Modern Africa, Tropical Architecture

Editors: Ana Tostões, Ivan Blasi

Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Tropical architecture, Design with climate, African modern architecture.
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/48.I.J4XTEGOK

Since the 1990s architectural historians discovered Modern architecture in Africa as part of a cultural production related to colonialism. With the introduction of postcolonial theory in the historiography of architecture, an exclusively ideological critical sense has been developed preventing disciplinary autonomy or practice of architecture and finally condemning any objective look. Recently, the development of concepts such as hybrid or the otherness has been promoting a nuanced historical analysis about architecture and politics in the 20th century in Africa. The recognition that a widespread awareness of Modern Movement architecture has always been serving colonization involves rethinking the basic principle of Modern welfare society and practiced architecture as a mission: how Modern principles have been exchanged, resulting from a Eurocentric culture with the cultures from the East and Africa. In addition, it must be said that the case of Sub–Saharan Lusophone Africa is now beginning to be studied in depth putting together peripheral universes.
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Editorial

Ten Years After, the Continent of Hope and Modern Heritage
Ana Tostões

Lectures

From Sentiment to Science — docomomo comes of Age
John Allan

Essays

The Intertwinement of Modernism and Colonialism: a Theoretical Perspective
Hilde Heynen

Early Modern African Architecture. The House of Wonders Revisited
Antoni Folkers

Transcontinental Modernism: How to Find the Shortcut
Ana Tostões

A Resisting Modern Monument: Huambo Veterinary Academic Hospital
Margarida Quintã

Polana High School. A Modern Building Recovering Case Study in Mozambique
Vincenzo Riso

Introducing Modern Gallery Housing in Maputo: Design Experimentations, 1950-1968
Susana Gomes

Aiton Court: Relocating Conservation between Poverty and Modern Idealism
Hannah Le Roux, Brendan Hart, Yasmin Mayat

Other Modernisms: Recording Diversity and Communicating History in Urban West Africa
Ola Uduku

Otto Koenigsberger and the Course on Tropical Architecture at the Architectural Association, London. Some Notes on the Portuguese Context
Jorge Figueira, Bruno Gil

De-Tropicalizing Africa: Architecture, Planning and Climate in the 1950s and 1960s
Petros Phokaides