Colonial Architecture and Urbanism in Africa

Colonial architecture and urbanism carved its way through space: ordering and classifying the built environment, while projecting the authority of European powers across Africa in the name of science and progress. The built urban fabric left by colonial powers attests to its lingering impacts in shaping the present and the future trajectory of postcolonial cities in Africa. Colonial Architecture and Urbanism explores the intersection between architecture and urbanism as discursive cultural projects in Africa. Like other colonial institutions such as the courts, police, prisons, and schools, that were crucial in establishing and maintaining political domination, colonial architecture and urbanism played s pivotal role in shaping the spatial and social structures of African cities during the 19th and 20th centuries. Indeed, it is the cultural destination of colonial architecture and urbanism and the connection between them and colonialism that the volume seeks to critically address. The contributions drawn from different interdisciplinary fields map the historical processes of colonial architecture and urbanism and bring into sharp focus the dynamic conditions in which colonial states, officials, architects, planners, medical doctors and missionaries mutually constructed a hierarchical and exclusionary built environment that served the wider colonial project in Africa.

Dr Fassil Demissie, Associate Professor, Department of Public Policy Studies, DePaul University, USA

Contents: Colonial architecture and urbanism in Africa: an introduction, Fassil Demissie; Part I Archaeology of Colonial Architectural and Urbanism: French territoriality and urbanism: General Lyautey and Architect Prost in Morocco (1912-1925), Hassan Radoine; Architectural transfer, Italian colonial architecture in Libya: 'Libyan rationalism' and the concept of 'Mediterraneity', 1926-1942, Vittoria Capresi; Imperial sanctuaries: Arab urban enclaves on the East African coast, Mohamed El Amrousi; The point of pointed architecture: its revival in Europe and its appearance in 'colonial' mosques, Cleo Cantone; Whose colony and whose legacy? Layers of power and hybrid identities in Edendale, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, Debbie Whelan; The turning point in urban policy for British Colonial Africa, 1939-1945, Richard Harris and Susan Parnell; 'Aya Mahobo': migrant labour and the cultural semiotics of Harare (Mbare) African township, 1930-70, Maurice Taonezvi Vambe. Part II Colonial Disciplinary Institutions: Penal architecture: an essay on prison designs in colonial Senegal, Dior Konaté; Imagining a Christian territory: changing spatial strategies in the missionary outposts of Scheut (Kasai, Congo, 1891-1940), Bram Cleys and Bruno De Meulder; Pro fide et patria: Anglicanism and ecclesiastical architecture in Southern and Central Africa, 1848-1903, G.A. Bremner; 'Montcassin, Montserrat or ... an Alcazar?' Architecture, propaganda and everyday school practices in the Collège du Saint-Esprit in Bujumbura (Burundi), Johan Lagae; The grid of Saint-Louis du Sénégal, Mark Hinchman; Buildings as symbols and metaphors of colonial hegemony: interrogating colonial buildings and architecture in Kenya's urban spaces, Maurice Amutabi. Part III Colonial Modernities: Building dominion and the colonial overseas: the culture of British fabrics of financial intervention in (South) Africa at the end of Empire, Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe; Das Neue Afrika: Ernst May's 1947 Kampala plan as c