AFRICA: SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL AFRICA

Architectural expression of the southern subcontinent and eastern seaboard of Africa in
the 20th century resonates with broader international concerns. In the first half of the
century, before decolonization, the regional styling was a direct reflection of that of the
European colonial powers—an embodiment of empire and what architecturally might
appropriately reflect statehood and civic order. After World War II, postcolonial Africa
engaged the international architectural debate.
At the turn of the 20th century, the so-called scramble for Africa by the European
nations had created the geography of the continent, the larger portion of which bore the
pink mapping that demarcated the British Empire. The southeast and south-west
seaboards were flanked by Portuguese East and West Africa (since 1974, Mozambique
and Angola, respectively), which were at that time administered as provinces and not
nations, and German South West (to the south) and East Africa (to the north), now
Namibia (1992) and Tanzania (since 1964; in 1961, Tanganyika), respectively. On the highveld
(flat grasslands above the escarpment) lay two independent Boer republics. While being
the political domain of farmer-pioneers of European extraction of some 200 years before,
their numbers swelled a wave of immigration of the gold rush to the Zuid-Afrikaansche
Republiek (South African Republic) of the 1880s.
The subcontinent, as it entered the 20th century, was heir to the aspirations of one
man, Cecil John Rhodes (1853–1902), with his stated ambition to have the area from the
Cape to Cairo as a dominion of the British Empire. Architecture, through his architectprotégé
Herbert Baker (1862–1946), was to embody the expression of this ambition.
Baker can take credit for coining a style, Cape Dutch Revival, a derivative of the
domestic baroque of white-walled and curvilinear gabled homesteads of the Dutch
farmers who had settled the Cape peninsula and beyond. This was probably fired by the
Queen Anne style then fashionable in Britain, although the appreciation for vernacular
and traditional architecture fostered by the Arts and Crafts movement also played its part.
His first example of this revival, the “restoration” of Grootte Schuur (1896; since 1994,
the state president’s guest house) for his patron, Rhodes, has been shown to be a
fantastical reinvention of a once-sedate Georgian barn conversion. His homes for the
wealthy “Randbarons” on Parktown Ridge of Johannesburg follow in the Arts and Crafts
tradition, as, for example, the house known as Northwards.
A colonial war (Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902) heralded the new century. The British
had to maintain long lines of supply and communication, and so industrialization came
into its own. Kit wood-and-iron utility buildings, popular in the diamond rush to
Kimberley and the gold rush to the Witwatersrand in the latter half of the 19th century,
came back into their own for military use. The crowning achievement of prefabrication
was the supply of parts of buildings as fortification—loopholes, ladders, and hatches—in
steel. These were built into blockhouses, the rest constructed from any immediately
available material. Thousands were erected, and many survive.
At that time, the independent Boer (farmer-trekkers of Dutch descent) republics had
their own architectural patrimony, a European eclecticism rooted in the Beaux Arts. The
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 40
Department of Public Works was newly established in 1887 by President Paul Kruger
(1825–1904). The Dutch contingent of architect immigrants, with Sytze Wierda (1839–
1911) as head, brought with them current European practice. The best examples are the
Raadsaal (Legislature, 1892) and Palace of Justice (1900). This same styling manifested
in the then German colonies of German South West Africa and German East Africa, best
represented by the “Tintenpalast” (“Ink Palace,” Administrative Building, 1913,
Windhoek, Namibia). In the northern countries of Europe, Schinkel’s influence was still
strong—the tradition of brick buildings for public commissions in particular. This was
reflected in the schools, magistrate’s courts, and other utility buildings of the period, as in
the Johannesburg Post Office (1897). The colonial tradition of the Germans persists in
Dar Es Salaam and, while contributing to the architectural character of the city, was one
of the motivating factors for moving the capital inland to Dodoma. The term
“Wilhelmine,” deriving from both Wilhelm II (1859–1942), German emperor and ninth
king of Prussia, and Wilhelmina (1880–1962), queen of the Netherlands, is used for the
stylistic influences of northern European architects in German colonial Africa. It is the
equivalent of Victorian style in that both show eclecticism and revivalist styling
(particularly neo-Romanesque and neo-Gothic) but differ in their sources and treatment
of style elements, particularly domes and decorative trimmings. The style found its most
ebullient expression in his turn-of-the-19th-century Ostrich Feather Palaces, designed by
Johannes Egbertus Vixseboxse (1863–1943), in Oudshoorn (South Africa).
In the Union of South Africa (1910), which formed from the colonies of Cape and
Natal and the defeated Boer republics of the Orange Free State (Orange River Colony,
1902–10) and the South African Republic (Transvaal Colony, 1902–10), Baker and his
office, as official architect to the Church of England (Anglican Church) and favored
architect of the Department of Public Works, received numerous commissions, with the
Union Buildings (1912) in Pretoria being his crowning achievement.
A vast array of state and private commissions by the young coterie of architects was
brought into the Department of Public Works by the British administration. They belong
to the socalled Baker School, a collective term coined by Pearce (first head of school of
the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg—himself a Baker boy) to cover the
works of the young architects who worked either in Baker’s office or in the employ in the
Department of Public Works in the colonies of the Free State and Transvaal (1902–10).
With its attention to craftsmanship in detail, traditional use of material to suit
circumstances, and free borrowing of styles, it dominated architectural thought for
decades after Baker’s departure. Included in the school are the works produced in his
own office and of his own imagination in the years 1902–13, when he was resident in
South Africa; commissions carried out by his successors in the firm in the period 1913–
20 at the dissolution of the partnership; work done by previous members of the
partnership after 1920 or former assistants who established independent practices on
leaving; and then contemporary architects inspired by his work but having little or no
direct association in practice. This styling of the Edwardian period in the other British
colonies, with a mix of Arts and Crafts revivalism and neoclassicism, particularly in its
state and civic expression, was meant to aggrandize the sense of empire and, hence, is
known as the Empire style. Lutyens’s (1869–1944) New Delhi Secretariat complex, to
which he had been jointly appointed with Baker, epitomized this style in India. Lutyens
too has his legacy in South Africa: the Johannesburg Civic Art Gallery (1915).
Entries A–F 41
Opportunities for these architects expanded to the northern colonies of Southern and
Northern Rhodesia (since 1964, Zambia, and since 1980, Zimbabwe, respectively),
Bechuanaland (1885; since 1966, Botswana), and beyond to Nyasaland (1891; since
1964, Malawi) and the East African Protectorate (now Kenya).
A reaction to British imperialism was to be found in the person of Gerhard Moerdyk
(1890–1958).
Old Stone Town, Zanzibar, Pwani Region, Tanzania
Born on African soil and educated at the Architectural Association in
London, he looked to northern European precedent, particularly the Romantic Nationalism (the term derives from Kidder Smith as applied to certain early 20thcentury
trends in Sweden) of the Baltic peninsula. The brooding and somber Voortrekker
Monument (1949) remains his personal triumph, although he matched the number of
Baker’s Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastic architecture with more than 80 Afrikaans Protestant
churches, built from Windhoek, South West Africa (now Namibia), to Salisbury (now
Harare, Zimbabwe). His joint appointment to the Johannesburg Station (1932) with
Gordon Leith gave opportunity for demonstrating the use of local materials and
decorative motifs and artworks (their school colleague Henk Pierneef was commissioned
for these) on a public scale. These Romantic Nationalists show diverse stylistic
influences, but central to their endeavor is an expression of the use of local material and
decorative devices. There is usually an underlying classicism and thus sometimes the use
of classical elements, although often in modern guise.
Until the 1920s, architects of the southern African subcontinent were obliged to study
abroad. The first local architectural graduates were from the Witwatersrand School
(established in 1923) and made their mark internationally. The students brought the
Modern movement to the subcontinent with their publication zero hour (1933; the sans-serif
uncapitalized lettering a deliberate choice, showing solidarity with the Bauhaus). In their
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 42
seminal publication, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier were heralded as role
models. Le Corbusier was sent an issue and responded with an approving letter,
published in the South African Architectural Record (vol. 20, no. 11 [1936], 381–83) and used to preface his Oeuvre Complete. In this he
coined the term “the Transvaal Group,” a name that has stuck. South Africa was thus at
the cutting edge of the Modern movement in the post-Depression years. Monuments to
the period are the residential blocks built in the developing higher-density suburbs of
Johannesburg and Pretoria.
In the years directly following World War II, Expressionist modernism became
popular on the subcontinent, fired by the “Brazil Builds” exhibition (1943) and the
subsequent publication of the same name. Graduates from the architectural schools of the
Witwatersrand and Pretoria (established 1943) had a particular affinity for the style, and
the highveld became a “Little Brazil,” a style term used by Chipkin (1993) and derived from
Pevsner’s (1953) observation that Johannesburg was “a little Brazil within the
Commonwealth.” The appellation has expanded to all southern African architecture of
the 1950s and 1960s that reflects Brazilian influence. The idiom is most flamboyant in
the then-Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, particularly in Lorenço
Marques (now Maputo), with Pancho Guedes (1925-) being its distinguished exponent.
Graduates from the Witwatersrand and Pretoria Schools (the latter established 1943) had
a particular affinity for the style, and the highveld became a “Little Brazil,” typified by buildings
that were overtly styled against sun penetration—exaggerated louvers, bris es -soleil, and egg-crate
sun guards, with the first such building being Helmut Stauch’s Meat Board Building
(1952).
A movement with nationalist roots but without an overt political agenda was the
emergence of a regionalist school, and Norman Eaton (1902–66) was its recognized
founder and master. He frequently traveled to East Africa, sketching and photographing,
bringing these motifs to his buildings as sculptured elements and patterning in brickwork
and paving; his Bank of Netherlands buildings (Pretoria, 1953, and Durban, 1966) are his
finest testimonies. This style, termed Pretoria Regionalism, epitomized by Eaton, is a
variant of the Modern movement where the tenets of modernism are tempered by
considerations of local material, techniques, traditions, and climate. Graduates of the
Pretoria School moved away from the aesthetic of large expanses of window and clipped
eaves toward an architectural expression of deeply recessed or screened windows and
wide eaves, verandas, and pergolas. Materials of choice were stock bricks, gum poles,
stone, and roughcast exposed concrete. Traditional elements such as downpipes and
shutters were employed, although they were reinterpreted in modern idiom.
World War II brought with it the demise of the European colonial empires.
Postcolonial Africa needed new symbols of independence. Nairobi, Kenya, as the capital
of one of the first independent southern African British colonies, engaged in a program of
high-rise building. High-rises were not new to the subcontinent. Johannesburg (South
Africa) had always been at the forefront of the tallest modern structures on the continent,
the most innovative being the Standard Bank tower, the most ambitious the Carlton
Complex. Today, it is the Reserve Bank (1990, Pretoria), in neo-Miesian style, that holds
the honor.
In the 1970s, New Brutalism, a term associated with Peter and Allison Smithson of
England, found its way across the continent through the offices of the Transvaal Institute
of Architects and the Witwatersrand School, who invited the Smithsons to visit South
Entries A–F 43
Africa. Similar influences were through the frequent visits of Fry and Drew and Paul
Rudolph from the United States. The aesthetic was an uncompromising ruthlessness,
intellectual clarity, and honest presentation of structure and materials. The University of
South Africa (Pretoria) best epitomizes this period and is possibly the largest single
commission in the world that can be ascribed to only one architect—namely, Brian
Sandrock.
Louis Kahn was also highly influential and established a committed following among
local students who had gone to Philadelphia to do postgraduate studies under him. Roelof
Uytenbogaardt (1933–98) is possibly the most esteemed local protégé, and his Steinkopf
Community Centre (1985) is probably the best architectural example, although his
contribution as teacher of urban design at the University of Cape Town remains his
enduring legacy. Unfortunately, his honest opposition to the apartheid state denied him
any commissions of substance.
In the late 1960s there arose an international interest in traditional African
construction and styling provoked by the Museum of Modern Art exhibition
“Architecture without Architects” (1964). A concern for alternative low-tech architecture
gained further impetus with the oil crisis of the 1970s. Hasan Fathy (1900–89) was
teaching mud construction up north, where both tradition and vernacular were explored
as precedent; his critical sensitivity catalyzed a reevaluation of the architectural heritage
of the subcontinent. There is now a concern for conserving traditionally African cities,
monuments, and settlements (such as Zanzibar, Mozambique Island, and Great
Zimbabwe). Restoration in the 1990s of Stone City, an Arabic heritage of Zanzibar, with
assistance by the Aga Khan Foundation, is a case in point. A rise and growth of Islam has
witnessed a revival in the tradition of mosque buildings, with Mohammed Mayet being a
practitioner particularly skilled in interpreting the type. The largest such building to date
is the Kerk Street Mosque (started 1994, under construction) in Johannesburg.
Attempts to translate an understanding of the architecture of Africa into a body of
theory have been termed “Afrocentricity” (Hughes, 1994), an understanding directed at
African-American practitioners that has searched find a theory of Afrocentric architecture
through a process of using observed empirical data based on three principal areas of the
built environment: historic prece-dent (including ancient civilizations and monuments),
cultural elements (including customs, ceremonies, and living patterns as well as
representational aspects of artifacts), and elements of the environment (including climate)
and ecology (including geologic conditions and physical features).
African sensibilities in architecture find their best expression in buildings as
ensembles rather than as individual set pieces. Liberated states needed new capitals, and
it is here that the expression of African spaces is made. Dodoma, as the newly conceived
capital for Tanzania, is a people’s forum, a space for the meeting of governance and
populace. Lilongwe, the designated new capital of Malawi that was meant to replace
Blantyre, has ambitious intentions of pedestrianized boulevards and vehicular routes but
languishes as it derives from the personal ambitions for aggrandizement of the president.
An interesting new capital is Mafikeng, provincial capital of North West Province, South
Africa, conceived as the “capital,” Mmbatho, of “the independent homeland” of
Boputhutswana. This had been done as part of the apartheid ideology of Bantustans (the
suffix “-stan” being a cynical attempt at exploiting Balkanization through association
with the separation of India and Pakistan at independence, which had the support of the
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 44
international community). It was meant to supplant nearby afiking, which had served as
the out-of-country administrative center for the Bechaunaland protectorate until the
protectorate became the independent state of Botswana and relocated its capital to
Gaborone. In the Legislative Administration Building (1982), Britz and Scholes explore
the traditional kagotla, or place of gathering, built in monumental brickwork and expressed in
Kahnian style and scale. Yet there is a pervasive sense of an African place in the spaces.
At present, some.practitioners on the African continent meet the ongoing challenge of
designing affordable, appropriate, and sustainable architecture. The Eastgate Building
(1996, Pearce Partnership) in Harare serves as an example, as does the Appropriate
Technology Centre (1999, Stauch Vorster, MOM) in Gabarone, Botswana. There are,
outside the mainstream of commercialism, architects who engage with communities as
clients and attempt to express their clients’ concerns and financial circumstances in built
form; for example, Liebenberg Masojada (Kwadengezi Cemetery reception area, 1995,
Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa), Design Workshop (Warwick Avenue Bridge Market,
1999, Durban, South Africa), and CS Studio (Uthago Lotyebiselwano [Learning Centre],
Nyanga East, South Africa).
Under the auspices of the Commonwealth Association of Architects, those schools of
architecture established in the emergent independent African states once under British
rule partake in academic exchange and scrutiny of their teaching programs by
accreditation boards. More and more architectural graduates are emerging from these
institutions, and as time passes, their contribution should become more apparent.

AFRICA: NORTHERN AFRICA

Compared with the rest of the continent, the countries of North Africa form an
immediately recognizable region and appear as a more cohesive bloc than do their
neighbors south of the Sahara Desert. They derive their apparent cohesion from a
common language (Arabic), a common religion (Islam), and a shared cultural identity as
heirs of the Ottoman Empire. Like their sub-Saharan neighbors, all shared the historical
experience of European colonialism and of the struggle for independence. Unlike their
sub-Saharan neighbors, however, pan-Arabism has been a more powerful force than
African unity.
On closer examination, all the countries of North Africa have developed their own
distinctive cultural identity and historic perception of themselves and their role in the
world. Egypt, with its overpowering legacy of its Pharaonic past and its small but
influential Coptic Christian minority, has always perceived itself as distinctively different
from the Maghreb (the countries to the west) and more naturally internationalist in
outlook. Morocco, which was the only country in North Africa that did not suffer the
experience of Ottoman rule, prided itself on the purity of its national culture and the
dignity of its sultanate.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was collapsing all around
the Mediterranean: Its final death throes came after it allied itself with the German and
AustroHungarian Empires at the beginning of World War I. Egypt had effectively
become a protectorate of Britain in 1882, to the intense annoyance of France, which had
enjoyed most-favorednation status in Egypt since Napoleon’s short-lived expedition to
Egypt in 1799–1801. Algeria (or at least the coastal strip) became a French colony in
1830, to which the mountainous hinterland and the desert interior were added in 1848,
and by 1900 it was effectively part of metropolitan France. Tunisia, as a consequence of
the dey of Tunis’s indebtedness to French bankers, was annexed by France in 1881. The
Sudan, over which vast territory British troops had campaigned sporadically for 20 years,
was absorbed into the British Empire in 1899 as an Anglo-Egyptian condominium. Libya
was invaded by Italy and incorporated into the infant Italian Empire in 1912; in the same
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 34
year, Morocco became a protectorate of France by treaty, proudly safeguarding its
cultural independence as the brightest jewel in the French imperial crown.
The European colonial experience was, with the exception of Algeria, short-lived and,
again with the exception of Algeria, relatively bloodless. Egypt gained its independence
in 1922 under the Albanian dynasty, whose founder, Mohammed Ali, had seized power
from the Ottomans and imposed himself as khedive on the long-suffering Egyptian
people in 1805, shortly after Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt. Effective independence
was not really secured until the revolution under General Neguib and until Colonel
Nasser overthrew King Farouk and seized power in 1952. With the exception of Algeria,
all other North African states gained their independence in the 1950s: Algeria, after a
long, bloody civil war between the European settlers (10 percent of the population) and
the indigenous Africans, finally followed suit in 1962. (A couple of insignificant Spanish
enclaves on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco still owe allegiance to Europe.)
For the first half of the 20th century, the architectural and urban development of North
Africa was European directed and European driven. At the beginning of the century,
European imperialism was at its apogee, and between 1900 and the outbreak of World
War I in 1914, with a few significant exceptions, colonial governments, architects, and
developers aimed to recreate Europe in Africa. By 1900 regionalism and vernacular
revivalism had become respectable, even fashionable, architectural styles in Europe in a
period when eclecticism reigned.
Physical manifestations of imperialistic rule, such as the Union Jack-inspired town
plan of the new capital of the Sudan (Khartoum) and the Hausmannesque boulevards
imposed on the organic city plan of Algiers were characteristic of this period but by no
means were universal. Equally popular were the garden suburb, garden city developments
that were fashionable in Europe: the Garden Suburb along the Nile in Cairo, the more
ambitious New Town of Heliopolis on the desert fringe of the same city, and the Parc
d’Hydra and the hilly suburbs of El Biar in Algiers were laid out in European lines for a
mainly European settler population.
Arabisance (Arabism) and the Hispano-Mauresque Revival were eagerly adopted by French
architects in Algeria, as the Saracenic, Coptic, and even Pharaonic styles were adopted by
the polyglot architects practicing in Egypt.
Representative buildings of the pre-World War I period, when European imperialism
reigned supreme, were the Post Office (1890–1900, Algiers) by Tondoir and Voinot, the
Galerie Algerienne (1902, Algiers) by Voinot, and the Prefecture (1904, Algiers) and the
Hotel St. Georges (1910; now the Hotel El Djezair, Algiers), all in a highly decorative
and stylized part Ottoman, part Hispano-Mauresque style inspired by the wealth of
handsome 18th-century Ottoman buildings in the city. Also representative, in Cairo, are
the eclectically classicist Egyptian Museum (1900), the vernacular revivalist Coptic
Museum (1910), and the Beaux-Artian, symmetrically planned buildings of the Cairo
University (founded as Fuad University in 1908); in Khartoum, the neo-Byzantine
Anglican All Saints’ Cathedral (1909–12) by Robert Weir Schulz and the late Ottomanstyle
Gordon Memorial College (c. 1905; now the University of Khartoum) by Fabricius
Bey and Gorringe are representative.
Lieutenant Gorringe was a British army officer serving with the Royal Engineers;
Fabricius Bey was architect to the khedive in Cairo and of southern European (probably
Maltese) origin. Under the autocratic rule of Lord Cromer, British consul-general in
Entries A–F 35
Egypt from 1883 to 1907, whose job title concealed the virtually absolute power he
wielded, Cairo and Alexandria were boom cities, and architects and engineers flocked to
Egypt from all over Europe. The indigenous Egyptian elite—the educated middle classes
who had enjoyed a privileged position in society under the Francophile rule of Khedive
Ismail before the British invasion of Egypt in 1882—were increasingly sidelined under
Cromer’s administration and agitated for a national university and for a school of fine arts
under Egyptian control. The foundation of the École des Beaux-Arts in 1906 and of Fuad
University in 1908 were the results of their efforts. By 1920 both institutions (now the
University of Helwan at Zamalek and Cairo University, respectively) had schools of
architecture. Not until the 1920s, therefore, were indigenous Egyptians able to study
architecture in their own country. The few Egyptian architects who were in practice in the
early decades of the century had studied abroad at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris or at
Constantinople.
A similar situation prevailed throughout North Africa: not until the École Polytechnique d’Architecture et Urbanisme (EPAU) was founded
in Algiers after World War II were there any schools of architecture in North Africa
outside Egypt. Inevitably, it was well into the second half of the century before
indigenous African architects were able to make a major contribution to the physical
development of their homelands.
If the period before World War I was the high point of European imperialism, the
period between the world wars was the decline of empire; however, the architectural and
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 36
urban development of North Africa was still almost entirely European driven. Morocco,
under its first French resident-general, Hubert Lyautey (1912–25), pursued a clearsighted
policy of state intervention in urban development (as did Libya) after Benito
Mussolini seized power in Italy in 1922 and sought to revive the splendors of Rome’s
imperial past in Africa.
Marshal Lyautey sought conscientiously to conserve what remained of the Moroccan
architectural heritage—Hispano-Mauresque, Arab, and Berber. He stated, “While in other
parts of North Africa we only found social debris, here…we have found a constituted
empire, and with it a beautiful and great civilization…. A remarkable Morocco can be
created, that will remain Moroccan and Islamic” (quoted in Betts, 1978). However, he
was not averse to contemporary architectural developments: Auguste and Gustave Perret
designed and built the Dock Installations and Warehouses (1915) in Casablanca, but the
cities of Casablanca and Rabat were replanned on grandiloquent lines and had public
buildings that were both neoclassical and embellished with Hispano-Mauresque
decoration, as in the Law Courts (1915) in Casablanca by J.Marrast and the Post Office
(c.1920) in Rabat by J.Laforgue.
The Italian administration showed no such sensitivity in Libya, except toward the
imperial Roman sites. Tripoli was replanned as the colonial capital, and the new town
was created on provincial Italian lines, designed by the architects A.Novello and
O.Cabiatti; in building during the 1920s and 1930s, it was a prototype of Giovanni
Pellegrini’s Manifes to dell’ architettura colon iale (1936).
No such high-mindedness drove the architectural development of the other North
African countries. Where appropriate, arabisance prevailed, as in the Waqf Ministry Building
(1925) by Mahmould Fahmy Pasha and the Bank Misr (1927) by A. Laseiac in Cairo; in
general, however, North Africa followed European precedents: a pared-down
Neoclassicism in the 1920s with some commercial Art Deco in the downtown streets of
major cities, a tentative adoption of modernism, and the International Style in the 1930s.
Algeria generally set the pace: the Palais du Gouvernement General (1930; now the
Palace of Government) designed by M.J.Guiauchain with A. and G.Perret, the Maison
des Etudiants (1933) by C.Montaland, and the Town Hall (1935) by L.Claro, all in
Algiers, are no less advanced than are their contemporaries in Europe. In addition,
Algiers was the subject of Le Corbusier’s most sustained urban-planning initiatives.
Between 1933 and 1942, he published no fewer than three major plans for the city;
formal concepts first proposed for Algiers were eventually realized elsewhere (such as
the Ministry of Education building in Rio de Janeiro and the UNESCO headquarters in
Paris).
The struggle for independence and the consolidation of power after achieving it
preoccupied the governments of all North African countries during the first decade and a
half after the end of World War II (part of which was fought over North African terrain),
and the series of Arab-Israeli wars, culminating in the disastrous war of 1973 and the
devastation of the Suez Canal Zone, deprived the region of the economic security and
political stability that is a prerequisite for sound and sustained physical development. In
contrast, the final quarter of the century saw massive investment in building and a
transformation of the built environment throughout the region (with the exception of
Sudan, where a civil war has been waging for 20 years).
Entries A–F 37
The provision of adequate housing for the mass of the people has been a major priority
of all governments in the region since independence. The rehousing of immigrant
squatters on the outskirts of all major cities, the protection of the limited areas of fertile
agricultural land from population invasion, the reconstruction of the devastated Suez
Canal cities, and the creation of new towns to accommodate the overflow of population
from the major cities have become major areas of architectural activity. Hassan Fathy
was one of the first North African architects to engage seriously with the problems of
popular housing: his modest book Archi tecture for the Poo r, which describes his attempt to create a humane
environment in the resettlement village of New Gourna on the west bank of the Nile at
Thebes in Upper Egypt, has been acclaimed worldwide and has transformed architects’
perceptions of their social responsibility as housing providers. Hassan Fathy was also one
of the pioneers, along with his contemporary Ramses Wissa Wassef, in the revival of
traditional materials, constructional systems, and craft skills. The bulk of his practice,
however, was the design of individual houses and villas for private clients. Abdel Wahid
El Wakil is an accomplished younger Egyptian architect designing in a similar manner.
Inevitably, however, given the enormous shortfall in housing provision, the emphasis
in most state-funded social housing schemes has been on quantity rather than quality, and
four-, five-, or six-story walk-up blocks of apartments have become the norm. Some
architects have handled such assignments well (for example, Elie Azagury’s apartment
blocks in Rabat and Casablanca [1960s] or Candilis, Josic, Woods and Pons’s residential
estate Sidi-bel-Abbes in Oran, Algeria [1950s]), but the scale of most state housing
schemes necessitates the formation of large international multidisciplinary teams of
architects and engineers, as in the huge new cities in the desert hinterland of Cairo
established by the Egyptian Ministry of Reconstruction, New Communities, and Land
Reclamation in the 1980s: Sadat City, 10th Ramadan City, and 6th October City.
Also in the state sector, major building programs for education and health care have
sought to remedy the neglect of these areas by the colonial authorities and to demonstrate
governments’ commitment to the provision of education and health care for all.
Provincial universities and regional hospitals are perceived as flagships of government
policy, and architects of international reputation are commissioned for major projects
(such as James Cubitt and Partners for the University of Garyounis, Benghazi, Libya;
Oscar Niemeyer for the University of Constantine, Algeria; and Charles Boccara for the
1982 Regional Hospital, Marrakesh, Morocco).
Tourism has generated large downtown hotels and holiday resorts. Good examples of
the latter include work by architects A.Faraoui and P.de Mazieres in Morocco, Fernand
Pouillon in Algeria, and Serge Santelli in Tunisia. In addition, the demands of tourism
undoubtedly generated several major historic and archaeological conservation projects,
the most spectacular being the UNESCO-sponsored re-erection of the temple of Rameses
II at Abu Simbel on an elevated site overlooking Lake Nasser in Upper Egypt.
A major factor that was instrumental in the evident raising of standards of architectural
service and of the quality of architectural design in the last 20 years of the century was
the institution of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA). Conservation of the
environment, community involvement in the design decision-making process, and the
appropriateness as well as the quality of the executed design are among the criteria for
selecting buildings for an award. The patronage of the Aga Khan through this award
scheme has both publicized and promoted, as models for other architects to emulate,
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 38
several excellent buildings and conservation schemes in North Africa, among them the
Arts Center at Harrania near Giza in Egypt by Wissa Wassef, the revitalization of the
Hafsia quarter of the Medina in Tunis, and the Dar Lamane Housing Community in
Casablanca, Morocco.
Finally, two outstanding buildings that have become icons of their countries’
commitment to excellence in architecture and the arts are the new Cairo Opera House and
Cultural Center (1987–92) on Gezira Island by the Japanese consortium Nikkei Sekkai
Planners Architects and Engineers and the Great Mosque (1986–93) in Casablanca,
commissioned by King Hassan II from the French architect Marcel Pinseau. By way of
postscript, with about 20 schools of architecture in the region at the turn of the
millennium, the 21st century can expect a much higher proportion of buildings in North
Africa to be designed by indigenous architects than was true in the 20th century.