Crumbling modernisms: Luanda architectonic utopias after the boom

Abstract

In Luanda maybe more than elsewhere, controlling the city landscape is synonymous with controlling the polity at large. Despite a tremendous political change in Angola during the twentieth century, the paper traces how the modernist plans elaborated in the late colonial period (1945–1975) have influenced the planning imagination of Luanda until today. It argues that the construction boom that reshaped Luanda at the end of the war in 2002 can be interpreted as a modernist promise to break the middle class free from a hopeless urban fabric by promoting a specific urban aesthetic rather than facilitating social transformation. These continuities are, however, complex and fragile. What happens when the utopia of a city under control starts to lose power? Reflecting on two urban projects built around half a century apart, this paper explores how the kinesthetic experience of the city might constitute an unexpected form of ideological dissent able to disrupt modernism at large. The trajectory of Kilamba City, in particular, is the epitome of the oil-fed reconstruction frenzy of the late 2000s that brutally ended in 2014. Looking at how residents, planners and even state media relate to this project suggests that the unsustainability of a utopian suburban life eventually triggers new political subjectivities and directly challenges the modernist ideology that endured for so long.

À Luanda peut-être plus qu'ailleurs, le contrôle du paysage de la ville est synonyme du contrôle de la politique dans son ensemble. Malgré d'énormes changements politiques en Angola au cours du XXe siècle, l'article retrace comment les plans modernistes élaborés à la fin de la période coloniale (1945–1975) ont influencé l'imagination urbanistique de Luanda jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Il soutient que le boom de la construction qui a remodelé Luanda à la fin de la guerre en 2002 peut être interprété comme une promesse moderniste de libérer la classe moyenne d'un tissu urbain sans espoir en promouvant une esthétique urbaine spécifique plutôt qu'en facilitant la transformation sociale. Ces continuités sont cependant complexes et fragiles. Que se passe-t-il lorsque l'utopie d'une ville sous contrôle commence à perdre de sa puissance? Cet article est une réflexion à partir de deux projets urbains construits à environ un demi-siècele d'intervalle. Il interroge comment l'expérience kinesthésique de la ville pourrait constituer une forme inédite de dissidence idéologique susceptible de perturber le modernisme dans son ensemble. La trajectoire de la ville de Kilamba, en particulier, est la quintessence de la frénésie de reconstruction alimentée par le pétrole de la fin des années 2000 et qui a brutalement pris fin en 2014. En regardant comment les résidents, les planificateurs et même les médias d'État se rapportent à ce projet, il apparait que la non-durabilité d'une vie utopique de banlieue finit par déclencher de nouvelles subjectivités politiques et constitue un défi direct à l'idéologie moderniste qui a duré si longtemps.

Keywords:

• modernism
• urban planning
• architecture
• Luanda
• Angola

Mots-clés:

• modernisme
• urbanisme
• architecture
• Luanda
• Angola

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Statement of Ethics

At the time this study was conducted, IFAS did not require ethical approval to be sought for this type of research.

Notes

1 José Eduardo dos Santos was nominated by the then party-state to succeed the father of Independence in 1979. He left office in August 2017, after 38 years in office and only one official electoral win (in 2012).

2 Exposed at the fourth International Congress of Modern Architecture in 1933, but published for the first time in the French journal Technique et Architecture in 1944, the Athens Charter lists the key principles of modern architecture. Later republished by Le Corbusier, the Athens Charter is widely recognised as the founding text of functionalist architecture (systematic differentiation of the four key ‘functions’ of space: Habitation, Leisure, Work, and Traffic). Although the ‘-ism’ of ‘modernism’ remains contested amongst architects, the Athens Charter is also unquestionably a marker of a peculiar ideology, based on a strong critique of existing urban conditions at the time and on an insisting call (‘exigence’) for strict technical solutions. The original document itself concludes that its 95 bullet-points indeed establish a ‘doctrine’.

3 See, in particular, the collective work of architects called ‘Modernidade ignorada’: http://cargocollective.com/arquitecturamodernaluanda/Presentacion.

4 This idea of gradual urbanisation has been recently revived in Angola through the debate that surrounds the introduction of democratically elected governments (autarquias). An old chestnut of Angolan politics, autarquias, has been on the top of Lourenço’s agenda since his election in 2017. Elections were announced for 2020 but on the condition of ‘gradualism’. Given the lack of readiness of local institutions, parliament proposed either a ‘functional gradualism’ (gradually giving full autonomy) or a ‘geographical gradualism’ (gradually extending the elections to all municipalities). Pro-democracy groups strongly denounced both options but were especially worried that ‘geographical gradualism’ result in a contemporary enactment of old colonial segregationist patterns.

5 A public-friendly PDF of the plan was initially made available on a dedicated website (www.planoluanda.com), but the site stopped working in 2020.

6 The word ‘musseque’ is locally used to designate any neighbourhood built outside the limits of the old European centre (from consolidated houses integrated to the infrastructural networks of the city to precarious slums located far outside the urban core).

7 Not his real name.

8 This quote and all that follow come from fieldnotes taken in Luanda in October 2019.

9 Yearly economic prospects are available online: http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects. Of course, figures might have looked different at the time of the elaboration of the plan but even then, stable economic growth in an oil-dependent country was a highly risky bet.

10 Following Geraldo, only two Angolan planners participated in elaborating the plan. They are not mentioned in the public release.

11 See, for example, the critiques made by Giddings and Hopwood (2006) towards British masterplans or by Watson (2014) towards new city planning practices in Africa.

12 This blurring of the boundaries between governmental communication and planning imperatives leads to some interesting developments in the PDGML: a full-page portrait of president Dos Santos appears on page 4, the section on environmental preservation describes an agenda that ‘has always been our priority’, leaving the reader confused about who is behind the discourse.

13 ‘Luanda, a world city for foreigners, by foreigners?’, asks anthropologist Claudia Gastrow (2016) after she collected testimonies of local residents denouncing ‘neocolonialism’ in the intervention of foreign investors, planners and builders in Luanda.

14 The idea of ‘aesthetic dissent’ discussed in this section comes from Claudia Gastrow’s work, specifically, her PhD thesis (2014) and her paper published in Antipode in 2016 entitle ‘Aesthetic Dissent: Urban Redevelopment and Political. Belonging in Luanda, Angola’. As I explain below, I prolong her analysis of ‘the expression of political dissent via a language of aesthetics and materiality’ (Gastrow 2016, 3) by reflecting not only on ‘language’ but also on the kinetic experience of the city.

15 See Buire (2017) for a general timeline of the project.

16 Further work is necessary to elaborate on what planning is going to be like in Luanda as the post-boom low becomes the new norm of Angola’s economic pace but the current work led by Angolan urbanists, such as Sylvia Croese (University of Cape Town) or Pedro Cidade Vemba (Methodist University of Angola), show the growing influence of United Nations ideas and principles.