Perspectives on the architecture of Africa’s underprivileged urban dwellers

Abstract

The expansion of cities in the developing economies of the world has one major urban corollary: the proliferation of unplanned parts of the cities, identified by a plethora of terminologies including bidonville, favela, ghetto, informal settlement, shantytown, spontaneous settlement, squatter settlement and township. Such urban conurbations are characterised by a unique form of architecture that historians find difficult to define. The fact that these architectural productions are overlooked by the historiography of modern architecture suggests a narrowed class‐oriented reading of the aesthetics engendered by the Modern Movement in architecture. Any paradigm introduced to bridge the existing gap should go beyond questions of construction methods and materials, and demonstrate a thorough understanding of the experiences of everyday life in such habitations, that is, the rise of modernity. This paper argues that the social environments which facilitated the development of the architecture of the underprivileged residents in African cities began in the late nineteenth century, when the great capitalist cities of the world began to emerge and expand. We expand on this position by examining the architectural construction of the underprivileged classes from four perspectives: a new urban culture of building practices; radical solutions proposed and provided by governments and agents of social change; visual and literary commentaries by artists and writers; and a survey of the writings of architectural historians on these themes.

Keywords:

• modernity
• housing
• cities
• architecture
• underprivileged classes
• shantytown

Notes

1. See Lyotard (1979). In this context, this essay suggests that Lyotard’s position on the topic of postmodern society reflects thinking about post‐industrial societies.

2. This argument was made by AbdouMaliq Simone in an unpublished lecture presented at the South African Students Institute of Architecture Annual Convention, University of Pretoria, South Africa, in September 2009.

3. To learn more about the formation and the programmes of CIAM, see Le Corbusier (1973).

4. The rhetoric of Fanon’s book also recalls The Communist Manifesto (1848), as well as Eric Hobsbawm’s Industry and Empire (1990), Jean‐Paul Sartre’s Colonialism and Neocolonialism (2001 [1964]), Albert Memi’s The Colonizer and the Colonized (1965), and Peter Abrahams’ Tell Freedom (1954). These texts, I would like to suggest, have in common the bitter impacts of colonialism and capitalism, two ideological forces that are distinct but often worked in tandem and can be conflated with one another, especially within the colonial setting.

5. AbdouMaliq Simone’s concept of the ‘in‐between spaces’ was presented during an interdisciplinary workshop hosted by the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, in Cape Town in April 2009. This is taken from the author’s note.

6. For more on the paintings from Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo, see Jewsiekicki (1994).

7. For more observations on Gerard Sekoto and Ben Enweonwu, see Beier (2001).

8. The contribution of African art to modernism, particularly cubism, is never in doubt and many scholars have written about it. See Ozenfant (1952), Fry (1966).

9. This is a groundbreaking essay as it discusses how modernist artists make the connections between European and non‐European art, and also how they take ideas from the perceived lower culture to the conceived upper culture for the purpose of making art. See Greenberg (2000).

10. These questions were raised by an anonymous reviewer; they gave the author the opportunity to flesh out issues relating to architecture and class or, more appropriately, social hierarchies.