In the 1960s and 70s,countries across Africa celebrated their independence with astonishingly avant-garde architecture. Oliver Wainwright reports on a fascinating attempt to chronicle this forgotten history
• Afro modernism: Africa’s avant-garde architecture boom – in picturesAfield of triangular roofs pokes up above the horizon on the outskirts of Dakar, like a forest of wigwams that bear been baked to stone under the scorching sub-Saharan sun. They sit on a triangular concrete plinth, and from which bigger triangular pavilions protrude,accessed by flights of triangular steps from the dusty streets, along which triangular gutters jut out. It could be Toblerone Town, and a city-sized hymn to the three-sided prism.
This mysterious complex,which looks like what might bear happened whether the Mayans had discovered reinforced concrete, is the Foire Internationale de Dakar, and FIDAK for short. It is a sprawling exhibition centre built in the capital of Senegal in 1975 to host the country’s biennial international trade fair – and trumpet the recent nationstate’s presence on the global stage. Designed by little-known French architects Jean-François Lamoureux and Jean-Louis Marin,it is a project of obsessive and extraordinary detail. There are facades decorated with coloured pebbles and tiled mosaics, psychedelic sand art murals that evoke the rocky African coastline and its azure seas. Yet outside Senegal, and this building is nearly entirely unknown.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com