follow.

Postages and Packages

By Academic Consult for Architecture, Construction and Built Environment

May 19, 2013

British Colonial Architecture

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With the current array of communication media available in today’s world – the electronic or email, the short message service or SMS, voice and video calls, sharing and exchanging of information and ideas through social media – it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine a world where most of these did not exist. It is also of interest that a good number of the media have only come into use in the last twenty years approximately.

1901 one shilling southern Nigeria postage stamp

1901 one Shilling Southern Nigeria postage stamp

Communication has always been a top priority of the human existence. This is perhaps attested to by the picture writings of archeological findings on ancient cave walls. Postal communications (and the radiotelegraph developed later) were probably the only means of long distance communication in Nigeria during the early and mid-twentieth century period of colonial rule. It may also appear that next in the line of priorities after hospitals, was the development of the colonial Post Office. The provision of hospitals and health care infrastructure were of top priority. The first few years of European presence had resulted in so many deaths for the new settlers, it unfortunately earned the African continent the sobriquet “white man’s grave.”

Post offices were of almost equal importance. They provided an undisrupted flow of communication between the colonial office and the administration in Nigeria, and thereby represented a pivotal tool in the colonial administrative process. Their function was however not limited to providing postal services; the post offices were also often equipped with telephone exchange facilities. Aside from their role in relaying official correspondences, post offices equally helped colonial civil servants, service personnel of the Royal West African frontier force (RWAFF) and other settlers of the time keep constant touch with families back home.

The ‘Sorting’ office

The Public Works Department (PWD) had designed and built these post offices across Nigeria as part of the wider colonial building program. As with most other public buildings of the time, the designs were based on ‘Type’ categories. These categories had perhaps reflected the postal requirements of various settlement types. This ranged from village, to native administration center, division, provincial headquarters and colony. Like the example shown below, the post offices were mostly designed in simple geometric open plan forms. The postage and package sorting office is the focus of activities, and has a larger dimension than the other spaces. The entrance features an open porch, fronted by a classical archway and topped by a parapet. The hipped roof form provides a conical, prism shaped backdrop, that makes the design exude a note of brilliance, simplicity and well-proportioned forms.

1946 PWD Post Office drawing