A look at Senegal’s contemporary built environment reveals a recent shift towards industrialized construction practices that borrow from imported building solutions rather than the local techniques and materials that characterize much of post-independence Senegalese modernist architecture. With construction no longer driven by a specialized local workforce, but rather by the dominance of increasingly industrialized industries and the importation of materials, this exhibition focuses on local material cultures (stone, shell, fibre, and clay) and makers to offer a counterpoint to standardized and depersonalized modes of architectural production. By recovering the materials and crafts emerging from Senegal’s territory and ecosystems, it proposes new leads for the study of the country’s architectural histories rooted in sustainability, tradition, non-extractive practice and identity—and their importance for architecture today.  

The exhibition forms part of the research conducted by CCA c/o Dakar curator Nzinga B. Mboup, co-founder of Worofila, with whom we have been collaborating since 2023. Over the past three years, the c/o Dakar program has investigated Senegal’s architectural modernities and the pedagogies, crafts, materials, and practices that have sustained them and continue to do so. The exhibition features material produced with students from the University of Toronto John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, with whom we collaborated during a summer school program in Dakar. Developed in dialogue with local artisans and practitioners, the students’ work has contributed to the research of the exhibition.

Alongside the exhibition, the CCA launches Les modernités sénégalaises imaginées par l’École d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme de Dakar / Envisioning Senegalese Modernities at the École d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme de Dakar during its participation at the African Art Book fair. Edited by Nzinga B. Mboup with Carole Diop and Alexandra Pereira-Edwards and co-published by the CCA and Archive Books (Berlin and Dakar), this oral history of the École d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme de Dakar (E.A.U., 1973-1991) brings together extensive archival documentation and first-hand accounts to uncover the ambition of the post-independence nation-building mission carried out by the first generation of Senegalese architects trained in Senegal.

Curator: Nzinga B. Mboup

Curatorial Assistance and Coordination: Rosalind Jay, CCA; Laura Lipp

Exhibition design: Nzinga B. Mboup

Graphic design: House9

Design development: Sébastien Larivière, Anh Truong, CCA; Laura Lipp, Jilca Abessolo

The CCA gratefully acknowledges the support of the government of Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.