58 years ago, the British historian Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper stated emphatically, “Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is largely darkness. And darkness is not a subject for history.” Underpinning his dismissal is the belief that writing is superior to speech; that written histories are more valuable than oral.
The AFI’s first major academic project, Speaking History, is a multi-faceted initiative that interrogates and overthrows this Eurocentric and racist assumption. This initiative will take several different forms, from a mini-documentary, Remembering Accra, to conferences and workshops unfolding over the next year. Starting October 13, 2022 and running until February 16, 2022, we will broadcast six 45-minute mini-documentaries, also available as podcasts, featuring in-depth conversations with the architectural historian and former mayor of Accra, Nat Nuno Amarteifio, Professor Lesley Lokko, and Ghanaian architect Ruth-Anne Richardson.
Disseminating ideas about the built and natural environments is a critical part of a robust architectural and urban culture, but how does one go about becoming an architectural writer, thinker, or critic? Our first academic programme, a year-long course, Architectural Writing, Journalism and Criticism, is scheduled to begin in August 2022. The course is open to architects, graduate-level students, journalists and aspiring writers and critics. The course is taught by a stellar group of African and international academics and writers, and will be offered in hybrid online and inperson teaching format. The AFI is a non-accredited, non-professional institute and does not award degrees. Details of course fees, teaching programme, tutors and guest professors, application process and all relevant deadlines will be available from January 2022 on our website. In conjunction with the course, a brand-new prize has been developed in partnership with the US-based PLACES Journal that gives the winning participant the opportunity to work exclusively with PLACES editors to develop an extended essay for publication.
The newly-formed African Architectural and Urban History Network (AFRAUHN) aims to promote, support, develop and disseminate high-quality research and teaching about the architectural and urban history of the African continent and the African Diaspora. It offers a shared platform that aims to promote, support, develop and disseminate high-quality research about the architectural and urban history of the African continent and the African diaspora—including also studying the links to cultural practices, socio-economic conditions, material traditions, building techniques, environmental factors, gender/identity politics. Its inaugural conference, both online and in person, will be held at the AFI in April 2022. AFRAUHN’s founding members are Professor Nnamdi Elleh (Wits, Johannesburg); Professor Murray Fraser (Bartlett, London); Professor Lesley Lokko (AFI); Professor Ikem Stanley Okoye (University of Delaware) and Professor Ola Uduku (University of Liverpool).
While buildings are often associated with domestic politics—as expressions of power or identity—they can also play an important role in international relationships. Architecture can be used to project a country’s image abroad—through airports, which are the first sights that visitors get; televised sports stadia in international events; and in embassy buildings which act as state proxies in foreign capitals. Many African capital cities seem full of buildings that have been erected by foreign powers—during the colonial period or gifted as part of soft power or development projects—which can make the continent appear particularly susceptible to architectural influences from the outside. But the influence works both ways, with high-profile African architects, styles and techniques impacting the ways architecture works around the world. The multi-institutional research project, African State Architecture, is headed by Professor Julia Gallagher (SOAS, University of London). The Accra workshop, organised between Professor Julia Gallagher, Dr Irene Appeaning-Addo (IAS, University of Ghana) and Dr Daniel Mulugeta (University of Birmingham), will look at the role of architecture in Africa’s international relationships.
Architectures of the South: Bruising, Wounding, Healing, Remembering, Returning, and Repairing is an exhibition and workshop conceived by Dr Huda Tayob (UCT, South Africa) and Dr Catalina Mejia Moreno (University of the Arts, London). Drawing on Ananya Roy, they are ‘interested in how material, visual, sonic or textual pieces which turn and return to traces of “bruising”, “wounding”, “healing” “remembering”, “returning” and “repairing” might enable us to comprehend entangled relationships between bodies, the built environment and wider ecologies.’ This exhibition and workshop aims to further creative methodologies of critique, and collectively share and generate ways of looking, talking and thinking about the built environment, architectures, land and violence in non-extractive ways.
Follow the AFI on Instagram, Facebook and our website for further details about Speaking History projects. The AFI is supported by grants from Ford Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
