There is a burgeoning, perhaps overdue, interest in mid-twentieth-century African architecture of the Modern Movement. This period saw independence movements and new self-ruling governments asserting their new nationhood with built projects, often in what was regarded as the International Style or Tropical Modernism, both offshoots of Modernism. These included monuments, convention centers, and hotels, with well-known examples such as the refined brutalism of the Kenyatta International Convention Center in Nairobi, Kenya, or the formal expressionism of the Dakar International Fair, Senegal.
It was also a time when universities were expanded and new ones established, requiring new state-of-the-art buildings and even entire campus masterplans. Several of these included new architecture schools, a new discipline in some countries. Aside from the well-published schemes, two small campus buildings on the edge of architectural discourse illustrate how the Modern Movement became deeply embedded in architectural education and practice in their respective countries. Both were designed by educators in the field who laid the foundations for generations of homegrown architects. These would go on to flourish in a profession that was initially dominated by foreigners, usually from Europe, and keep Modern Movement principles alive in the continent well into the 1980s and beyond.
The first is an examination hall on the campus of the University of Khartoum, Sudan. Soon after the country came under British rule in 1899, the new administrators of Sudan established the Gordon Memorial College on the banks of the Blue Nile River in Khartoum. An impressive red brick building in the ‘colonial’ style, with verandas and symmetry, was constructed. As the college expanded, the campus extended southwards with a pair of buildings continuing the axis of symmetry, the material palette, and the style of construction. But in the 1950s, change was in the air. The country gained its independence in 1956 and one of the acts of parliament passed in the first year was to grant university status to the college and rename it the University of Khartoum. A Sudanese vice-chancellor was appointed.
Related Article
Victoria and Albert Museum Investigates Tropical Modernism Movements in West Africa, Modern India, and GhanaThe university had an engineering department but none for architecture, with the Ministry of Public Works having to send students abroad to study the subject. In 1957 the Department of Architecture was established and Alick Potter was appointed from England to become its founding professor. Potter was pedagogically a fervent Modernist and, in his first year in Khartoum, he was also tasked with designing a new examination hall for the growing student population. This would be the first Modernist building on campus and the first of many to come. Much is known about the design and construction of the Examination Hall from the memoirs of its architect.
The brief for the hall called for a single large space for 500 students seated at widely spaced desks. As it was an examination hall, it had to be column-free to allow an unbroken view during exams and be able to be subdivided into smaller spaces for separate activities. The large single-span space presented a problem as the new government of Sudan had placed restrictions on the import of building materials. This meant that steel girders which would normally be used for such long spans were unobtainable. It was this constraint that led to the Hall’s defining design feature - the undulating hyperbolic paraboloid timber shell that formed the roof and provided the interior with the necessary unbroken view. Made from mahogany timber slats brought by steamer from the south, the timber shell was both the roof structure and the rich interior finish. The walls were made of local brick, with panels of hit-and-miss brickwork encouraging natural ventilation.
The Examination Hall was Potter’s first built work in Khartoum following the principles he taught in the classroom. He would go on to design several other buildings, including staff housing for the university. Abdelmoneim Mustafa, who graduated from Leicester, England, also taught in the department and would go on to design several landmark modernist buildings and private houses in Khartoum in tropical architecture principles. One of the students in the first cohort of the Department was Elamin Muddathir, mentioned in Potter’s memoir, who would go on to design buildings such as Araak Hotel and the Entrance Gatehouse of the Sudan National Museum.
Across the continent in Kumasi, Ghana, is another small building associated with an educator. Like Sudan, Ghana gained independence from Britain in the 1950s and proceeded to expand its higher education institutions. The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) developed from the Kumasi College of Science, Technology, and Arts. Like Khartoum, Kumasi established the country’s first school of architecture in 1957. Together, the two schools are regarded as the first departments of architecture on the continent between South Africa and the Sahara.
KNUST was heavily influenced by foreign architects, including the likes of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew who were also involved in establishing the Tropical Modernism course at the AA. Its impressive campus was masterplanned by the Modernist architect James Cubitt. One name stands out in the architectural history of the university, and it is that of John Owusu Addo. He initially trained as an art teacher before studying architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic in London (now Westminster University). As well as practicing in architecture he was also known for becoming the university’s first native-born lecturer and then head of a department. During his lecturing career, he spent 6 months on a Tropical Architecture training program at the AA. His celebrated built works include the Unity Hall of Residence and the Senior Staff Club House (both designed with Miro Marasovic) at KNUST.
However, a smaller, lesser-known building best exemplifies Owusu Addo’s design and pedagogical approach and it is his first built work on the KNUST campus. The KNUST Community Centre (KCC) was commissioned in 1961 as a communal space for staff members and included a kindergarten and children’s library. It is a single-storey building with an events hall adjacent to an open courtyard, respectively referred to by the architect as the ‘dry court’ and the ‘wet court’, reflecting the local seasonal patterns. Concerts, cinema screenings, and even sporting activities all took place in either of the two spaces, affording a vibrant social and cultural environment for university staff. The tall structure of the hall and the courtyard, both of a rectangular footprint, are surrounded on all sides by ancillary spaces and the welcoming main entrance.
The overall design reflects Owusu Addo’s desire to harness Modernism to suit local social and climatic requirements as well as utilize appropriate materials as opposed to expensive imported ones. It was built of sandcrete blocks with posts and beams in reinforced concrete, creating an assemblage of simple planes. The roofs were flat or shallow pitched in corrugated steel. This modestly sized building would set the tone for the architect’s future projects on campus and beyond. Writers on Ghanaian architectural history lament the use of lavish imported building products instead of local crafts, which Owusu Addo tried to do at the community center.
The KCC in Kumasi and the Examination Hall in Khartoum may be relatively small in scale when considering the architectural histories of Ghana and Sudan, but they both occupy unique positions in the story of African Modernism. They are closely tied with the establishment of early schools of architecture and eminent educators in their respective countries, thus marking the entrenchment of pedagogical and design approaches in the early period of independence. After a period of disrepair, the KCC was refurbished in 2020 and it opened to the public, while the Examination Hall’s roof suffered damage after neglect but was refurbished in 2014. These efforts to preserve the buildings are a testament to their importance. At the time of writing, the Examination Hall remains in an active war zone and its state is unknown.
