Dakar is a vibrant and bubbling city that has long been one of Africa’s cultural capitals. From monumental historical events like the FESMAN in 1966 and the Biennale of Contemporary African Art, also known as Dak’Art, which is the continent’s largest contemporary art event, art and culture is everywhere in the city and cultural institutions are constantly opening doors and flourishing.¹ The country is also known for its forward-thinking scientists and philosophers such as Cheikh Anta Diop and Felwine Sarr whose works have reminded us, as Africans today, of the rich cultural and scientific common heritage we hold and the necessity to (re)invent our modernity, in our own terms.

This heritage of art and culture at the forefront of the country’s identity is often attributed to our country’s first president, Leopold Sédar Senghor who was also an artist and poet and deliberately established a cultural policy to develop a modern Senegal. One of his theories, that of “asymmetrical parallelism” has inspired architects to create a distinctive post-modernist style, in which geometry is based on fractals and rhythm.² The Law of Architecture of 1978 promulgated by Senghor stated that architectural creation must draw inspiration from the values of negro-African civilisation, particularly the “sudano-sahelian” whilst fulfilling the requirements of modernity.

We hold a range of architectural traditions dating from pre-colonial times with vernacular African architecture that showcased how to build durably with biomaterials in accordance with the climate. These traditions give us a range of constructive techniques but also of urbanism and establishes how to live communally and are still present in the city today as seen in the form of Penc and compound houses.³ These traditional forms are interwoven with other histories such as the colonial French buildings dating back to the 17th century, the Neo-Sahelian architecture of the 1930s of the Marché Sandaga, the bubble houses of Wallace Neff in the 1950s and the post-modern articulation of first Senegalese architects like in the Immeuble Faycal by Cheikh Ngom and the BCEAO tower of Atepa.

A true palimpsest city, Dakar has been a fertile ground for experimentation and forward-thinking and the place where a lot of questions about the future of cities are still being posed, some are unique to the context and others are universal. More specifically, we are faced with the challenges of defining what is the role of the architect, and of architecture, in a country of 18 million people, with less than 300 registered architects, and the absence of a National School of Architecture since 1991. For architects living and working in Dakar, research is critical to learning about the context despite the lack of resources specifically on architecture. To access knowledge and engage in a debate on the place of architecture in our societies, we have to think creatively and work across disciplines ranging from art, craft, anthropology, sociology, and history, and find a new language to convey ideas about architecture to the people and create archives and repositories to make knowledge available.

Community is key to how we, as Africans, relate to one another. As a young architect living in Dakar, I find it important to inscribe myself into a history and tradition where I am able to learn from my living ancestors, the first generation of architects in Senegal such as Cheikh Ngom, Pierre Goudiaby Atepa, Mbacké Niang, Annie Jouga, Jean-Charles Tall to name a few and confront the legacy of their practice with the challenges we face today. My contemporaries are also my teachers, and as a collective we are working together to start research projects such as Dakarmorphose or Habiter Dakar.⁴ Most importantly, my practice of Worofila has enabled me to work with architects and engineers like Doudou Deme to define a language of bioclimatic architecture utilising raw earth and typha to make buildings that reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions of construction in a world where we are increasingly threatened by climate change exacerbated by uncontrolled rapid urbanisation with concrete, steel, and glass.