African Architects - In and out of Africa - SWAG- Olufemi HINSON YOVO

African Architects - In and out of Africa Perspectives of a young African architect Olufèmi Hinson Yovo

I am a young African architect, with hope to change cities for the greater good. I was born and raised in Benin. I chose architecture because I was longing for a practice that would join artistic abilities and technical skills. After graduating in London and Paris, I returned to the continent. I have been practicing as an architect over two years now. These are my thoughts on the practice in and out of the continent.

I truly fell in love with my field of work in my 4rth year of architecture, when looking for a dissertation topic. My dissertation “Rethinking Africa’s Cities Today Through Local Practices” has led to an urban restructuring project in Cotonou, with urban diversity and the informal sector at heart. For once, I was given the opportunity to analyze the urban context i grew up in. Between England and France where I studied, I quickly found a gap between the proposed curriculum and the Beninese urban context where I grew up. I wondered about the relevance of certain topics in teaching. They didn’t speak to the urgencies back home.

Coincidently my research topic enlightened me on the extent of intervention areas possible for a young architect. It became clear that my architecture should contribute to building the continent, urban and architectural scale. Thus, at the end of my graduation, it was impossible for me to stay in a European context far from the realities that I had just begun to decipher. I thus moved to Abidjan were the architectural scene is challenging, booming with young and established firms, all fresh with perspectives. Koffi & Diabaté Architects seemed to me to be best suited to confront me with the realities of my practice. african architecture education Africa is facing an unprecedented urban context. In the space of twenty years, the urban population of the continent has been doubled and, according to the United Nations, has reached 472 million in 2015.1This figure should almost double to reach billion inhabitants in 2035. From Lagos to Dakar via Abidjan, Lomé, Cotonou, population growth and rural exodus lead to unparalleled urban expansion. These megacities grow in cross-sectional informality.2 In Benin and Cotonou, for example, 79% of the population is in the informal sector and less than 10% of the built environment is professionally produced by architects3. Moreover, in sub-Saharan cities, there are 200 architects on average, 400 in the Maghreb, against 30,000 registered in France4.

Lets look at architecture education in Africa. Most architecture schools are located in Magrheb and South of Africa. In sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa, Soudan, Nigeria and Egypt have the largest number of universities offering architecture in their curriculum. According to Archidaily, University of Cairo, Egypt is the only one included in the top to Top 200 Universities in the World for Architecture 2018 5. In Francophone West Africa there is only one in Togo, Ecole Africaine des Metiers de l’Architecture et de l’Urbanisme, EAMAU. Since few years, the EAA, Ecole d’Architecture d’Abidjan was born. These numbers illustrate how little education we dispose in West Africa, without further interrogation on curriculum adequacy.

First, we have limited architecture schools in our immediate environment. Only those who can afford international schools will go to Europe or America. Universities mostly address subject they are facing. Often we may find similarities with our context, but those remain superficial. Students trained abroad, like me, find themselves disconnected from their realities back home. If the condition for a return are met, we commit and come back. But a lot remain, depriving the continent of well educated architects.

Instead of going north, we could either turn to successful souths. There are several universities in South Africa sharing the same context. Finally why don’t we consider south Americas or Asia? In fact, according to the 2018 ranking Archidaily 6, National University of Singapore is the 10th on 200 schools, right after university of Cambridge. Several national universities namely Chile,Thailand, Japan, China, Brazil hold in the top 50 of the world. In general, in a school we are searching for curricular structure tackling African urban issues including climate change, population growth, informality and education. Fortunately refreshing perspectives are birthed. Initiated by Christian Benimana of MASS Group in Rwanda, the African Design Center, A.D.C is offering a 2 years post-licene course on contemporary African challenges.

1 L. Caramel , “Un milliard de citadins dans vingt ans : l’Afrique est-elle prête ?”, dans Le monde du 30.07.2017 <hhps:// www.lemonde.fr/afrique/ar cle/2017/07/30/l-afrique-en-villes-notre-serie-d-ete-en-28-episodes-15-reporterset-10-000- km_5166712_3212.html> 2 L. Caramel ,” L’ Afrique en villes “, série d’été en 28 épisodes, 15 reporters et 10 000 km dans Le monde 30.07.2017 3 Plan de Développement Communal ,PDC Cotonou. Mairie de Cotonou 4 R. Atoké, Repenser l’architecture africaine,dans Mr Afropolitain accéde le 25.03.2015 5 P. Lynch. Archidaily .The Top 200 Universities in the World for Architecture 2018 .30 Mars 2019.<https://www.archdaily. com/889883/the-top-200-universities-in-the-world-for-architecture-2018> 6 Idem

socio-economic and political factors.

In the case of return, one undergo an important phase of adaptation or retropicalisation. Architecture school and the reality of practicing are far more different. In reality, the socio-economical context we enter is different from what we were taught. Firstly, one has to take in the social structure of west African environment. It is composed of hierarchy, unspoken actions, socials codes that are hard to decipher. Secondly, we quickly realize budget is one paramount parameter in our practice, for the benefit of both the client and the architect.

Thirdly politics play a prominent role in the architectural production as architecture regularly serves political power. The construction of public and private buildings is fully involved in the transformation of urban planning and incidentally shape a city and a way of life. There are several example in west Africa, specially after the Independence. For Houphouet Boigny, first president of in Ivory Coast, architecture was a way to solidify his new power. In that regards he instigated large construction in several town of the country, with the help of architect such as Henri Chomette, and left a unified group of public buildings, social housing. He is now remembered and live forever in the heart of Ivorians. A similar ideology can be found in Patrice Talon of Benin. Since 2016, the Government Program Action, PAG, is focused on buildings social housing, new institutional buildings, roads etc. It can be said of several African president. It contribute to their political power and constitute a leverage for upcoming elections. unexpected opportunities Although the economical and social climate can be challenging, it offers is a great deal of opportunities.

Urbanization is spreading through land, accelerating constructions. Thus arise occasion to work on incredible projects at a large scale. Practically everything is to be done, from roads, to social housing, to estate development, to hospitals and mixed use buildings for all kind of clients. One can find himself designing all scale and type of projects. Often there are still large plots of empty land across west African cities and rural areas. They are still green of palms trees, something uncanny in most areas in the world. Those greenland are yet to be arranged for future urbanization. The architectural parti taken on those first projects will dictate further developments.

If the opportunity of opening an office rise, architects will easily find several prospectives clients with a desire to building single dwellings but often with limited budget. Its on our behalf to be inventive in our approach to the practice of architecture and find suitable solution for all.

Furthermore, our architectural languages are yet to be found, respecting all the types of local climate.

Dwelling on vernacular architecture and needs of contemporary living, we dispose of research materials to develop novel way of living.

In conclusion, there is a large array of opportunities to be taken, from building types, to different clientele, to different types of architecture suited to tropical climates. One can look at the example of Koffi et Diabaté, practicing architect in Cote d’Ivoire. Their portfolios is varied, their clientele affluent and they have developed a language as much on private coastal villas as on their own in house development schemes, namely Les Residences Chocolats or the future Abatta Village, a urbancomplex offering 224 houses, apartments, gyms, office buildings, communal parking and a lagoon promenade. architectural production and representation As of several areas in Africa, foreign hands are largely invested in decision making. Architecture is no different. Often architectural contest are organized by international non profit organization, universities and developments founds. A recent example is in a competition organized by Kaira Looro foundation alongside an Italian architect director of non profit organization in Senegal. The 2017 edition was sacred architecture, and 2018 edition was cultural center. According to the official website 7 in their last 2017 et 2018 editions, there was no African architects involved in the jury. It appears, the 2019 edition for a peace pavilion include in his jury two architect from Mass design.8 All participants submitted wonderful works at both editions and the 2017 winners came from Poland, Romania and Uk, while the 2018 came from Italy and Spain. When looking at finalists they are predominantly from Italy, China. All factors of this competition are foreign, the jury and the winners but the very land and client. Foreign input may be beneficial but it is paramount to include local actors and ensure local communities needs are being met. This is a simple example of African architecture being controlled, designed and published all with the faintest African input. Although those competition help nurturing the debate, they once again deprive us of our capacity of decision making. As African architects we should see opportunities in creating our own platforms and ensuring they reach young African students and practicing architects.

7 KairaLooro 2018Competition.1 Avril 2019.<http://www.kairalooro.com/competition_culturalcenter/giuria.html> 2018 KairaLooro 2017 Competition.1 Avril 2019 <http://www.kairalooro.com/competition/competition.html 2017> 8 KairaLooro 2019 Competition.1 Avril 2019 <http://www.kairalooro.com/competition_peacepavillon/index.html>

Meanwhile, since our architecture elite is being taught internationally, residing in Europe afterwards offers advantages. With the right communication and adequate entourage works can be broadcasted to a large audience including African student based in and out of the continent. It has been the case of remarkable works of David Adjaye ,Francis Kere or Kunlé Adeyemi They are immensely contributing to the contemporary debate and bringing architecture from Africa in places like the Venice Biennale with Adeyemi’s Makoko school on the shore of the Venice Canal. Francis Kére’s remarkable work on rural communities using local material is to be praised. Likewise David Adjaye crystallized his extensive studies on African cities in his book Adjaye Africa, alongside realizations like the Smithsonian Museum of African American History or Alara Store in Lagos to name few. Indeed, when I was in my masters, those were rising figures in the international architecture scene and for the first time we had inspiring African architects showing example. I must share with you how much they filled my heart with pride and hope.

Furthermore when inquiring on African architecture, a simple tangible exercise is typing African architecture on Google. One discovers either traditional architecture or architecture conducted by the starchitects, afore mentioned. When one further inquires on countries it results in several international firms with work based in Africa and very little on African architects based in Africa.

In the meantime, African architects based in Africa are overlooked when they should have accolade for residing on the continent and dealing with its reality on a daily basis. Architecture debate is dominated by the west and African architects initiatives are not always understood. Obvious reasons being that foreign medias don’t often understand the local context and miss the intricacies of the work in context with its immediate surroundings.

Fortunately there is great example of contemporary architecture by MOe+Art in Nigeria by Papa Omontayo, CMDesign atelier by Tosin Oshinowo both getting exposure on Archidaily for their newest realizations, Koffi et Diabaté and SAOTA as older firms. Finally there is a great deal of African architect based in Africa achieving amazing work such as in Abidjan Architecture et Milieu by Sarah Abdel Reda , Architecture Factory, Jeannette Studio by Melissa Kacoutié, in Senegal Lamtoro, Mariama Kamara etc.

Fortunately new architecture medias find their voices on the continents alongside world class competition the African Architecture Award For Website, Archidatum, L’Archicaine, Afritecture .

To conclude,there is an urgency for Africa based architect to shift the paradigm and operate in novel ways. Modern urban and affordable architecture is a large topic to be tacked .We have to decide the narrative and offer various visions. As Issa Diabaté put it in his 5 pillars of architecture9, ‘‘Architects must use the world as a palet. We can draw build, write, think, do Art... as means of expression. The polymathic nature of our trade allows us to tap into any discipline, in order to get our point across and thus, bring life to our action. Our ideas must be nourished by oppenness, understanding of our immediate surroundings. Our solutions must be inventive, novel and push the borders of the usual ,think outside the box“.

Our African urban context is opening ways for unmatched opportunities. We stand at a critical position: to decide our present for ourselves by rooting in tradition and culture in other to provide solutions for today and tomorrow’ challenges. Our cities are yet to be built. Our contemporary architecture languages are yet to be found. Our architecture schools are yet to be erected. Our architecture students are yet to be taught. Our biennial are yet to be opened. Our competitions are yet to be launched. And our great architects are yet to be.

9

Issa Diabate.5 pillars of Architecture. Unpublished.