2022/07/01 by Kuukuwa Manful, Innocent Batsani‐Ncube, Julia Gallagher · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #African history and culture studies #Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies #Urban and Rural Development Challenges
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/cura.12505
openalex publication_date 2022/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
This article examines recent attempts to create specifically African forms of modernist political architecture that draw on 'traditional' or 'pre-colonial' aesthetic forms and ideas. Taking examples of three prestigious structures - the presidential palace in Ghana, the parliament in Malawi and the Northern Cape regional parliament in South Africa - the article shows how vernacular ideas have been incorporated into state-of-the-art political architecture, producing new or explicitly 'African' forms of modernism. It explores how such buildings, which draw on 'invented traditions', are used alongside conventional, monolithic representations of the state to produce 'invented modernisms' that both uphold and question the African state as a project of modernity.