Description:

My project revolves around the search for an elusive architecture called "Afro-Modernism." This term, which is invoked a great deal in contemporary Africa, describes a modern, African approach to architecture and urbanism. This is an architectural project that has suffered a great deal from the difficulties experienced by African nations, particularly in the so-called "lost decades" of under-development. As such, Afro-Modernism is often understood as a tragic non-event, a promise of a bright future that has subsided under a weight of tragic history. "African" and "modern" are terms that are often, if implicitly, set against one another in a continent where the modern seems fated to a late arrival. It is the hypothesis of my own research, however, that Modernist architectural ideals were active in African architectures even prior to the colonial period—in the presence of flexible, open-spaces; in the relationship between buildings and a broader landscape; and in the use of monolithic construction materials.

My project proposes to survey examples of this "proto-Modernist" architecture in the Tswana territories of South Africa, and to look also for historical precedents in Southern and West Africa that were built in the heyday of an African regionalist Modernism in the post-independence years of the twentieth century. I have begun to pursue this with a trip to the area of South Africa near the city of Rustenberg, and I hope to visit the other sites later this year. Following this, I am hoping to propose some elements for an architectural language that could be called "Afro-Modern," one that is simultaneously forward- and backward-looking.

Joshua Comaroff MArch/MLA'01