An African Historical Perspective of Modernism

A TALE FROM 3 CITIES:

FROM TROPICAL TO AFRO MODERNISM: Nigeria 1945-2018
Unpacking the History of Nigerian Modernism through a study of 3 University Campuses

A research and lecture proposal for Gainesville Spring 2020

James Inedu-George + HTL

2019

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AN INTRODUCTION: A TALE FROM THREE CITIES?

Have you seen the city today?

We are living in some form of apocalyptic future of modern architecture, which we can say was the
worst dream of the modernists. There are even rumblings that architecture is of no real importance
anymore, and this goes especially towards modernism.
Unbelievable mudslinging.
But modernism was a hit in Africa. It built a new man from the colonial ashes of Africa too. Wouldn’t
it be an intelligent hypothesis to study what happened and the inventions that emanated in Africa
through modernism, to create a new renaissance in Architecture and urbanism globally?

It is possible to squeeze the narrative of African Late Modernism into the same epochs as their global
counterparts, but it would be found that each period will be named to suite a paradigm that did not
exist in Africa or did, but was not executed with the rules of thought that had been elucidated by the
European Avant Garde. Africa would have the forms of these movements without the corresponding
theories. In what seemed like a theoretical vacuum, there was a narrative that like all things African,
was explored but never catalogued in writing. This narrative that melted over time and all but died, in
the last few years has resurfaced strongly. What was once called Tropical Modernism has been
resurrected round West Africa as Afro Modernism.
Modernism as a movement came to Nigeria through several British and Polish architects. Some, like
John Godwin and his wife, would live in Nigeria in perpetuity. Max Fry and Jane Drew, who had
succeeded with Pure Corbusian Brutalism in India, were the first global stars of architecture to bring
an imported Modernism into the country and that pure Modernism collided with Nigerian culture to
shift the dial of Modernism and form a hybrid. Again, this was Africa as a generator of hybrid form.
This Hybrid form was explored to great lengths at the newly minted University of Ibadan.
Universities in Africa are museums. Buildings are never pulled down and as such they are the perfect
architectural vacuum and create the ideal laboratory conditions to not only study but also catalog a
series of conditions that developed over time. We can therefore go to them in ‘white laboratory
coats’, like scientists and study objectively what happened over the years.
As a background however, the architecture of the period in Africa grew in direct response to broad
based economic and political challenges and this growth that is underpinned by a theory, is based on
a broader reading of Bannister Fletchers tree of architecture, unbeknownst to the practitioners
involved. It was a theory in practice, a poor man’s Modernism.
Four cardinal periods can be traced from this study:

 A Period of external Influence or the birth of Tropical Modernism 

The end of colonialism brought a need for rapid modernization and industrialization for a people who
had little or no experience with modern building techniques. New towns, cities, factories, skyscrapers
and factory parks that will all eventually stop functioning were being hurriedly being built. Britain,
who preferred their Georgian Architecture to any form of Modernism in their own country, exported,
by policy, its modern architecture force, armed with pure principles of the movement to rapidly
modernize Africa. Africa, the creator of globalized hybrids, swallowed Modernism and spat out a new
kind of Modernism: Tropical Modernism or poor man’s Modernism. A stripped down, sparsely
detailed response that responded to the climate was born. This architecture which was strangely
beautiful, had as its fore runners and major advocates, Max Fry and Jane Drew, John Godwin and his
wife Gillian Hopewood, the planner Max Lock etc. A manifesto was produced by Fry and Drew, but
was never touted as one, even if its principles would be used to create buildings endlessly. It was
called Tropical Modernism. Its principles were disseminated in schools of architecture because these
pore runners were teachers in the newly minted universities. The architecture is heavy with excess
shading with few sparks of brutalism. They christened their basic architecture pallet (in response to
Modernism’s concrete, steel and glass) concrete, steel and the breeze block. The basic invention is
that African Glass is the breeze block.

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Figure: Breeze Block becomes African Glass.

Figure: Tropical modernism according to Max Fry

 The Period of Experimentation 

After independence, scores of Nigerian would-be professionals were exported for training in Britain
and the newly confident American Schools of architecture. Primed with hope and a need to equal their
foreign counterparts and with fear for the new graduates from the then international standard Nigerian
Universities and a government with newly minted post war hubris and oil boom caused by the oil
apotheosis in Europe, a new period of experimental architecture was born. These experimenters,
backed with impetus from the myriad of black writers and artists who were making international
headway, like Wole Soyinka and Ben Enwowu etc, not only started to replace the Europeans who had
started to leave the Universities, but started to get a bigger slice of the work to which they responded
with a slow, extremely complexly detailed architecture that was almost impossible to replicate both
technically and financially. The forerunners, like Demas Nwoko created a highly personalized
architecture that was based not on public, but private principles that were never cataloged in any form.
A new post Modernism. The government of the day which was still the major employer of architects,
after building a few buildings by the principals of this movement like Demas’ beautiful but complexly

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detailed Benin Auditorium and David Aradeons’ Unilag Kindergarten, side steps them for less
interesting architects. This is the beginning of the decline. 

Figure: Demas’ Wonderment at Ibadan, also carries forth the Breeze Block as glass idea

 The (Era of the) Great Compromise 

The architects that swallowed the patronage the experimenters frittered away, because architecture for
them was a past time and not a business, were not only business men, but an extremely malleable
bunch. They, in a bid to discredit the works of their peers, fragmented architecture into facade and
building, and emphasized that the focus of the experimenters on the outlook of buildings created a
financial impossibility to make them. They convinced their patrons that a simple shed will solve the
needs of the people, after all, what did they know? This coincided with the deconstruction movement
in the west but was a total opposite of it. Business of Architecture became more important than
architecture itself and with the rise of the Big-Man, who fell in love with Grecian Temples and the
Mc.Mansions of America and bent the malleable architects into making bad deals to make bad copies
of them, even in institutional Buildings, this kind of architecture became the prevalent language
taught in schools and the experimenters suddenly becoming too old and tired to fight. A Faustian
bargain had been made, and it was a bargain that architecture would neither have the tools to win
nor recover from.

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Figure: How Tropical Modernism became the Great Compromise.

 The Afro Modernists

Along with this was the decline of the education system in Nigeria and the corresponding loss of
pedigree of architecture firms and reduction in basic staffing. Another exodus occurred, with rich
parents shipping their kids out to foreign, but not too expensive schools to become architects. They
were exposed to, as history, works of the Tropical Modernists and armed with this and a hubristic
belief that they were better than the locally trained lot, they returned with a faux Tropical Modernism
that looked like the master works slightly but were simply Mc. Mansions dressed in new clothes and
roofed with mono pitch roofs. The stripped-down aesthetic uses Tyrolean as a means of external
expression.

AREAS OF STUDY
 
We have created a process of elimination based on the following criteria and this have led us to
choose 3 universities to study. These criteria are:
1. Age of inception of institution and construction of campus
2. Architects of initial buildings 
3. Volume of new buildings added over time
4. Master Plan
5. International Connections 
6. History 
These criteria left us with three universities to study: the university of Lagos, Ahmadu Bello
University Zaria and University of Ibadan.

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PURPOSE OF STUDY 

From our preliminary research, we have found the following truths that buttress our theory that if
architecture will survive this century it must change entirely its mode of operations and focus:
1. To introduce the subject of African Architectural Intellectualism to a wider audience
2. To create a means of exchange and growth from a treasure trove of information that remains
untapped

Figure: A failed generation.

PROCESS
Having identified our areas of study, the exhibition shall be made with the following methods:
1. Comprehensive Photographic survey of the buildings in the 3 universities
2. Foraging the Archives of the schools to find copies of drawings and early photographs,
budgets and comprehensive project information for a selected group of buildings that we
deem as representative, and the masterplans of these universities. All the drawings shall be
shown in the original architects’ hand.
3. Drone videos and photography
4. Interviews with living architects
5. Foraging Max Locks archive in Middlesex University if possible
6. Measuring some chosen buildings within these universities for 3D printing
7. 3d printing of chosen moments and buildings to create scenes.
8. Can we make a movie of the periods as a mashup? Maybe.

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TEAM
1. A Professor of History from each school in the study.
2. Graduate students of architecture in each school led by a HTL Staff
3. A photographer of our choice.
4. Graphic designer to synthesize information into beautiful and legible diagrams
5. A cartographer for mapping
6. A statistician to synthesize the data emanating from the research
7. A model making team to make models of key buildings, probably 3D Print

INTERVIEWS
While this is not an exhaustive list, we propose interviews with:
John Godwin, Tropical Modernist
Gillian Hopewood, Tropical Modernist
James Cubitt Architect (Alan David CEO), Tropical Modernist
Demas Nwoko, Experimentalist
Wole Soyinka Experimentalist
David Aradeon, Retired Professor, Expermemtalist
Prof. Olusanya University of Lagos, Experimenter
Ade Shokunbi PWDC, leading Afromodernist
Chuka Ihonor ARG Studio, Afromodernist
Tosin Osinowo CMD Atelier, Afromodernist
Papa Omotayo MOE+, Afromodernist
Seun Oduwole, SISA, Afromodernist

CONCLUSION
Unbeknownst to us, as we worried about senseless things, it seems that the traditional architect and
his conventional practice are on the verge of disappearance, this is being exacerbated in Africa. This
study proposes to use history as a watershed.

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