Architectural practice and the discipline have been integral to what Valentin-Yves Mudimbe calls “the invention of Africa” by the West (along with academic institutions, archives, libraries, and museums.) However, there are increasing efforts to indigenize curricula in African countries in general and across architectural training and practice in particular. Beyond the simplified Global North-South divide, how might we understand the current practices of African architects as well as architecture’s historical role in decolonization, neocolonialism, globalization, and their manifestations across the continent, at both local and regional scales?

This event brought together scholars and practitioners participating in Centring Africa: Postcolonial Perspectives on Architecture, a multidisciplinary research program led by the Canadian Centre for Architecture and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Each researcher offered a short proposition that will analyze and historicize the ways in which architecture manifests transformations in post-independence African countries. This series of propositions discusses how such an African-led understanding of continuity and change can challenge the established methods and disciplinary conventions of architectural and urban studies.

EV 10.625 (Ethnography Lab)
Concordia University
1515 Rue Sainte-Catherine O

Doreen Adengo is the principal of Adengo Architecture.
Dele Adeyemo is a doctoral student at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Warebi Gabriel Brisibe is a senior lecturer at Rivers State University.
Monika Motylinska is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space.
Cole Roskam is an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong.
Huda Tayob is a senior lecturer at the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg.
Moderated by Hone Mandefro Belaye, a Ph.D. student in Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University.

This event was co-organized by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Ethnography Lab and the Concordia African Studies Working Group.