Unsettled in Dakar: Architectural Modernity in 20th Century Senegal (University Seminar)

So, good morning. Um, on behalf of my co-organizer, Luchia Alice and myself, welcome to Unsettled in Daar, Architectural Modernity in 20th Century Sagal. Uh, my name is Ralph Goch. I'm um one of the chairs of Beyond France University Seminars here at Colombia. This conference grew out of conversation I began having a couple of years uh a couple years ago um with Luchia um she had just presented a paper in beyond France on the museum dynamic in Dhakar and was expanding her research on mid-century modernism in Sagal. Around the same time I was teaching a new course on the idea of the colonial city in French imperialism. So the prospect of a conference on a pivotal colonial city like Dakar um was of of extreme interest to me. Um and we we also noticed that this there was a veritable surge of interest in West Africa. um three scholars in fact uh presenting in Beyond France were uh focused on Seneagal um and including Luchia and uh Greg Gregory Vald despino who is presenting today and so we start to wonder what might happen if we brought all this work together. I want to begin just with a few words of gratitude to the university uh seminar office for providing uh this conference with the necessary funds for bringing this gathering together to the Mison Frances in whose space we're in today uh for co-sponsoring and especially to Shiny Pierce and her team including Emmanuel Busher who helped us immensely with the uh with the AV system and the two assistants who'll be helping today uh Naomi and Michelle to the Bule Center uh our other co-sponsors and of course to Luchia as well as her team Michelle Hun Chu and Elsa Maki and most especially to our assistant who is in the back uh Ugo Loz a PhD student in history who's devout devoted I mean countless hours and and hard work to organizing this conference even even as he prepares for his orals uh in a couple of weeks. So, we're very grateful to all of you. We have designed this day as as really as a conversation and we're going to be learning as much as you with ample time for discussion after each panel. Uh we hope you'll join us in thinking through what it means to study architecture, urbanism and the colonial city in Sagal, past and present. Thank you for being here and Luchia will say a few words. >> Hi everybody. Um, as Ralph mentioned, this is very loud. As Ralph mentioned, the symposium is what happens when two architectural historians notice kind of sparkles of interesting work about the same theme coming from many different people and decide to bring them together to fulfill their curiosity and learn. Um if you pay attention to ongoing conversations about uh African architectural modernity and even African contemporary architecture um you'll notice that the case of Dar or Sagal is not only crucial to the conversation but tends to push against generalizations against easy histories against tempting categories and whether that's because of its kind of paradoxical role in the long dur history of settlement whether it's the looming presence of Sangar Whether it's the French imperial steering of Boza and modernism which is different than in the anglophone imperial context or whether it's because of the vibrant scenes in the arts and architecture schools that DA has hosted. So this symposium is not a mean a way to kind of call for an exception or to narrow the field but sometimes focusing a little bit helps us to hone our categories and become better comparists and to you know make better solidarity let's say. So we've organized so we're so pleased that the speaker said yes. Thank you for coming and for saying yes. Um not all of them hail from traditional academic uh posts because a lot of new research is being done by journal editors and architects and um curators. Um so we've organized today in three panels and one film showing. It's roughly chronological. We'll start with questions of urbanism and settlement uh in the early 20th century. The second panel addresses and I just saw that Gregory just walked in uh housing in the mid-century. Um after lunch we'll show ghost fair trade and then at the end oh and the third panel will be on postwar modernism and then at the end we're very lucky that Freda Cooper is going to be giving us concluding thoughts. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce the three speakers in a row if that's okay and then I'll So our first panelist uh will be Stephen Nelson who is professor emmeritive emmeritus of art history and African-American studies at UCLA. He's a former dean of the Kazva. I'll just say the acronyms. Nelson has published widely on the arts, architecture, and urbanism of Africa and the diaspora and its diasporas and on queer studies. Nelson has held visiting appointments at the univers and in Bota and the social in Paris. Uh next we will hear from Zinga Boop who is in the car but she will be on the screen soon. She's a Seneagalles architect and co-founder of the Dar based architecture studio Worophilia. She's known for her expertise in bioclimactic design and construction using locally sourced earth and biioaterials. She's also active as a researcher and has made significant contributions to urban and cultural heritage studies since 2003. She is um basically in charge of this research project uh with the CCA in in Montreal, the curator of co Dakar, a three-year research program investigating Sagal's unared architectural heritage. And the moderator will be Ralph Goo, my co-organizer conspirator. He's an assistant professor in the department of architecture at Barnard. He's focused on two major research projects uh both on French colonial practices in 19th century Algeria. The first examines the Catholic Church and its reshaping of urban space in Alger. The second explores the exploitation of stone quaries undergirling French imperialism. He's also written extensively on 19th century French architecture including the book ornament and symbol in French romantic architecture. So please help me welcome Steven Nelson. All right, good morning everybody. Um, it's great to be here and I want to I want to thank Luchia, Ralph, and Hugo for bringing us all together and to thank everyone who helped put this together because having done programming for a decade, I know how much work it is. Um, and so why don't we why don't we get going just >> I should be able with this little thing. >> There we go. Okay, we're good. All right. Um, let's do this. When Lewis Federer, under director of the French Corps of Army Engineers, first set foot on Sagal's cap vert in 1852, they say that he was seduced by the site. This location jutting into the Atlantic Ocean at the westernmost point of the African continent provided the best natural harbor on the coastline. No other place in West Africa came close. Some say that Fed Herb had an imperial vision that this point, this wonderful outpost of the African continent, would mark the nexus of colonial power that would stretch to the Sudan. Fed herb's dream would be realized by the late 19th century and in 1902 the spot where the future governor of Sagal stood would be the capital of the recently inaugurated French West Africa. Perhaps the colony's first governor general Ernest Rome shared Fedherb's vision. A staunch advocate of France's civilizing mission he viewed Dar as the site from which the policy would take root raising the lives of millions of Africans living in the colony. About four years later in 1906, Charles Jhou, then a doctor based on Gore, also seemed to have understood the city's possibilities. He writes, "Having become the capital of French West Africa, the residents of the governor general and heads of departments, the seat of the court of appeal, a fortified camp and support point for the fleet, and a port of call for all nationalities bound for South America, the Cape, or the African coast. Dar aspires to greater ambitions. Plans for the city's expansion are already underway. A greater DAR is to rise on the P plateau as far as Capmanuel. Avenues of liberty republic governor general corbair and others will crisscross the city. A city hall, a new train station, a new market, a damarie, an in indigenous hospital, a continental hotel, barracks tramways and electric lighting will transform the car. And that is one very long sentence and I didn't even write it. This morning I would like to think with you about the architectural development of Dar at the beginning of the 20th century. Beyond the role that architecture played in the making of what would become known as the plateau. I'm interested in how the builtin environment forwards the agendas of the colonial commissioners who wanted to support their missions as well as how it gives insight into the ideas of French culture that that were in currency both in France and its colonies at the time. For this morning's discussion, I'm going I'm particularly interested in the moment before World War I when the French ideas of assimilation were still in broad currency. At the end, I would like to talk briefly about how the built environment has morphed as generations and ideas have changed. Rome, an extremely well-connected member of the colonial lobby and an experienced administrator, had grand plans for West Africa. In his own words, "If France were to have no other objective or ambition in West Africa than to maintain order among the native population in order to promote commerce, the need for a federal framework could be legitimately contested. But we have a higher ambition and a significantly broader intention. We wish to truly open Africa up to civilization." Between 1902 and 1904, Room reorganized the colony's government, transforming it, according to historian Alan Conklin, quote, from a loose federation with little authority to one more like its counterpoint in Indo-China, that is to say, a highly centralized and financially independent organ capable of undertaking the public works program in which he so believed. The governor general, deeply steeped in colonial discourse and well acquainted with the various third republic strategies for colonial expansion and exploitation was a staunch proponent of mis valor, a colonial paradigm that suggested extending and managing the colonies through as conlin notes rational and progressive development connected to new ways of thinking about social problems in France. Misen Valer consulted experts in my in myriad fields to come up with solutions for social problems with an eye towards improving public health, the workplace and individual needs. These could be done, adherence claimed, through the rational and systematic study of social phenomena. It sounds a lot like today actually. By the time Room came to power in French West Africa, there was a cottage industry of books, treatises, and legislation aimed at the rational and effective administration of the colonies. Excuse me. Moreover, he was closely connected to individuals and private organizations that would help him achieve his goals. With his new powers, Rome created ambitious plans to extend Dar's port as well as to make the city the hub of the colony's communications and railway systems. These public works projects would transform Dar into an imperial capital. Much of the literature on the development of DAR rightly focuses on these projects as well as many urban planning initiatives aimed at both improving public health and segregating the city. Unlike railways, communications and sanitation, the vast array of commentary on colonial administration in the government and in the public sphere is largely silent on architecture and its role, the role that it might play in civilizing in the civilizing mission or in miser contemporary researchers mostly untrained in architectural history rightly understand the city's architecture as an architectonic representation of French power. But if architecture is not prominent in the written words and conversations, it is front and center in the visual archive. In the early years of the 20th century, photographers made thousands of postcards of the colonies, including Dar. In these in these objects, certain buildings, the presidential palace, which you see on the screen, the hotel deviation, among others figure prominently. These images circulated worldwide, showing a large public, the transformation of the city into an imperial capital. For our purposes, they give insight, albeit European insight, into the importance of the built environment as site and as symbol. In looking at these and exploring the connections and networks of architects and colonial officials, we can better understand the roles architecture played in the new capital. in October 1903. Oh, what happened here? What happened here? I'm behind. Thank you, Ralph. Like, it's not working. It's not working. Um, in October 1903, the newspaper leant reported Dar, which is becoming the official capital of French West Africa, will soon have have its presidential palace. Mr. Dlan has been entrusted with its construction utilizing artificial stone right in Sagal using ingredients imported from Europe. A month later diplomatic followed suit announcing that Dlan architect of the Grand Pal at the 1900 Paris International Exposition has been commissioned to build the presidential palace in Dar. The completed building was inaugurated on June 28th 1907. Dlan was a natural poise choice for the project. By 1903, he was a well-known member of the faculty of the echo de bosar and was conversant in issues facing architects and engineers in the French empire. He was also a respected civil architect. By the beginning of the 20th century, he served on the council of civil council of civil buildings and the committee of public works for the colonies and he was well acquainted with Rome. The architect was also a commentator on other colonial projects. On the proposed plans for the presidential palace in Hanoi, he noted, "From an artistic point of view, the proposed constructions generally seem to have been built in any city in the metropole with an excessive overload of moldings and ornamentation. It is regrettable that the climactic and technical conditions particularly particular to the region did not inspire the kind of local sky styles less like that of equivalent buildings in our own countries. He was not happy. Asked to opine on the budget and delays on the Saigon Saigon opera in 1898, Dlan in Rome advised officials to continue as planned because as art historian Goan Bailey notes, Saigon's prestige demanded a showcase building and that it is well adapted to the climate. Such comments give pause about the Dar Presidential Palace. Given the architectur's charge that the Hanoi Palace isn't particularly original, and given his lament that the plan is devoid of inspiration from local sources, his own building is pretty curious. Okay. What Dlan said about the Hanoi structure could easily apply to his own design. Dripping in ornament built with artificial stone enclosed by an elaborate iron fence that was part of the French exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, Dlan's building is a paradigmatic example of Bozart's construction that would be at home either in the metropol or the colonies. It is tempting to think about Dlan's lack of originality or the disconnect between his words and his actions as a kind of philosophical failure on his part. However, both in the palaces in fitting into a larger terrain of Bozart design are immediately the their both of the palaces in Honoi Endicar are immediately identifiable as manifestations of French administration under the rubric of the civilizing mission. Such buildings successfully forward Bozart's principles that seek to define a French architecture that fuse historic models with contemporary building practices. And there's a lot to talk about with artificial stone in these buildings. At this point in time, at least in the administrative realm, despite occasional claims to the contrary, French officials did not seek styles that registered as anything other than French. By the time Dland began work on the presidential palace, he was familiar with architecture in the colonies, including West Africa. The architect worked on multiple cont commissions simultaneously. While he was engaged in the design and construction of the presidential palace, he was also working on the French West Africa pavilion for the 1906 Marseilles colonial exposition. Unlike the neocclassicism of the Dar project in the south of France, Delane invoked Sudanic architecture for the pavilion. And it's also important to note that the great mosque of Jenna was being rebuilt right at this moment as well. In this setting, as if to architecturally illustrate the dis distance and affinity between France and its West African children, Sudanic architecture is cast as part of France. For visitors of the exposition, such difference would contribute to their understanding of West Africa as mysterious and exotic. The West Africa pavilion was a showcase for the projects and commerce of the colony and Alan worked with Rome on the form and spaces the pavilion would ultimately have. In an article on the pavilion, colonial official Leon Kila noted that the structure recalls Sudanic mosques. He also spies the presence of a miniature of the presidential palace. He says in a central vrine one finds a magnificent model of the palace of the governor general nearing completion in Dar. This palace is the work of Msur Delen who moreover is also the architect of the commission buildings of the commission of West Africa. By repeatedly going to oversee the construction work on the palace, Mr. Leglan was able to depict our African possession in its most seductive aspects and this is more beneficial for the colony. Dlan consciously clo chose not to use sudanic architecture and not to use reference in the construction of the presidential palace. Indeed, these motifs would not appear in Dar's built environment until the late 1920s. Delane recognized the differing functions of these two buildings. The pavilion is a showcase for the telling of a colonial story aimed at bust buttressing the need and benefit for continued colonization. The palace serves a similar role to the Saigon opera. It is in part to show the glory of a new capital city and by extension the glory of the empire. The architects stated concerns about climate and local technology in the case of Hanoi did not include the incorporation of African models, local or not, as they would likely not present to Europeans an architectural image appropriate to the metropol ideological and political goals. Whether Sudanic or French, both buildings take advantage of the languages of difference and sameness. Colonial administers and architects used each situationally. Until the late 1920s, the presidential palace was the largest building in Dar. One could see it from anywhere in the city. The structure modernized in 1947 still dominates the view from Ance Benabad. In situating the building, In situating the building outside of Plasete, now the Plastand Panons, high above the water, urban planners transformed what was the site of Libu villages into a space of colonial domination, a literal staging area for the civilizing mission. The city's late 19th century plans show the extent to which this was true for in all of Darvi. In the name of sanitation, straw buildings were banned. Villages were replaced by boulevard boulevards and squares. Other public buildings largely followed suit. A primary example is Dar's hotel devi designed by architect Lewis Duan who studied at the de de boz under delay. Though far less elaborate in ornament the structure completed in 1914 echoed models from other colonies as well as cities in France. The hotel devi also had a garden on its grounds. While it was small, its present aligned with the principles inherent in the civilizing mission. Like communications and transportation, the spaces delineated by gardens work in tandem with the 1903 introduction of a French curriculum into French West Africa. Whether Africans were actually allowed in the garden or not, this is unclear right now. The space even as spectacle participates in discourse around improved public health but also that of opening up the mind to the benefits of French culture. Both participate in underscoring the superiority of France. In this context, buildings and gardens reminiscent of the metropole participate in the belief that in addition to the book, in addition to French language, one could create an enlightened citizenry through the built environment and the manipulation of the landscape. Indeed, Third Republic edicts about education for the colonized mirror Second Empire discourse surrounding the modernization with of Paris with new parks, squares, and wide boulevards. In 1910, during this construction of the Hotel Devi, architect Charles Pbear was commissioned to build the Carmel Market, echoing iron construction in Paris of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Playbear's design followed the trends of the time which utilized pre pre-fabricated cast iron frames partially or completely covered in brick through iron construction and it had been invogue for decades by the time in French West Africa. It was emblematic of the third republic's continued belief in technologies capacity to improve people's lives. Unlike Dar's other public buildings, Carmel Market was covered in colored brick and tile reflecting the institutionalization of the Rook Co. that was taking place in the late 19th century and early 20th century in France. While it is unclear what Plebear was studying when he designed the structure, it is clear through looking at the aldeliss which he designed around the same time that he was interested in polychrommy and bringing the ro to bear on public architecture. These vast buildings which seem to marry spaces of exhibition that one would find in world's fairs with the gazeos, kiosks, zedi and pavilions one might find in the bansen play with non French influences in ways that might align with their position as spaces for everyone. Indeed, the kermel market was a public space that was not restricted in the ways that others might have been. In this sense, researchers have asked about the hil building's horseshoe arches, noting its Muslim references, and there's one, I'll show you a clearer picture in a minute. Um, while the building would seem to be different on these grounds, and while some have faulted the builders for not getting it right, like the other public buildings, the incorporated of his the incorporation of Hispano Moroccan elements was something that could be found in the Metropole at the time. Plber would not have had to look far farther than World's Fairs or the Guaden in the Metropole. The horseshoe arch in the polychromi might associate with Islamic forms in Spain aligned beautifully with goals with turns to art nuvo and the attraction to the rock co. In a sense, the architecture was not meant to represent local cultures. It was another instance of a French play of form which ironically could be cast in the same way as a presidential palace or a municipal garden. Perhaps it is the train station completed in 1914 which combines the tripartite construction of Bozart's buildings and the cast iron construction and polychrommy of the Kreml market that is the true key to the architectural program at the moment. It is one that had a wide birth and enabled French values to be commuted communicated in varying ways. At the same time, they were intended along with railways, communications, and sanitation to display a modern city on the verge of becoming an imperial capital. Scent postcarts and commentary in the press tell us something about eur how Europeans responded to these and other structures as well as to the city more generally. As one might imagine, it was a completely mixed bag. Some thought Dar was beautiful. Others saw it as a backwater devoid of real architecture or charm. Early 20th century African commentary on these spaces is extremely rare, and I've yet to see any. However, over time, these buildings would come to play several roles in the characterization of Dar as a city in the in the postcolonial identity of Sagal. In his 1969 film Contra City, director Gigabel Jop Mambetti casts the Boosez buildings explored here as neocolonial agents and the material representation of the Western Seneagalles elite and its repressive oppressive politics. Indeed, architecture preservides a screen in which a clueless European tourist can keep mistaking things African for things French. And she does. It's hilarious. You have to see this movie. Panning across the Carmel market, Mamemeti dwells on its polychrome, its horseshoe arches, its intricate rosettes, and its lion's heads of stone. As the camera moves around the building surface, we hear a frenzy broken crazy chant of rook coco lampuning French decadence and its ensuing orient orientalist variance. Mambetti suggests the ways in which colonial architecture still reinforces racialized economies inequities and the inequities of Dar. In MBetti's hands, the presidential palace, the hotel deviation morph into a series of mutable and misenated signs, making impossible any easy notion of a pure Africa, a pure Europe or what first senagles presidents, what first senaglles president Leopold Sangor Sigar Sangor in his formation of negritude called a universal humanism. Membi send up aside. More recently, these buildings, particularly Kermel Market and the train stations, have been hailed as an indelible parts of Senagalles heritage. In 1993, the original Kermel Market, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978, was destroyed by fire. Rebuilt to its original specifications with the help of of financing of $5 million. The new market was inaugurated on March 4th, 1998. In 2019, an exhaustive restoration and expansion of Dar's train station was begun with funds from the Aakhan Award for Architecture. Excuse me. The restoration continues with the original aesthetic of the building with the sen merges the original aesthetics of the building with the seneagalles government's aspirations for 21st century users. It was completed just last year. Calling the station's architecture majestic, journalist Dembe Jen notes that it is a heritage site, one that has been transformed into a vibrant hub of activity. Since the first decades of the 20th century, Dar's colonial buildings have structured the lives of those who live in them and who use them. Yet, as they have directed behavior, they have been reignified and have been taken up to serve changing agendas. In this way, the buildings that display power still can and do, but the nature of that power over time has changed. At the same time, these buildings are characters the on in the ongoing life of Dar, now a sprawling city of almost four million people that allow people to think historically while dreaming of other ways of being in the world. Thank you. I'm going to put you on the screen. If you'd like to share your screen, just louder. We just increase the volume and then and then you can share your screen whenever you're ready. >> Uh, no, not yet. >> Maybe I need to unshare my screen. Okay. I'm sorry. Yes, please. Please. >> Perfect. >> I think you're good to go whenever you're ready. Thank you. the we we tried for over an hour to get that to work yesterday. Um the system just won't allow it because we're also recording um and so it won't allow us to do the dual thing. So >> yeah. So unfortunately >> Ning can we just test the audio? Can you say hello? >> Hello. >> So hopefully that's that's fine. >> Yeah. >> Um >> so and I'll be using the mic so that that'll help. >> Put the mic towards the speaker. >> Smart. >> Bespoke. It's very bespoke. >> Yeah. Um so well thank you these are really tremendous papers uh which in a way examine the same geography and historical context but um uh two sets of diff radically different objects um Nelson Steven Nelson's focus is on Dar and French colonial architecture the presidential palace the hotel Deville the Carmel market and the train station bosar structures that announce themselves with great monumentality and grandeur and are seemingly indifferent to the African context onto which they are imposed. By contrast, Zingga boops uh directs our attention to the wooden barrack houses of Dakar, makeshift huts constructed from shipping crates and pallets, structures that are defined not by their permanence, but by their modesty and means of means and extreme mobility. huts that could be lifted and carried quite literally on the shoulders of their inhabitants from one forced relocation to the next. We might be tempted in light of this contrast to invoke the familiar characterization of colonial cities as Manakian worlds, the white city versus the indigenous city. Of course, France Feno gave us that that kind of language. Uh, but does a closer reading of these two papers side by side actually bear out such a clear-cut division? What strikes me in BOP's uh analysis is how building materials emerge as racial and cultural signifiers. Would instead of stone, straw rather than brick, thatch in place of tile? These are not merely practical choices but markers that distinguish the quote indigenous city from the European city. One can see from her analysis the racial that's racial science in the 19th and early 20th centuries did not just infiltrate architectural style and there's so much writing about that uh but reached into the very materiality of architecture itself. The question of what building materials were deemed appropriate for which populations became a question of hierarchy of civilizational capacity. Stone and bricks signified permanence, reason, progress, all those values attached to that the French attached to themselves. And then wood and and and thatch signify transients uh at least for the French backwardness and inability to truly inhabit the modern city. As an Laura Stler has shown, the lines between lines dividing colonizer and the from the colonized were rarely as stark as the maps of segregated cities suggest. The colonial world was not neatly split into two halves. Instead, differences were was difference was enacted through subtle distinctions in behavior, in gesture, the food one ate, the spaces one occupied, and as MUP adds to this list, the materials one might have used. These lines were often hard for outsiders to discern. Yet, from within the colonial order, they were fiercely policed. Boop's careful attention to materiality reveals exactly this logic. The French did not simply cordon off an indigenous quarter and declare the problem solved. They scrutinized the materials of the hut, condemned them as insan insanitary, and use that condemnation to justify eviction and relocation. The distinction between stone and wood was not just a building code. It was a racial boundary made material. And precisely because the boundary was never stable. because huts kept appearing where they did not belong, the colonial administration had to constantly reassert it. Whereas Nelson's paper invites us to consider how the dual city model might be challenged from another angle. Consider the question of time. If the white city was merely was meant to represent French modernity, why were its building so sty stylistically dated? as somebody who works on the French 19th century. I mean, you know, it's it's so clear that these even, you know, by the early 20th century, these these are not really um you know, experimental styles. Um the the de completed in 1914 uses a French Renaissance revival um and that had fallen largely out of fashion in France decades earlier. >> The presidential palace evokes the Italian revival that peaked in the mid 19th century. What are we make to what are we to make of this? If the wooden huts were condemned as backwards, the stone palaces were also in their own way completely out of time. Both existed in a kind of temporal displacement. One relegated one relegated to the primitive past, the other pro frozen in an eclectic historicism that it quickly uh that was quickly losing favor in the metropole. The dual city model assumes a clear opposition between European progress and African tradition. Yet what Nelson's paper suggests is that Europeans, the European side was itself performing a version of Frenchness that had already become nostalgic, even antiquarian by the time it was built in Dhakar. And then there's a question of non-European references. Nelson points to the horseshoe arches of the caramel market, references to Islamic architecture from North Africa, not West Africa. French architecture, it seems, could absorb influences from elsewhere, but only on its own terms. This reminds me of the uniform of the vinegal, which incorporates both native elements um while remaining unmistakably French, styled, used situationally, as Nelson puts it. But this eclecticism also reveals something deeper. The power of French architecture lay precisely in its malleability, its capacity to absorb cultural influences influences and in so doing to dominate through that absorption. Nelson's account evokes the logic of French assimilationist policy. I want to come back to that. The idea that other cultures could be incorporated into France without threatening French supremacy. >> The Carmel Markets horseshoe arches are not a gesture towards Sagal. They are a demonstration of France's ability to ingest the exot exotic and make it its own. And finally, I'm struck by the role that circulation plays in both these papers. Nelson traces the circulation of images, postcards that carry Dakar's monuments across the globe. Traces the material circulation of shipping crates and from the peanut trade, crates that brought bricks from Marseilles and returned as the walls of wooden huts. These two circuits, one visual, one material, are I think deeply entangled. The same trade routes that built built colonial monuments also built these vernacular housing. And this brings me to a question that I want to leave with both speakers. Um, Steven, your monumental palaces and markets were built from materials that arrived in those very same shipping crates. Crates that once emptied became the walls of the huts of Nazinga that Nzinga described. To what extent was your architecture of permanence dependent on the very circuits of trade that produced the makeshift and inzinga your wooden huts were not only made possible by col colonial commerce but also existed in constant relation to the stone city cleared from its neighborhoods pushed to its edge yet always returning. How did the hut's mobility shape the meanings of the monument's fixity? Were these two architectural worlds in fact two sides of a single colonial formation? One impossible without the other. >> So would you would you like to start with >> and Zena do you want to start? >> Um sure um on the um thank you Raf um for this beautiful response. I um I'm really glad that uh the question of the architectural models but also the sourcing of the materials was um was really um kind of like highlighted because um I have um like you say I think there's uh the the two sides of the same coin whether we look at the big monumental um architecture that uh Nelson Steven sorry uh referred to as uh coming from the metropol and coming on these uh on these boats. Um and um and the same with the with the wooden huts. I think what we're sort of grappling with is uh the kind of disturbance of uh of of of Dakar as a first a village um to and how it was transformed by the French colonial administration. Um I think there's a lot of uh what whatever type of architecture we sort of look at since um the French colonial administration we see that there's a lot of politics that are embedded in the way that we built um nothing is absolutely neutral. Not even the materials that we build with are neutral. And uh as I've looked into um um as I look even into the uh letters that you find at the archives, the specifications of uh some of the buildings u made in the French colonial administration, they always specified in respects that you had to use products coming from either the Metropol and they had to travel uh under Pantheon France or I mean the particular type of um u um um commissioning and u making sure that they they fed in a way or enriched the uh economy of uh of France at the time or they uh um what do you call it local materials could be used. So there's a kind of like tension between uh having to use what is available locally um because that's probably um cheaper or also importing anything everything from France because it's probably safer and again contribute to to the economy and I think it's important that we also start reading um a lot of the architecture through that lens um through the material lens we understand the economic um lens we understand material flows and then we understand as well ultimately why certain ways of building became predominant over others as my practice for instance like I I stated uh has a great interest in uh particularly the urban architecture uh which we find in pre-colonial times um you see over the times that this is a type of architecture that actually became illegal um there are uh urbanism laws uh in the early 20th century that say that is unsanitary to build with uh earth uh mud for instance um inside the city when today we know and there's a sort of regain into this uh uh type of materials because of because of their sort of low carbon component or the sort of thermal benefit that they have. It's uh it's uh everybody um uh has to sort of question why they sort of went out of style. And then the other thing that I will um say as well uh in in when we look at the political history of of materials is that that also applies to um concrete and cement because as it is also a building method that in the context of Sagal and got imported um you also um see the evolution of cement as an important material to one that then get produced locally. But in the especially post independence there's a lot of histories of the erasure of other type of building methods such as the fired bridge by the cement um industry. Uh first I think because uh they actually need the same type of resources as the ones that are used for fired clay because cement is made out of stone is made out of clay. uh in the context of a place like Rufisk um um uh you see the type of limestone that was used in French colonial administration which you can still see in many of the Romanian buildings um just really disappearing because the same limestone um is now used to um produce the cement um the the first cement factory of Sagal um open in her face precisely for that reason um and then later on um there's a um history and evidence of the same cement factory buying the fiber factory in the late 70s and shutting it down uh now actually becoming the main sort of ubiquitous building materials. So um um I yeah maybe I'll just stop here but I think um my the point that I was trying to make and and in looking again back to uh these two various typologies is that it's very important that the material flows get um questions that they get understood from a historical perspective. Um because I think only then can we make very critical and informed decision about how we should build. Um it goes deeper than style. it goes deeper than uh properties of materials. Ultimately, these stories are inherently political and I think the history of uh of of the car's um architecture proves it. >> Yeah. And and I would just follow on that. I think you know absolutely everything in Enzinga just said what what is so amazing is how intertwined all of it is. I mean even even with the Bozart's buildings that you know it's artificial stone which is you which is related to cement right and it's coming it's coming the materials are coming from France they're mixed in Sagal um and then constructed in Sagal but all of these things are are enacted to build in the colony while supporting the metropol's economy and so even if you can make it into car and you could you're not going to right And so there's that when when when when Enzinga showed the the um the slide of the tiles from Marseilles, I was like, "This tells us everything. That tile tells us everything about about building not just in the plateau, but everywhere else." And you can still see some of these buildings with those tiles in um in the um in all around the city in in the in the plateau and in the medina. But I also think that these things and the buildings give lie to the constant the constant line we hear about the colony being the laboratory for the metropolitan. It you know it isn't. It isn't. And and the and I I I chose to pick to look at preWorld War I quite on purpose because things are really messy before World War I. It is before what Jean Sur Canal called the golden age of colonization which for him is between the two world wars. It's it's when things are just coming up. It's before all of those those building projects of the 20s 30s and 40s which really integrate you know a Frenchi sudanic architecture into into the city. Um and and I think what what these papers also sort of show us is that we need to stop comparing urbanism in DAR to other cities in the in the colonies, you know, because every time you look at that literature, Dar comes up as somehow backwards or is somehow well they were doing this in Hanoi, but they didn't do this in Dar. Well, of course, um that that this this thing is its own situation and how things develop here um are really quite unique. >> Yeah. Thank you. Um rather than go on with my questions, what I want to do is open up uh to other questions from the audience. Yeah. Uh Fred, >> the mic will come to you. Well, this is a question coming from some somebody whose expertise in social political history and not >> sorry I can't hear should the mic >> is the mic >> maybe talks >> okay uh one of the unique features of uh not quite unique but almost unique features of of DAR is that the local population had citizenship rights. >> Yes. going going back to 1848 in some respects and reaffirmed quite decisively thanks to the deputy bless John right >> in 1916 >> uh and uh that meant that you're dealing you're dealing with lots of differentials not just the racial one >> uh between citizen and subject and with all the migration coming in from the countryside those people did not have citizenship rights whereas Dakarwa did as in the other three of the four commune of the katak commune Uh so my question with a with a differentiated African population including a merchant class that had goes back well into the 19th century and had a certain amount of wealth. Uh perhaps not as much as the San Louis did, but still in the car you had you had that kind of people. Uh and people with with some kind of rights even though the French administration was doing their best to attenuate them. uh how does this affect the the the kind of dualistic picture uh that one that one has? Where did the Senagalles elite live? What kind of houses? How much did the could the administration force them into the same kind of spatial configuration in the medina or or elsewhere that that people without citizenship rights were be were coming back? And did people like the the Seneagalles who were on the city council back at the 19th century or Bles Jon sitting in the asamina in Paris did they have anything to say about the built environment that was different from what the colonial administration was trying to impose uh on on Africans? So the the question is really for both of you is the extent to to which a differentiated African population and a politically active population going back into the 19th century uh put is part is part of this uh this story. >> Okay. Um, I that's an a great question, Fred. And I think that that, you know, for me that was, you know, where where I wanted to go next to to look at these things and and look at Diaby's writings in his archives, and I've just not gotten to them yet. Um, in in terms of where they lived, I don't know yet. And um but but but but to your point about the a dualistic idea of that place, it was never dualistic, right? It just wasn't. And um and even in the example of you know we've moved out huts but here they are we've moved them out here they are um they always pop up and I think that you know one of the complex one of the complex things to think about is this mercantile class many of them who were on gore um many of them stayed there um and would just go back and forth um but I think that you know one has to look more closely at what was being built and who who lived there because there wasn't a wholesale all Africans have to live on the other side of um of the of the boulevard that that separated the medina from from the plateau. >> Nzinga, could you could you hear the question? >> No, I mean I feel like I rarely like I more or less understood that it was about asking about agency in city making. I wasn't sure but I could barely hear. I'm sorry. It was that and also um thinking about uh the mercantile classes of Senagalles people and how they may have responded to the built environment in the early 20th century. Yeah, I guess maybe my contribution to that question would be to um highlight and state that uh the uh Lebu people of DAR um have uh um always I think found a way to negotiate uh um their sort of status in the city with the French colonial administration. My feeling is that across um at least the history and what I know of other um um uh cities on the African continent under French colonial administration I don't know many other capitals that actually have retained the indigenous population and when and also having an indigenous population that actually still um yields quite a lot of uh power uh in the city when you look at the car um other than the original um um sort of uh pinch or or or compounds that are mostly within the city center and Mina, you have greater parts of that car like the one where I'm located uh called Wakam Yong that are known to be villages. They still call like that because they do hold a sort of sometimes semiautonomous um status where the from an urban perspective you can see that these are places that have kind of resisted the sort of autoonal planning that you see in the rest of the city. Um you still see a form of kind of very organic um um um um sort of layout which actually responds to many of the traditional spatial logic of organizing compounds in uh around central spaces and all the compounds are organized around the central kind of like plaza which is called the page and it's marked by a old tree or the mosque. So these are realities that still persist um in that cart today. And I think the reason why even Tah and I wanted to when we did the first exhibition wanted to focus on the story of the Liberal people is that you do you have that ability to kind of read what the city was and what the city became and what those processes were throughout time. And like I said the LEU um are still organized as a republic. They still have a very strong um social political organization. um they have certain um traditional rights that still govern things like fishing um of off the coast and uh places even behind the the presidential palace. Um there uh uh Steven spoke about it at uh at Len um behind the presidential palace you still have a sacred um um Liu beach where people still go to perform sacrifices. So you would not expect seeing at the city today and you would think that it is mostly a product of either the French colonial administration or what happened post independence. But when you get a sort of closer reading and and and looked at the city through the lens of the Libu people, we understand how much they've been able to negotiate their presence. And I think the proof is just how much they are still uh physically present in the in the in the city and how much you still see um a lot of the urbanism a lot of the infrastructure and a lot of the sort of cultural performances within um the the city of the car. So I think in that sense I would just state state that outside of the the kind of uh uh administrative layer of people like bless giant um that was also Libu and became a deputy the the traditional um dignitaries of the Libu republic have um still found a way have always found a way to negotiate their rights to sometimes taxation. I think even the presidential part as I understood it was still paying taxes to the Libuh people because they occupied their land and other places like the cess which I'm sure you you'll hear more about uh was also on Labu territory and I think before occupying there has to be some level of negotiation u with with the indigenous community of >> car well thank you I think we have a question from Jana um I'm wondering because the microphone doesn't seem to be very loud I wonder if you might want to step on the podium >> at the podium and speak into the microphone. >> No. Um yeah, so my I think this was really great uh uh just really two really fabulous talks. Uh thank you so much. Um um I think what bo really comes uh into forefront in both talk is is this kind of a realization of saggali culture where even if we wanted to return to the pre-colonial you know situation it's just like hardly possible because uh the boundaries are so blurred which you know is pretty visible with this problem of the neoani style even like I found the spire of the neoanis um you know pavilion and the spire of the of the presidential palace. Like the similarity is kind of striking which also explains to a certain extent while you know for instance the this culture politics how in the colony actually any form or any material becomes highly symbolically charged. Any form is symbolic in a way whoever masters or controls that symbolic order of the colony controls the power. uh which I think it's really striking and that also explains why for someone like Sangor you know culture politics culture is really in the s in the core of the kind of decolonization project which obviously some say hasn't been successful but you know it explains us the role uh while culture is so important uh what I'm interested in are found quite fascinating as are these various feedback loops so for instance like you show the typology of that one uh like veranda barak which I found kind of amazing because that's like the colonial colonial villas with verandas that's French typology and I encountered a similar case I don't know 100% if it's true uh because you know the information are just hard to verify but if you look at the kasmurid at the echol national administr told me that apparently it's being called Kazmurid because then there were the people who started building similar kind of Kaz like you know in in the actual informal architecture inspired by this building uh by this kasm pyramid kasmurid. Um so again I don't know if it's 100% true but what I find kind of fascinating is in this cultural politics how do these feedback loops operate where actually the in the informal vernacular architecture people appropriate something coming from the the dominant you know cultural politics. So the forms are like highly you know and that ideology operates also in the colony in many ways. So thank you. Thank you. I would maybe just add something um since um um you made this comment Jana and given that it's your um you know I think an architecture that you know also very well it's just how the the the kind of like flows of inspiration um also goes the other way um especially when it comes to the sh uh you know somebody like Telo speaks a lot about how he um was inspired by a lot of the kind of African art and uh and African craft as well which is kind of very present um in uh in the architecture and the expression of modernism. We have another question. Mary, do you think you could go just for the comments? >> Um, one question I had, it's a little pushing back on Ralph's very articulate response. You tried to contrast the stone city with the wood city, but looking at the images in Professor Nelson's talk, I was struck how many of the nonprominent buildings used wood. Yeah. >> And in the Zingga's talk, I'm not sure I said your name right. Um, the wooden barracks were a kind of you seem to appro suggest for a neo colonial vernacular. So I wasn't sure looking at materials if it too suggests what seems to be a major theme this kind of mixture uh in cross fertilization and related to that was there really a stone city or was there just a few stone monuments it seemed to me the whole model of segregation doesn't quite work. Um but this is coming from someone who has never been to Dhakar. >> It totally doesn't work. But but your your point the the thing I would look at actually in in you know sort of thinking about the kinds of buildings and Zinga is talking about are less those big stone buildings and more military b barracks. um the buildings by the port, you know, there were tons of them. And even even some of the early houses in on the plateau, you know, because it's it's the you know, of course, it's the architecture that this architectural historian didn't look at right now, right? Um, but those I I think it's interesting to think about those 19th and early 20th century models as in conversation with what people start making in, you know, what what happens when when the architecture of the Lu becomes becomes fused with what people are seeing across across the boulevard. I would say that uh maybe um the the this kind of um uh categorization of what materiality is indigenous or you know imported or colonial I think um can easily get sort of blurred >> um um over over time. I know that for instance when it comes to um stone architecture people will uh u um maybe associate it with uh with with the colonial type of architecture but I started a paper talking about this fortified walls that the Libu had built in order to be protected um from invaders um uh when they moved to the peninsula in the Dhakar peninsula >> in as far back as the 16th century. um we don't have traces of those walls anymore but uh there are records that they sort of existed. So because the last the remaining sort of stone architecture that we see today is of the French colonial administration there's a kind of uh um maybe a type of uh it would be easy to assume that but um we and and like like you said with the examples of these barracks is that they are typologies that are seen as as particularly u u uh specific to the African people living in the city even though they are no references for any type of wooden um traditional arch architecture it will be made mostly with straw because this is what was available right we're in the Sahel so you know we don't really build with with timber uh in such an expensive capacity so I think ultimately this type of um richness and convergence of of materials that uh um um you know sometime were sourced locally but done in a French style or imported and then you know sagalized like in the case of of of timber or cast iron I think ultimately speaks to um our our our identity today um in uh in Sagal uh like the one that you know sort of Sangal sort of touted as being kind of very layered um and also global right like very universal in that sense so it isn't so much that you know one is of of either indigenous or uh or exogenous um they both I think on the on the territory of of Sagal uh were able to um merge and I think >> Mhm. speak about the layers and uh of our of our histories and of our of our identities. >> Thank you. I I think we have uh time for one more question. Ananda, would would you mind coming to the podium? Thank you. >> Just trying to innocently ask questions. >> Um Enzinga, can you hear me? Can Can she hear? Is it? Oh, >> thank you. >> Yeah. Is it Can you hear now if I talk into the microphone? >> A little bit better. >> Oh, no. Okay. Maybe >> I'll bring it even closer. >> Yeah. >> The portable panel. >> How is this? Is this Is this better? Oh, goodness. So, so sorry that this is like this, but we're so glad we get to have you in our conversations from afar. Um I um don't know anything about Dakar. So this is a naive question in a way. But my question is really about historioggraphy because I've been grappling myself um with a with a an insistence that I heard in your presentation Stephen that um we need to think very kind of historically specifically about Dakar that losing that historic specificity and I think Enzinga's um demand that we really read the materiality in situ um I have made these same arguments and but my my empire is the British Empire and I but I've also worked in many many port cities all over um Africa. So I've been trying to re really think through what is the value of this historical specificity that you know can run the risk of provincializing a discourse provincializing the historioggraphy. You know it sagal can be thought of as a backwater only within a certain literature. in a more global literature maybe it is just another example like Madras which is often also that same kind of backwater so but so I've been trying to also think about you know the the Marseilles tile story is very much like the Mangalore tile story so people in Dar Salam will be dealing with Mangalore tile whereas people in Dakar will be dealing with Marseilles tile and it can in certain ways tell the same story but I have often insisted no no these are specific ific histories and specific material trajectories. So, but I think some of what I want to grapple with in this French context that I'm less familiar with is what is the value of a a specific set of historioggraphies that allow Dhakar to be Dar and to be unsettled as itself. This is a question for you the organizers as well Luchia and Ralph. But I think my other you know question is what is the value of um some level of abstraction that allows this to be maybe African architectural historioggraphy? Do we even want that? So I it's an open question for me. I just would love to hear you all weigh in on it. >> I'll start. I mean I I what I kept coming up against what I kept coming up against when I was starting to do this work and I started doing this work way too long ago um was every time people would start talking about DAR it was always relative to North Africa and to Indochina and two places which were you know sort you the populations are different, the colonial conditions are different. You know, so so people are compare constantly reading Dar as a pale example of what was happening in Rabbat or Casablanca or Alers which had been developed for decades and centuries before. And so so it so in my own work I started bucking against that because there was something different about this place. There was, as Enzinga so beautifully points out, there there are diff the the the the ways in which people are on the land and control the land to this day is different. It's just different. And so, you know, and and I think that in in a larger sense, the value of become of being specific is that you understand the specific the specific forces that come to play in this in the thing that you're studying. It doesn't mean that we can't talk about Bangalore and Dar but it does mean that for me that should not be the beginning. It shouldn't be the beginning. Um you can't do comparative work without understanding the spec specifics of each location first. >> Can I make a comment? >> Yeah. >> You may need to go. >> You're gonna have to come to a mic. Um I mean um in terms of the organization what I said before which is that sometimes you have to focus in order to then make better comparisons which is also what >> Stephen was just saying um but it strikes me that one way to answer the question of method or of how to generalize is that you are both telling the story of a kind of competition for a counternarrative to the French universal. You both said it's not universal, but Stephen, your story is more about the capacity for absorbing reignification and transformation, whereas Zinga, you're talking more about a kind of detour. These actually are not the same uh narrative and those are both things that one could then take, >> right? >> And I don't know debate whether they occur elsewhere and that's not necessarily only about whether the brick is moved or not. So I guess but my question is is there a competition? I mean I know we heard about feedback but that sounds kind of you know loosey goosey. Is there competition? Do you see a competition between a kind of French desire to reignify versus an in local capacity to you know borrow and collage? And in Zingga do you see do you see these as you know a conversation a competition feedback? Yeah. Zinga, I'll let you start. >> No, I think you start. I don't know. I'm so processing. I really would love to hear your thoughts. Um, Stephen, >> no. Um, we'll do this. No, I I Luchia, I think you're right. I think that the these narratives these narratives are really different, but they're complimentary, right? and they tell, you know, and I I loved Ralph how you described it as kind of two sides of the same coin or I I'd actually think of it as kind of a a cube where this cube has many sides, right? Um but I think that that you know, you're right about being specific in order to branch out. Um but to your I'm forgetting your question. What did you ask me? >> What did you ask me? >> Is there conflict? Is there Oh, there's always conflict, right? And so around AR, I think there is. And I think what's so complicated, at least in what I've seen thus far, it's it's not fully articulated. And so it's it's not like, okay, this group is saying architecture is A and this group is saying architecture is B. What you have to see is what people are doing on the ground, right? And so and it it can be even it's not architect to architect it's neighbor to neighbor you know what comes into fashion what falls out of fashion what you know where's gore in all of this because I actually think that gore is is kind of the elephant in the room where you know in terms of architecture in terms of you know gore is for those of you who don't know the geography gore is right there gore is a 15minute ferry ride and so it is there and those buildings are are a century older, right? And so what are people taking from that? You know, certainly in terms of the residential architecture, Gore is the model. It's not, you know, gore it, they're not looking much farther. Um, and so there's certainly competition and to and I would assume particularly amongst the the the sort of merkantile class of Senagles people because they're they're moving back and forth. They're not losing a lot of power under the French and so they're you know it it it would be really interesting but you've got to look at the buildings. >> Hi. I think what I would say and uh I'm going to try to respond to it from a very sort of subjective um um reading as a singles person um from a cultural perspective. I think um we actually managed to um reconcile a lot of um these sort of conf what seems maybe to be like conflicting forces >> um you know and in a in maybe simplistic way between the kind of uh uh French culture or or that legacy of colonization and uh our old sort of like you know pre-colonial traditions that have permeated and remained through time. Um and and and I think those two sort of forces are are just coexist uh within um the Sigal um cultural identity. Um it's evident in in everything that we do. It's uh I think in the architecture um it's in the it's in the food, it's in the outfits. I mean the way in which we've sort of nationalized rice for instance when you know that this was I mean it's not that we didn't have like you know rice before but we didn't certainly didn't eat it um the way that uh we do at the scale that we do today and uh uh and uh and the history of that is is a colonial history is also associated with the peanut um um trade where the farmers were sort of imposed to do monoculture but still needed to be fed. So the kind of uh overflow of rice from Andushin was uh was introduced here. Um but now it's it's the most kind of like you know sniggles uh type of type of dish. So um because we kind of appropriated it and again have these sort of dishes like the the tibuen that uh were originated in Sani and and I think yeah denotes all those various layers that we have. Uh we see this paradox in the way that we live. And when you look at close uh when you analyze actually how housing gets organized in the city, you see that uh there are places that uh are really crafted for for much more kind of traditional rituals and ways of congregating like in the center of of the household including in apartments. I mean people have these sort of large hallways um because you still need to have a central place of gathering even when you have an apartment um in in the city and no longer live on the ground traditionally. Um so we we we we I've found that um um we very attached to many of these traditions that even through colonization have u have persisted and I think yet have found a way to kind of um embrace or integrate u many of the forces even the ones that were um kind of uh uh introduced as the form of control and and of oppression. Um yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, Via, but uh that's maybe my kind of much more um emotive so type of understanding and uh and reading of of of all of these conflicting forces as being part an integral part of uh the Synod identity. >> Well, thank you very much, Nizinga. Um thank you very much, Stephen. Uh we're going to take a five 10 minute break. Please refill your coffee cups and we'll be back. So, welcome to the second panel. Um, I'll be introducing the speakers and the respondent. Luchia Alice is an associate professor of architecture and and the director of the Buell Center here um for the BU Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University GAP. Her work addresses the history of architecture, technology, and politics on the global stage. Her book design of destruction ex addresses the de redefinition of monuments in the 20th century. She's also written about the history of architectural history uh architectural theory carbonation in reinforced concrete and contemporary design. She's the founding member of the aggregate collaborative and an editor emmeriti of Grey Room. Gregory Vald Despino is an assistant professor in the department of history at the University of Iowa, specializing in the history of migration and urbanization in France and its former colonies in West Africa. He is currently completing his manuscript on subsidized housing in the former French empire entitle entitled the politics of dwelling making homes in Paris and Dakar and our the the discussant Rosalind Frederick's is an urban geographer and associate professor at NYU's Gallatin School. Her research is centered on the politics of waste infrastructures in Dhaka. Her first book, Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dhakar, uh was um was uh I'm sorry, was awarded the Toyen Falola book award for the best book in African studies. Her current book manuscript titled Refuse All examines the life worlds that hang in the balance with the transformation of the car's garbage dump dump. I'm sorry. >> Mubus. She has also edited two books with Maduru on citizenship in African cities and the fourthcoming volume the politics of disposability discard studies in the era of devaluation with Muhammad Rafi Arafan. Frederick's is also a film producer and director and she's recently completed a fulllength documentary film the waste commons and the politics of waste picking in Dakar. Uh we'll welcome our first speaker Luchia. All right. Um, thank you everybody and this is fresh work and I'll get right to it. >> Okay. When the French architect constructor Jean Pu was preparing to present at the International Congress of Modern Architects in 1953 CAM, he drew six cartoon sketches of what he called characteristic examples of recent research on the industrialization of building. The theme of the congress was housing or what they said what they called levita. And yet only one of sketches included anything resembling a completed dwelling and then only as part of a two-step process. On the left we see a dome-shaped balloon inflated at the end of a simple pump and right behind it a full-blown house of the same shape accessorized with a rectangular window and door. While all the other sketches were of mechanical connections and complex assemblies, here Pu gestured to a satisfying malleable completeness. Especially promising for Pu was the fact that tool and result were almost identical. Only a few folds to signify the softness of rubber and a few dots the hardness of concrete. The sketch was labeled Walter Nef after the American architect who had patented this building procedure and had been deploying it in several continents since the end of the war. Pu was most likely familiar with these so-called air form domes from his travels to Franophhone West Africa, specifically from having flown in and out of Dar where four neighborhoods of these houses had been built including two on the outskirts of the airport. In a characteristic period postcard, the development is shown from above, seemingly floating in a barren landscape. A set of photographs from the archives of Walter Nef illustrate the building procedure more usefully. The domes had been made by pouring a circular concrete pad on the ground, securing a semi-pherical rubber balloon to this pad, and inflating the rubber with a pneumatic machine. A crew had then sprayed concrete over the whole half sphere with the same machine but a different attachment. The concrete had then dried for a day. The balloon had been deflated and removed through the door. And then the next house over had been built using the same balloon, the same machine in just as little time. Between 1949 and 1952, over a thousand of these domes were built by the housing authority SECAP. You'll hear a lot more about that later. Inda where they temporarily stole the show of the construction fever with which the French government was continuing to to transform the city into a colonial capital. They appeared in newspaper articles, in special issues of trade journals, and even in media outlets of international organizations. And then almost as quickly as it had floated into view, the domes retreated into obscurity. Already by 1953, all construction had halted. Soon the whole procedure was declared a technological failure. So when Pu continued to lecture about the air form in his in his teachings, he noted what a shame it was that such a good idea had not come to pass. And so Dar's bubble domes exist in the literature as a failed experiment. One survey by Zavier coup um and Carolup they credit the mison balon as a as triggering a aesthetic revolution in the city but also being totally unsuited to the so-called housing crisis that they were supposed to be a response to. The reputation of the domes as a passing fad has been reinforced in recent return in the press where many have discovered that a few dozen of these domes survive in Dhaka imshed in the accumulated fabric of the city and have argued for their conservation. Testimonies gathered from former inhabitants and current owners have revealed an attachment to their atypicality making them a whimsical but precious architectural heritage. In my talk today, I want to question the consensus that these domes are reducible to a failed architectural experiment. It's true that as a housing typology and as a constructive paradigm, air form domes eventually gave way to a much more conventional type of development. Again, Greg will talk about that later. And it's also true that this formal contrast invites a reading of their design as a symptom of historical transition in late colonial French governance. But it's the equation between lightness of form and lack of historical weight that I want to question. Does physical ephemererality really mean historical fleetingness? Is there really a contradiction between the fact that this development appeared unattached to any particular spot on Earth and the fact that some of it has stayed behind? Part of the reason why it's attractive to interpret these forms as abandoned experiments is that there's a venerable literature in architectural history and Stephen already talked about this on colonies as side of experimentation. So I'm not going to summarize it, but basically you're supposed to think that the colonies were a place where you would experiment and then bring things to the metro. If a case were to be made for Dakar's air form domes as precursors of this kind, it would be in the architectural history of disaster relief and refugee shelter where they preceded by a decade the so-called dome culture that proliferated in 1960s and the inflatable technologies that followed in the 1970s. And just one example, these are igloos done by Oxfam in 1971. They're also using inflatable formwork, but you don't spray concrete, you spray basically foam. So if we were to insert Dakas domes in this lineage, this would only reinforce their image as placeless and kind of movable objects. But what are the politics of this mobility? So instead of answering the question of whether they were meant to be temporary or permanent, whether they're forward-looking or conservative or reactionary, I want to consider the air for domes in Dar as entry points for understanding the colonial urge for mobility in this moment. And the moment is indeed one of transition when the French state found itself in dire financial straits after the war. Inventing all sorts of new public private entities to channel economic investment to its colonies and using these investments to calibrate the what they call the long-term presence that they would retain as the independence of their colonies began to seem inevitable. So in this period charged with kind of bravura and uncertainty the mison balon as I'll call them help to inaugurate a conception of housing in which mobility is of the essence. So the rest of my papers in three parts each one kind of recounting a kind of actor and the idea of mobility that they sort of subscribe to. I'll begin by recounting how Walter Nef's apparatus found itself in Dar here the mobilities of parts and material. uh then locate the air forms in the history of greater planning in Dar or planning in greater Dar and here the it's really spatial and urban mobility that's of the essence and lastly I'll turn to African syndicists for whom housing was a bargaining chip and who sought to construct a fundamentally mobile African polity all right this is not useful here we go sometime in 1952 too. Sometime in 1952, the California architect Wallace Nef took out a pair of scissors and a can of white correction fluid and began retouching the photographs of the Yoff air form development that a French architect had sent him. He cut out the background around the profiles of the humans and their houses and replaced it with a gray blur of a sky that made the sky the site look flat and empty. He patched over the domes to enhance their rounded whiteness and highlight a nuclear family standing in front. So on the right, on the right you can see the kind of retouching and on the left the result. Nef was a well-known designer of Spanish revival mansions for Hollywood stars. This is Frank Sinatra's house and spoke of the air for domes as a separate line of work claiming to just be an occasional inventor that had happened upon a good idea during the lull of the war. The invention itself was one of logistics. The basic proposal was to bring the pneumatic technologies that were being perfected for aeronautical and military use to the construction site where you replace heavy cranes and light with light-footed equipment like this and a reduced construction crew just two people. Although Nef subsequently branded air form buildings as light and airy through the extensive use of soap bubble imagery, the machinery used to construct them had been developed through the brute force of the industrial investment that comes with war. Not only the idea, but the realization was also indebted to the war. Nef worked with engineers at the Goodyear company to perfect the balloon size. His first client was the defense housing agency who was relocating employees near Virginia Falls. He also worked with the defense department to um you know gave him a kind of bureaucratic expediency because he applied for a patent for his system in 1942 and he convinced the director of this agency to support his request for accelerated approval. Having patented his product at war's end he was able to transform it into a commercial product seeking out partners around the world. So by 1955 the brochure vaunted that air forms were being used in high and low registers by name brand architects as well as for quote lowcost housing in Dar on campuses tourist villages retreats gas stations agricultural storage and restaurants. The two branches oh and here I'm um yeah the two branches of Nef's architecture were not actually so far apart. Nef valued the dome stylistic versatility and customized windows and shapes and accessories to match local vernaculars. I'm showing you grain storage in Portugal, mosques in Egypt, housing in South Africa, and a country club in California. He seems to have reveled in the dome's odious potential for indigenization, flattening its shape for military officers in Pakistan, making models to suggest a thatched porch for Africa, a thatched roof for Hawaii. Nef did distance himself from the technical responsibility for building the air forms and for their performance once built. All shipping was to be managed by existing import export companies and construction by a local contractor. After all, in order for the shippable parts of the air forms to work, someone needed to provide sand, cement, aggregate, water, gas, scaffolding, and labor. In the car, the company that took up these tasks belonged to Geier, a quote young dynamic entrepreneur who specializ in concrete and credited it was credited for a number of prominent buildings on the cast plateau. Like Nef Fritier did not shy away from primitivizing the air forms. In a perspective drawing in a perspective drawing of his first proposal, he isolated a four-person family around one shell and echoed its form by showing by drawing the mamel dunes in the background. And I'm sparing you all sorts of nipplebased jokes. Not my jokes, obviously theirs. Once on site, however, he did enhance the development with honorific neocclassical details, adding archways to flank the entrance and punctuating the perimeter perimeter wall with square posts, each topped by an ornamental sphere. How exactly the match was made between Nef and Fuier is not recorded in the archives, at least not the ones I've seen so far. But we know that within the timeline of housing, this was not the first time that CCAP was resorting to uh shippable parts. In 1946, the public works director Roj Noa had ordered a shipment of 30 pre-fabricated houses from the company Aras. I actually don't know how to pronounce this, but Aries. By 1948, the Aras contract had to be had turned out to be a costly failure, but one with good lessons to learn. First off, the wall panels, which had shipped from Germany, had been made of wood chips mixed with cement, which had become moldy during its transport and would only further decay in a tropical climate. The supply chain was also difficult to coordinate. These internal partitions on the right had been the first to arrive and would have to be sit for weeks while the external shell was being built. And lastly, assembly turned out to be specialized work. Without training or experience, the laborers had produced a kind of set of ill-connected parts rather than a weatherproof house. So to use Pro's language, there was no correspondence between procedure and result. In light of this, the air forms that Griefier was had started to build next door seemed far more promising. And especially the idea of using concrete, as Enzinga already talked about, was especially attractive to public works officials because they just opened their first concrete plant in West Africa, creating a new private public company, Sukosim, as part of a policy of misal. The timeline was long-term. Even if political independence was forthcoming, France would retain economic influence through its business ties. Within the year of the plant's opening, Fitier had proposed the air forms and within another year he was confronted with significant technical issues. Some domes had collapsed, others leaked. Many, many showed cracks. That's why Nef had to wipe them out because there were many cracks. The reaction of the public works department was to delay payment to Fuier and to contact Nef. Unusually, Nef wrote back. He cautioned that the responsibility was not his and that that it was difficult to judge from afar, but he bet on local deficiencies, bad sand, cement, rock or water. He also suggested waterproofing the homes with globally available chemical products. >> Uh so and then the authorities also contacted Nef's French partner Gil who was in Marseilles. He similarly blamed the quality of local sand, but added a critique of the mediocrity of local manpower. This essentializing of the colonies as made of the wrong stuff, both material and geological, was compounded once the department hired an independent expert, who determined that the lay the fault lay in the fact that a combination of concrete had been sprayed on the first set of air forms. Some fresh cement from the port had been followed by a coat made with bags of cement from the new plant. The question of which cement would be used in building up the car was not limited to the air forms and had profound consequences on the political economy of the territory. As again Zingga was just talking about suim operators were fighting a virulent fight against the colonial budget office who despite their support for the plant kept importing foreign concrete. This was unfair competition. This is a Soosim executive saying, "As soon as we've established our French cement, French cement, we were astonished this year arriving on into the port enormous quantities of foreign concrete." The states responded by promising to open new markets in Nijer and Ivory Coast. And yet as soon as production was ramped up for those again the empire defaulted on its supposed ability to control the economy as the price for bagging concrete which was essential now became tied up in labor negotiations. So like many other private public ventures cement producers kept having to ask for exception after exception from the state who only open more market for ever more distant financial gain. The air form projects basically parallel this struggle, but they prove surprisingly resilient. Once completed, Leninoa requested a survey of all the air forms as built. He looked at the sheet and concluded that a satisfactory improvement in performance had occurred over the course of the buildings of the four neighborhoods. And giving this learning curve, Fitier was allowed to pay be paid and resume building. Montenoir wrote to a colleague he felt confident that the air forms could now be made applicable across all the French colonies. Against all odds, the air form domes had helped to transform concrete into a local material. And I think that the repeated form of the domes, the the capacity to be surveyed one by one as if they were ready to test the same industrial procedure over and over again was essential to their power as a tool for domestication. Uh so my second part talks about the domes also as part of domestications but not only material but also spatial. Okay. In August 1949 the secretary general of the colonial government Paul took out a compass and traced two concentric circles on a piece of tracing paper. He was trying to represent the Y airport and its surrounding buffer zones. By hand he added three smaller circles. Oops. No, not yet. He added three smaller circles to represent uh the communities of Eno, Yaf, and Wakam, who are the three communities that Enzinga was just talking about. And with a wavy line, he indicated the ocean's edge. He drew this diagram to try to convince the director of public health of greater Dhakar to relocate an air neighborhood, which had been planned for 53 African employees of the weather service from the southern edge of the airport's diameter near Wakam to the north near Yof. The move, he said, would accommodate these functionaries closer to their place of work and reduce the cost of carrying them, transporting them from home to work. The public health official was against it. He had already explained in an angry four-page memorandum that, quote, locating indigenous habitat so close to the aerodrome was against world health regulations. The airirst strip itself was left over from an American air force base and had originally been slated for demolition, but it was now being kept operational because under American pressure, Doul had declared that the French should continue to have a military presence in West Africa. So the airirstrip had been designated for civilian use. The airport needed to include housing for Air France employees and a tourist hotel. And so the public health official had been the first to draw a distorted arc on a piece of the sheet from the 1946 master plan and invoking decades old practices of hygienic segregation called for the weatherman's homes to be to remain outside this endemic zone. Besides, he added, he couldn't help himself, shouldn't buildings for subolan persons be taller and denser? And wouldn't an earlier proposal for a garden city for Europeans be a more appropriate use of the peninsula? And you can see the garden city right there. At this point, it might be helpful to note that urban historians of Dar have described the period 1940 to 1960 as a curious hench when a massive building wave fueled by state investment produced important architectural realizations in the plateau and the port. But when a lot of this urban construction was in some sense honorfic. In the words of one historian, with no sense of irony, the French finally constructed their Vampirial when Empire was about to disappear. The air for neighborhoods helped to diagnose this uneasiness. They appear at the margins of the um 1946 master plan and are much better understood on a commercial map indicating international headquarter companies and infrastructure. Here, air for neighborhoods exist in spatial transitions between city and energy, city and commerce, city and port, city and airport. And the stakes of populating these buffer areas with housing for African functionaries should not be underestimated. What was meant by housing crisis after all was an influx of persons that required urban planners to turn their attention from the plateau to the whole cap vera peninsula. There was significant uncertainty about how exactly this should be designed. And as my opening vignette shows, this created a significant clash between different kinds of mobility. The infrastructural mobility where you're trying to locate things with their proximity to infrastructure and basically social mobility or urban mobility where people can live in certain places and deambulate there too. One way that the planners dealt with this uncertainty was to make scale comparisons. This is the urban crisis. This is the influx of people in the car. One way that they dealt with this uncertainty was to make scale comparisons with Paris. In late 1946, they superimposed a diagrammatic outline of the French capital onto the map of Cab. The hope was in part to absorb the large-scale angles of airplane runways into citywide housemanian exial schemes. Somehow this is not clicking. There it is. So there's you can locate your favorite uh you can locate your favorite landmarks in Dhaka. Um nor was this strategy limited to Dhaka. The the strategy of combining of trying to look for housemanian logic in Dhaka was not limited to this city. In 1945, a special issue of Liki made a catalog of colonial cities with leftover um massive air strips and patches of radially drawn and axy planned Bozar cities nested in their arms. So here's the airirst strip. Here's the city. Here's an airirst strip. Oops. Wow. How did that happen? Sorry, I have to go through the whole thing now. I don't know what happened. You get to remind yourself of what I just said. This is what they look like. This is nef. I don't know why that happened. Okay. Give me an air strip. Okay. So, this is n air strip. little bozar strip and a little bozar. It was this disjunction between scale two different scales and epistems that Chuvan was trying to resolve by locating these mison banon in the buffer zones because they're kind of nondirectional and multiplyable like this the way that they appear on the map today. Shauvan ultimately lost the fight and the 53 weatherman's homes were returned to Tamasud. The economic office declared it would no longer guarantee transportations for these workers and they would have to walk. So the mobility of logistical parts encountered the mobility of labor and won. But if the outcome of this particular clash between public works and public health reinforce these old hygienesis distinctions between Vidhen and Vidoren by consulting the correspondence around the air form domes as I have the four years that they were developed, designed and built. You can hear over the four years that this distinction between African and European space starts to wear away for purely pragmatic reasons. One way the distinction had been and I have to collapse my argument here but one way the distinction had been enforced by inventing three categories of housing recipients. This is how the the um houses are first designated when in the archive Kaz and one way the distinction had been enforced was by inventing three categories of housing recipients European indigenous and evolved that maintain ethnic hierarchies for the so-called evol housing came with a promise but never realized social mobility for instance the par fabricated homes that I talked about earlier had been intended for French bachelors not There they are. They had been intended as temporary housing for French bachelors, European bachelors, with a promise that once these bachelors started a family, they would move out and the houses would be then given to the evolu. >> A year later is when the air force, the SEC changed this strategy and designed air forms directly for the evol. Although social mobility was still controlled by architectural means because the Europeans who lived in these bubble developments were assigned to larger bubbles or multiple bubbles with front porches. Another way that the distinction between European and African space had been enforced was linguistic by using the word abita for Africans and Ljmo for Europeans. The two words implied different types of architectural design and and methods. Underlying AITA was the assumption that ethnic identities is structured and reinforced by living environments. The term lmon in contrast established a technical basis for housing. AITA implied an urbanism delivered in broad strokes in kind of zoning. Ljmon called forth a rationalized calculable form of design regulated by a market and measured in number of units. And significantly, as I'm sure Mary's about to say, the reverse operation was happening at CM, which in 1953 decided to adopt a shabita. And for them, that was a kind of humanist gesture. Uh, but in Dakar, plan officials basically hope to maintain social hierarchies through housing, but they stopped using the word abita basically within the lifespan of these domes. Evolving designs of the bubble homes also index this change. In his first drawings, Fuier had tried to pass off the domes as a species of vernacular architecture, echoing the claims of administrators that African employees would find themselves at home in these kaz traditional, like a hardened traditional hut. Um, of course, the idea that Dak's indigenous villages were made up of isolated round causalization. As Nzinga already has talked about, the traditional compounds in West Africa grouped buildings in a vast perimeter with domestic and communal buildings facing each other in a central area. But the fiction that was of these dots was reinforced by the French geographic service who used irregular clusters of dots on a blank page in order to represent the village de Bronur around Dar. And so Fritier's air form domes basically his first sight plans look essentially Oh, I was going to show a movie. Do I have time? You know what? I'll show the movie later. Fitier's first airformed domes looked essentially like a reordering of pre-existing village dots. They were arrayed gently around curves and they were connected by hub and spoke landscape features. >> As Sika began requesting open bids for affordable housing rather than commissioning them directly, the plans became wholly rectalinear. Each house was now divided with walls at right angles. No longer did the bubbles correspond to a single dwelling. Some contained bathrooms, others kitchens. Plot divisions bisected both. So a single kitchen dome like this one was actually shared by four families, each entering its pies-shaped kitchen through a separate door and from a different piece of land. This division of space had actually been so this is a site plan that's one plot of land not working again but this division of space had actually been demanded by secup who' made suggestions for how neighboring plots would be arranged back to back and that's seeup's suggestions four plots houses in the middle and that's fitier's s solution in a sense fit's ability to conform to these requirements was While maintaining the rounded form was kind of ingenious. It's kind of well done. But the goal was clearly to create a suburban family unit. The dome's form exaggerated this itemization since a circular shell doesn't have a back or a front and so had to sit now in the center of the courtyard. So even as they maintain their apparent form as an isotropic unit of indigenous life, the air form bubbles left behind a rectinear footprint characteristic of private property, even if they weren't actually private property. So in the final section of my paper, I want to show how this capacity for the domes to render visible a false premise of social mobility was leveraged by those who are resisting French rule. All right. In October 1949, the customs officers labor union voted to refuse to inhabit the future air form development that was being made for them in BOPA. I'm showing you the telegram where this news was discussed by the director of the general uh the director general and the director of public works. This refusal is arguably a better guide for understanding the end of the air form's colonial career in Dhaka than technological failure or architectural failure. And it's true that there were many technical issues. There were cracks and leaks. Also, the construction method is really not appropriate for the climate of Da. You have like a small dome, concrete, no insulation under the hot sun. It's not very bearable as a living condition as every architect will tell you. More broadly then, since the syndicate's goal was equality, we can safely say that they were refusing to inhabit what they considered second rate home, an unequal housing. But it's also important to note that the air forms had sustained the fiction of social mobility long enough, incredibly enough, to be leveraged in demands for equality. Consider the family. The balloon form had always existed in tension with France's attempt to impose a European family unit. In a magazine feature in Bingo that followed, quote, followed an employee of the police home to his bubble, the article repeatedly mentioned his nuclear family of four, a wife and two children, even if the accompanying photograph showed a group of 11 at some point posing in front. This spatial and numerical containment of the African family was a recurring theme in in labor negotiations and not always as you would think. After the 1946 abolition of forced labor, um the French government invented new calculations to legitimate salary differences between European and African French citizens because remember these people are citizens. One way higher pay with for French cadra over their African counterparts was justified was through a p deismo pismo. Basically this is a kind of displacement stipend. It means the notion is that any European who lives in the was fundamentally quote on leave from a French lifestyle and thus needed to be paid a salary higher that allowed his family to periodically return and eventually move back to the col to the metropole. And the French counted clearly on displacement being the one irreducible difference between the Europeans and the African Frenchmen. But rather than point out the injustice of this conceit, the customs unit accepted it and demanded equality and equivalence. African functionaries were also on leave. They were also owed a pismo since they also had mostly moved from surrounding communities and they were frequently leaving family behind and or having to sustain groups of relatives in two different levels of life. So to make my argument short, the syndicate's intrigent as to who was in dipismo who was displaced echoes its categorical refusal to occupy air forarm domes. Labor organizers could use housing as a bargaining chip among others because the mison balon made visible the rationalization of the family as a unit with its obvious formal completeness. The dome illustrated the house as a completed commodity form up for offer, negotiation and refusal. And this was despite the best efforts of the French to attach it to a kind of undeniably African lifestyle. So in conclusion, returning to my two initial questions, uh I don't remember if I have slides for this. Yes. Um what politics motivated the real and imagined mobility of these domes? I guess I'll go back to this. Uh the movement of parts is what motivated global capital. Imperial governance saw a tool for controlling social and urban mobility. But the syndicates had a different idea. They claimed a new equivalence between anyone who could be counted as mobile or displaced. Secondly, what kind of experiment is this? Remember that was my first question. The construction of the air form domes is not so much a formal iteration of the kind where you shape something and then you change your mind about the shape. It is that. But we can also think of it as an experiment in the sense that pu meant it. A process that shapes a result. If we take the result to be continuing French presence in the colonies by way of the misalon the French designed a process and hope that their legacy would mold itself literally upon them like concrete sprayed onto an inflated form. Thank you. Thank you. What a what a perfect transition. You even had some of my images at the end. Um so I just want to thank Lucia and Ralph and Hugo for organizing this. Uh this is really just a wonderful day. I also want to thank uh the incredibly overworked people at O'Hare last night who allowed me to not have to spend the night in the airport and I was actually able to get to New York in time despite classic Midwest airport difficulties. Um, so, so let's let's dive in once I can figure out how this works. Oh boy. An intriguing set of albums on sits on the shelves of the Societ Sagal's now somewhat familiar oldest public housing agency. Each album contains photos of complexes that CCAP built in Dar and the surrounding region during the 1950s. When I flipped through these albums for the first time nearly a decade ago, maybe over a decade ago, uh, one photo in particular caught my eye. In it, we see here, a young woman with a baby on her back stares at a sign that reads, quote, "The Cite is yours. Be so kind as to keep it clean." End quote. Now, the term CIE refers to both government housing, and more broadly, a locust of citizenship. And so we see the single family houses, the woman and child and the director to keep the space clean capturing the norms that one photographer associated with this new senagle cite. However, this was not the last time I encountered this message. In 2022, my research assistant Al-Haji Yu and I spoke with one Madun Jay who has lived in Cap's Libert neighborhood since 1961. As Enjai fondly recalled his childhood home and the streets he traversed as a boy, he recited a message he saw in signs across his suburban world. Quote, "The Caye is yours. Be so kind as to keep it clean." End quote. So colonial calls for cleanliness cleanliness lived on not only in official photographs, but also in the memories of daily suburban strolls from decades ago. Over the past few years, I've come to see these kinds of images, texts, and memories as debris from a different era in Dar's colonial and postcolonial history. Local manifestations of a much broader framework that made the French and Senagalles state responsible for certain West African urbanites domestic well-being. I call this framework the politics of dwelling. And my research on the politics of dwelling challenges the emphasis on displacement and dispossession and histories of colonial and postcolonial urbanization both within Sagal and beyond. And this framework has illuminated beautifully and powerfully how modern urban growth depended has frequently depended on often violently forcing impoverished and racialized urbanites to leave their homes. And I don't want to downplay this undeniable reality and its devastating toll. But I argue that urbanization in cities like Dar depended as much on selective installation as it did on mass displacement. And in doing so, I explain when, why, and how people like Mammud Jai engage with institutions often deemed agents of their dislocation. And in doing so, provide new historical explanations for the causes and consequences of urban inequality. Now, my current project does this by comparing subsidized housing programs for select West African workers in 20th century Paris and DAR. And by examining the origins, constructions, and legacies of these homes, I explain how French subsidized housing structured who did or did not get the right to the city in these connected metropolises. And I argue that unique historical openings allow distinct West African populations to use government funded homes meant to confine them to remain in these increasingly expensive and inclusive exclusive cities. Now the remainder of this presentation I'll focus on the dakarwa side of the project to explain the long history and legacy behind these ccap abodess. CCAP raises questions about why so many exclusionary postwar colonial modernization programs in African cities persisted after formal independence. After 1945, colonial authorities across Africa pursued unprecedented industrial and social investments grounded in growing modernization theory. Modernization schemes often claimed to put African societies on a fast track to western style industrial modernity. And many plans tried to create a class of urban of African urban nuclear families who whose reproductive and productive labor would promote economic growth and political stability. Now, historians, many of whom are in this room, have demonstrated that many postwar projects built on rather than broke with histories of colonial exploitation in foreign cultural impositions. In particular, urban historians have demonstrated how modernization plans replace the racially divided dual city of the colonial era by the socio-economically split cities seen after independence. Now, vital as these stories are, I argue they often miss or fail to fully explain why disruptive modernizing programs endured. And I argue that CCAP reveals that certain modernization plans had so much influence in part because they gave or at least promised to give, it's kind of building on Lucia's presentation, select African urbanites the comforts associated with the good life seen as key to prosperity and political legitimacy after the war. CCAP served a particularly influential clientele, salaried workers and function. Contracted wage earners constituted about 9% of postwar Sagal's workforce but as much as a third of postwar dars. While a minority dabakar fall argues that sagal's colonial and postcolonial leaders both saw wage workers as vital to economic and political stability. As a result, authorities and workers alike came to see CCAP as key to reinforcing this population and their in their stability and support for the government by giving them the domestic comforts associated with a global post-war middle class. Now, scholars have long debated the utility of using the concept of middle class in African history. And part of this relates to the terms ambiguity. The label middle class has never just denoted occupation or salary. In the modern era, being middle class has also meant access to globally circulating goods, ideas, and values. Historians have used this more expansive understanding to show how people outside of Europe and North North America have joined a global burgeoisi by accessing these circuits to distinguish themselves from peasants, precarious urbanites, and colonial or so-called traditional elites since at least the mid-9th century, if not much earlier. In the mid- 20th century, many socially mobile western West Africans similarly tried to achieve this status by accessing the markers of the good life associated with the postwar economic boom. In DAR, CCAP became key to this aspiration. French and Senagalles authorities used this organization to provide salaried workers with detached suburban homes that came to symbolize prosperity after the war. All to serve their often diverging and conflicting political projects. All the while, residents, particularly men, adapted these spaces to pursue their own aspirations. And examining this process reveals how colonial class formation structured the very landscape of Sagal's postcolonial capital. That's not the right direction. These things >> Yeah, let's just do this. This is going to make life a lot easier. So CCAP emerged out of decadesl long efforts to use home ownership to manage and divide the city's growing population. And so I'm here I'm building off of many of the presentations already given. In response to the now well-known and discussed 1914 plague outbreak, authorities built a new Perry urban so-called native village called the Medina. However, poor infrastructure and the indigenous labor community's unique political and economic rights meant that most of Dar's growing African majority continued to live outside the medina well into the 1930s. One 1930 report estimated that out of an African population of 28,000 only 8,000 lived in the medina. So by the mid1 1920s certain colonial authorities tread new strategy to segregate Dar subsidized home ownership. In 1926, French authorities established the office economic indicar and planners modeled this office off of similar programs in metropolitan France which since the 1890s had provided low interest loans to prospective homeowners to buy these houses from pre-approved contractors. Colonial Minister Leon Perier argued such an institution in Dhakar would help building uh builders overcome reservations about serving supposedly financially imprudent African clients while also furthering quote the sanitation and beautifification of the city and incentivizing among quote among the autonous population a sense of hygiene, well-being and savings end quote. However, this financial support did not go to everyone. At first, the OE focused on housing the city's labor residents who had long refused to leave their valuable plots in downtown Dar. After major reforms in 1934, the office increasingly focused on a new clientele, function, whose guaranteed income would allow them to pay back any loans, thus helping to sustain the office's finances. Furthermore, this small but growing population had increasing political power in the city, particularly in the context of rising labor militancy, popular discontent amidst the Great Depression, and efforts by France's popular front government to demonstrate colonial policies that could improve the so-called quality of life amongst colonial populations. By providing modern homes outside the city center this small class of Seneagalles dwellers, local officials hope to gain the support of a key demographic and inspire other Africans to leave the so-called European city of the plateau. Planners provided statebacked loans for detached family houses like the one seen here designed by the Seneagalles architect Amuru Mumbai in 1937. Through these houses, authorities hoped to segregate a car by example and not simply by force. And while World War II considerably slowed down construction, hundreds of applications poured into the O's files. And the vast majority of these, all except 10, came from men working in the government sector, revealing the O's success in attracting the function it sought to house. In his 1943 application letter, for example, the public works clerk Tamir asked for a new home because, quote, "This nomadic life does not allow me to know the joys of home and the pleasures of having my family at my side, under my control." End quote. Yeah. Yeah. Quite an ending. Records don't indicate if Toué got his request fulfilled, but they do reveal that hundreds of men turned to the office to get the kind of home they presented as key to establishing familial stability and patriarchal authority. And by the end of the war, the office had made only about 166 houses, even as Dar's population approached 150,000. So clearly, the OE had failed to meet at least any sort of mass housing goal. But that was never the goal. It was always selective housing and even if it failed to house the majority of the people it claimed to, it created administrative precedents and personal expectations that got con that were concretized after World War II. So by the end of the 1940s, colonial authorities folded the OE into a new and better funded agency, the now wellestablished CCAP. Planners and administrators felt CCAP had to succeed where the OE failed, especially in the face of DAR's rapid growth, which would surpass 300,000 residents by 1960. Housing became central to administrative efforts to make a DAR an emblem of postwar colonial modernization. And this strategy rested on a vast reorganization of the city and its periphery that we've already discussed a bit. This greater DAR plan would divide Dar and the broader Capair Peninsula into distinct residential zones. These plans designated zones downtown or along the coast as European areas in areas far beyond the city's limits as a um regions for so-called non- assimilated Africans. And then this plan left suburban areas for the Avou kind of the areas seen in blue a bit of as we established the colonial educated West Africans. So planners explicitly fl framed these neighborhoods as buffers between Dar's European and Autoinous European core and autoinous edges inscribing the Avolway's intermediary social and economic position into Dar's very soil. Armed with these plans and funded by lowinterest loans from the French overseas investment bank, CCAP purchased land, built residents and loans and provided loans. CCAP houses varied in size from studios to two to four room single family homes. And so this photo here depicted a three- room twin house which meant a sheran wall with its neighboring house. While this plan for a CCAP development included residential blocks interspersed with parks and trees lined streets as well as a commercial strip seen kind of vaguely in the center. And so this aerial photo here of one development of the 1955 CCAP pamphlet highlighted the scale of these new complexes on the edge of this growing city. So, as planners hope, CCAP, as hoped, CCAP quickly attracted a relatively privileged clientele. Prospective residents could either rent or sign a rentto- own contract that promised home ownership in 10 to 20 years. Prospective homeowners, however, had to provide a sizable down payment with all and all applicants, renters or prospective homeowners, needed proof of regular income, excluding thousands who worked without a stable contract. By 1953, one report said CCAP received 4,000 requests for rent to buy homes from African applicants, quote, especially Evo, notably bureaucrats who want to become property owners. End quote. And this profile reflects how high costs and need to provide sta to prove stable income limited CCAP's clientele. And local activists decried this elite elitism, as did many French officials within CCAP. quote, "We simply want to call attention to the danger," one 1954 government report said, "in raising up an African burgeoisi while leading the mass of the population to languish in their slums end quote." A 1955 audit similarly so that CCAP's rents were quote inaccessible to the majority of those we want to want to reach end quote. But the same audit praised CCAP for quote making the slums disappear, offering more hygiene and greater comfort at prices that were accessible to all and developing a sense of savings end quote. So like its into predecessors, CCAP not just wanted to build houses, it wanted to make a new class with new subjectivities, new financial practices that were by definition exclusive. So, photographs of 1950s developments in CCAP's archives highlight some of the domestic habits that these homes promoted. One such picture showed a couple sitting in their garden as the husband read the local paper, while another showed a dining room above a text that read, quote, "Our residents in general are very respectful. A healthy emulation leads them to lovely interior arrangements." End quote. CCAP even ran tidy home competitions with prizes for residents who had the most meticulously organized interiors which in the prize was enough money to pay one month's rent. And by promoting this emulation, administrators tried to create a new class that adhered to and promoted French domestic norms. In applications for homes in CCAP's Fanhawk complex, in particular provides insights into the people who coveted these houses and the good life they promised. Fanhawk's unique coastal location attracted both European and African applicants. So, it's a bit apart from other CCAP complexes, but it still kind of epitomizes the norms and associations with it. In the fall of 1952, CCAP's administrative council reviewed 129 applications, which included 37 from Europeans. And of all these applications, however, only 17 came from women, reflecting CCAP's strong, if not exclusive, attachment to a male breadwinner model. All the European applicants in all but 15 of the 92 African ones requested a single family house. So Fanhawk's uh racial diversity set it apart. Applicants professions match CCAP's socioeconomic profile. Of 123 applicants, only four lacked regular wages. And furthermore, 62% of applicants worked for the government, a figure that went up to 70% for African applicants. So successful applicants had a had a variety of jobs from midwives to chauffeur. But whatever they did, they kept a ste as long as they kept a steady wage, they held a privileged position in DAR's post-war economy. And CCAP's administrative council put select quotes from applications into their notes, providing glimpses into how successful applicants selectively echoed CCAP's priorities. Bubakar Sek, for example, evoked CCAP's thrifty imperatives when he said he wanted to save enough to turn a rental lease in a rent to buy one. Francois Duza similarly said she tired of quote paying so much for a badly oriented room in the medina. Complaints about uncomfortable or crowded homes evoked common frustration in this rapidly growing city. In CCAP administrator's decision to excerpt these statements also reveal how citing these issues caught their eyes. And in the case of one Richard Ali council members transcribed the entire letter. An accountant for a shipping firm, Ali said he lived with his three children, sister, and a cousin in a small room in a 16 room building in the medina. Residents depended on a mobile kitchen often used in the courtyard, quote, exposed to the eyes of those passing by end quote. This system overwhelmed Ali's family with smoke, meaning his children could quote easily contract all sorts of diseases. Moreover, noisy neighbors kept up Alb's children who quote had to go to classes the next day end quote. There's a lot of quotes. And children were not the only ones with rough mornings in this house. The building's bathrooms opened at 7:30 a.m. in issues for renters who had to get the office by 7. Having listing all these tren these tribulations, Albi asked for a three-bedroom CCAP home to quote, "Bring order to my household and for the education of my children end quote." This letter evoked the crowds and disease that CCAP claimed to combat as well as the commitment to the colonial education that reproduced the Avuloi class and the letter's contents and a transcription in official files show that he told administrators what they wanted to hear. More fundamentally though it also shows that Albi wanted a new home. Like many other applicants, he achieved this goal in part by paring official priorities. But this rhetorical overlap did not mean that residents passively adopted CCAP's domestic norms. In particular, many households failed to match the nuclear family associated with post-war suburbia in Europe and North America. In Fenhulk, for example, three successful applicants had two wives. And despite being minority, their presence and their success reveals that polygenous families were not inherently excluded from CCAP. And so these kinds of traces hint at how CCAP authorities adapted their plans to majestic realities on the ground. In some adaptations took a more concrete form. As it became clear that CCAP could not exclude non-uclear families, planners tried a new approach, the so-called transformable house. As CCAP Secretary General Gue Ewig explained in a 1955 article for the magazineistics, removable partitions let residents make new rooms and adapt quote their domestic space to the evolution of their family's needs. An arrangement that Hartwood claimed accommodated the essential the essentially variable African family end quote and that could in which a family that could not be confined in pre-planned suburban walls. But if CCAP met certain African residents domestic preferences, they did so in ways that imbued new conflicts into Dakar's periphery. Much of the land for these constructions belonged to indigenous labor families who had fought for decades, as we've seen, to defend their imperiled homes. Many labor patriarchs of Burump Pinch and Woolof had tried to keep the inherited land which anchored multif family compounds known as Pinch primarily a primary cause of the violent conflicts during the plague outbreak in 1914. Post-war suburbanization, however, pit these labor domestic aspirations against new ones held by thousands of salaried migrants coming to Dar. As Lucia kind of alluded to, by 1958, over threearters of CCAP households heads were born outside the Dar region. Many of the people I interviewed describe migratory journeys that ended in CCAP abodess. Papa Jai, for example, came to Sen Takar from Sagal's Lingare region in 1956 and lived in a wooden house in Dar's Medina neighborhood until 1967 when a secretary at the radio station he worked at gave him a chance to move into what he called the chic neighborhood of Sikap Libert and his coworker came from Toga and transformed her lease he transferred her lease to Injai after she moved into a larger home nearby with her husband. And so while Anjai moved into this house in 1960s, his story provides glimpses into desire that led thousands of migrants to move to CCAP homes in the 1950s. However, no interviewees mentioned to pre-existing labor residents. When I asked what was in the areas before, they described primarily trees and monkeys and animals in the area. So accessing and remembering CCAP homes meant erasing the ones that labor families lost. So quote in its time CCAP was really an elorado. Malik Sabali recalled wisfully many in long-term resident many long-term residents we spoke with evoked similarly rosy memories about CCAP's neighborhoods in the 1960s and 70s and these kinds of recollections of serene suburbs echoed the prosperous visions impwed into these neighborhoods both in the colonial and the early postcolonial period after French colonists used housing to justify their ever increasingly flimsy rule senagles residents and officials in the 1960s alike used these spaces to prove their nations and its citizens were comfortably at home in the postcolonial world. So, CCAP remained a cornerstone of Dar's housing policy after 1960, which in part stemmed from continued massive continued support from the French government, part of so-called cooperation policies that sought to keep former subsaharan African colonies in France's sphere of influence. French funding, however, did not stop people from imbuing CCAP houses with postcolonial potential. Editors of the popular bingo magazine already cited captured this belief in a 19 1960 the so-called year of Africa in a special edition on housing and domesticity and in the introduction they said quote our political evolution must accompany a parallel evolution in our everyday lives end quote and to document this transformation one article displayed the ccap home of Madu Asan Bengue and his unnamed wife the caption we see here underneath one image of their living room said that quote then a large map and a green plant symbolize Africa in this Parisian burgeois decor end quote so this multicultural decor broadcast the cosmopolitan aspirations bingo's editors believed that Sagal needed as it faced independence and president Leopold Sangor reinforced this link between CCAP and Sagal's new place in the world while discussing infrastructure at a 1962 socialist party congress sangor declared that well that is just way off. So listen closely. Sangor declared that quote water and electricity speak to health while the amelioration of housing recalls an effort of civilization. This fact is manifested in ccap and dar. There one buys fewer frivvalities. One buys more pieces of art. One takes in the state the taste and culture of trees and flowers. One creates there a new civilization negro African and modern. End quote. Sangor thus embedded these homes in his effort to make Sagal a center of postcolonial pan-Africanism. And that same year, CCAP published a pamphlet with with Sangor's words on the cover. And these, as you can see here, it's in the faded yellow transcribed directly Sangor's kind of praise for the Negro African civilization created into their promotional material. And then the pages within depicted the new complex and its verdant streets and described good schools, a new mosque and church and the roads that led residents down to their jobs in the plateau. And at the end saying, quote, "Ccap offers you practical, agreeable, and affordable housing that has already excited thousands, which tomorrow can be yours." End quote. Decades after endorsing CCAP's work, Sangor similarly appeared in many residents memories. Sambbasai for example is sitting in the recalled sitting in the front row when Sangor opened a new CCAP complex in the 60s. Lamin bro who has lived in Cap since 1958 fondly recalled Sangor strolling through nearby streets and saying quote President Singor loved to take his visitors into CCAP. He explained saying he would guide official guests from the nearby Avenue Borgiba to suburban complexes gardens. Other people even credited Sangor with creating CCAP. Indri who has lived in CCAP libert since 1966 said quote president Sangor initiated it at the time so each worker had a roof. End quote. These memories erased CCAP's colonial origins reproducing decades old visions of the suburbs as signs of postcolonial progress made during the 1960s. And in doing so, they reveal the enduring impact of the Sangorian state's efforts to bolster its own legitimacy by using CCAP to give a key constituency access to modern domestic comforts. Now, most residents we spoke with were children when their parents moved to CCAP neighborhoods in the 1960s, and they often recalled these neighborhoods prestige at the time. Lamin Borrow said his well-educated neighbors effectively wore a badge that said they were cir like the people of CCAP end quote laughing as he recycled this old colonial term. And we heard similar colonial echoes while interviewing siblings Albert and Aafate. After explaining in Wolof that people used to sweep CCP streets so regularly you can sit on them. Awa switched to French to say prop or it was clean. So instead of using the the woolof term for set which we can discuss is kind of associated with a very different kind of politics in postcolonial and contemporary decar fat invoked a French word that decades earlier appeared on didactic colonial signs. So interviewees uses of terms like citiz or pope hinted at enduring colonial influences on how CCAP residents define their communities. And when we asked Albert and Awa if CCAP was high class, she chuckled a bit. Her father worked as a bartender at the National Assembly and they grew up near bankers and accountants. And so while acknowledging that these were privileged jobs, she said her and her neighbors were sample. For AWA, what made CCAP what's special was their residents commitment to education, families, and keeping the neighborhood prop. And so this overlap with CCAP's founding ideologies, however, again, like in the 50s, did not stop residents from adapting CCAP spaces. Awave fondly recalled working with her neighbors to turn empty fields into collective gardens. And so while Bingo and Singor presented CCAP residents as savvy market consumers, these kinds of memories and other evidence reveal that CCAP tenants did not rely solely on the market for their daily needs. In some residents cultivated food much closer to home. Like other res like other interviewees, Julian Lo's mother, Marie Clar Costa, filled their backyard with mango and lemon trees and the occasional chicken. And at one point, Lelo showed me photographs of this lush garden with his mother draped by her suburban trees in the backyard of her CCAP home guarded in a folder for decades. This folder revealed not only how one resident changed their home, but how she and her son preserved this transformation. And so some of these adaptations again pushed against the monogous couple imagined as key to see Seneagal's and Dar's modernization. In 1970, Ibrahim Afal moved into CCA's Jup neighborhood with his mother, an employee at Sagal's social security office. And Fall's father had several wives, and he did not live full-time in this house in Jup. But instead, the house belonged to Fall's mother until her death. Women like her used their professional status to get their own houses from a program explicitly associated with patriarchal nuclear families. In a very different example, Mammud De said his father, a railroad worker, made a home aligned with what he described as his traditional background. His father built two rooms in the courtyard for his second and third wives. It's echoing how Bum Pench long made distinct rooms for different wives around sh within shared courtyards across Sagal. And his father brought these practices into CCAP neighborhoods. And we conducted this our interview in this very home which Demma inherited which he has used to reinforce his own patriarchal authority demonstrating how his father's investment continued to serve the family after his death. And in these different ways residents dictated what kinds of families lived in CCAP's modern homes and for how long. But again and of course as since the 1950s and the 30s even adaptability did not mean accessibility. In 1962, the French researcher Bernard Odin critiqued CCAP in a report to Sagal's Minister of the Interior by saying that the down payment and proof of stable income meant that quote exclusion is practically inscribed. End quote. Odin said the state would need to invest massively to increase construction to house a projected 300,000 more residents by 1970. And similar critiques came throughout the decade from researchers, funders, and politicians who wanted CCAP to act more like postwar Europe's mass housing agencies. But CCAP was never designed as a mass housing program. It had always and explicitly served a salaried minority that had become central to the Seneagalles state and economy. A letter by the head of France's mission of aid and cooperation in 1962 provides insights into this political dynamic, explaining that the sing that Sangor regularly rebuffed calls to push CCAP to focus on cheap cheaper housing because he because said quote the psychologically and politically difficult to reduce the quality and norms that clients are used to. End quote. Making these homes cheaper or less exclusive would undermine the prestige that made these houses key to both reinforcing support among DAR's professional class and celebrating Senagal's post-war prosperity or the vision of it. And by the early 1970s, these conflicts reach a breaking breaking point. Growing frustration with CCAP's housing model and broader economics constraints within in both France and Sagal led the French government to stop funding CCAP in 1972. In response, CCAP authorities tried to find new international investors, knowing that any new loans would likely come with much higher interest rates. And these troubles only grew as Sen Sagal's economy stalled, leading national officials to turn to agencies like IMF, who, as we all know, structural adjustment policies greatly diminished public investments in anything. So, as CCAP lost funding, residents have held on to memories of better days, if only to draw contrasts with the present. Dirty streets elicit the most consistent critiques. As Mammud Jai told us, the city's takeover of CCAP's maintenance in the 1980s quote facilitated the degradation of his beloved home. Trash came up constantly in interviews as the clearest manifestation of this deterior deterior deterioration often framed as an erase eraser of a prestigious boundary that once separated CCAP neighborhoods and the rest of the greater Dar. And this feeling arose not only in interviews but online. In November 2020, a Facebook group focused on Sagal's architectural history posted four old CCAP photographs, some of which I've used today. And the post listed dozens of comments by long-term residents. One poster writing, quote, "It was propra and beautiful," before another said that the loss of sanitation workers facilitated CCAP's medinization, a term that came up in interviews. And another poster asked one troubling question. Why have we regressed so much? end quote. Like bingo decades earlier, Facebook forums circulate CCAP's suburban dream, this time as a memory of a lost status. And trash has come to show that Sagal's government can no longer give its citizens the good life. But CCAP residents did not frame the last few decades as a total collapse. Increased rights to adapt houses has allowed many residents to transform these spaces with new floors or paint like this in my opinion quite beautiful bright blue and red house in Cap Libert. And many people still praise CCAP neighborhoods community spirit, relative quiet and durable streets and sidewalk that resist flooding unlike newer neighborhoods in Wakam. Um like and so they often pointing to these kind of sidewalks made in the 1950s and60s as part of kind of the neighborhood's prestige and physical integrity. But these persistent benefits do not stop older residents from mourning their perceived loss of privilege. And these rosy memories, however, depend on ignoring how this dream existed alongside and in many ways depended upon exclusion. In the 1950s, CCAP sought to selectively create new suburban families that would stabilize the colonial order. After decolonization, these homes tried to create and serve these same urbanites, now seen as cosmopolitan agents of national development. But by focusing on salaried workers, CCAP persistently placed Dar's most precarious precariously housed residents outside Sangor's new negro African in modern world. Examining these houses reveal how people fit globally circulating postwar visions of suburban comfort into local, national, and imperial efforts to transform Dakar. With official plans and personal ambitions, CCAP created a post-war suburban dream that lives on in walls and memories. THANK YOU. I CAN LEAVE AT 1:15. >> SORRY. >> Let's hope today. Um well this was really a wonderful occasion. So I wanted to thank the uh organizers for inviting me um and to thank our uh presenters here for their incredibly uh interesting papers. Um as an urban geographer of contemporary Daar, I found them very generative for thinking through the longer histories linking infrastructure to citizenship and belonging today. But I do want to emphasize that I'm not a historian and I am not an architectural historian. So I'm going to think about them, draw some themes out um through uh thinking about the sort of broader um uh urban scale and questions of citizenship. So on a most basic level, what stands out across both papers is that housing is not simply about shelter. It's a political technology, one that organizes who belongs in the city, under what conditions, and according to what social and aesthetic norms. Both of these papers afford us the opportunity the opportunity to examine the way that architecture and urban design served and frustrated imperial agendas in the late colonial period and the afterles of these relationships today. Um, so I'll start with you, Greg. Um, in his paper, Greg is offering a reinterpretation of colonial and postcolonial urbanization that shifts our focus from displacement alone to what he calls a politics of dwelling. That is the selective provisioning of housing as a way of producing a particular kind of urban citizen and to stabilize the political order. So, I appreciate the effort here to push back against what you describe as the historiographic dominance of narratives of displacement and dispossession, but I also found myself wondering whether what you're calling selective in installation is in fact inseparable from dispossession rather than an alternative to it. Um, and this version that you presented here was a little bit different than the one that I read where I think you're doing a little bit more to bring them together. But in other words, installation here in my mind is the flip side of dispossession elsewhere. Who was removed in order to make these blank spaces on a map? The production of these orderly serviced and desirable neighborhoods depends on exclusion elsewhere. The fixity of the middle class civil servant in the center was enabled by sweeping away the desuma on the periphery and they were literally labeled human trash during this time. So to me, these are processes we need to think together. And even within these neighborhoods, we might think about how disrepair itself becomes a form of dispossession over time, particularly as the state withdraws. And you were starting to get into that later history. So while I'm taken with your provocation, I'd be interested in seeing that tension made more explicit that installation and dispossession are co-constitutive rather than opposed processes. A second point that resonated strongly with my own work is your discussion of cleanliness of the city as pulp. This connects direct directly to what can be understood as the aesthetic regimes of urban belonging in Dhakar. In my own work, I describe this as a long history of what I call disposability urbanism. A system in which decisions about who belongs and who does not are often rooted in aesthetic and moral judgments as much as in economic or infrastructural ones. Well, your paper shows so clearly. What your paper shows so clearly is that modernist housing projects like CCAP are not just functional. They're deeply aesthetic projects. They produce a certain image of order, hygiene, and respectability. But beneath that apparent sterility is also a set of normative expectations around what a proper family looks like, how space should be used, and what counts as a good and productive domestic life. So, I found myself wanting to hear more about how these norms operated socially. I wanted more on how flexible these spaces were in practice for non- monogous households, how gender shaped access to owner, tenency, inheritance, and what happened when families invested in these homes as pathways to stability and prosperity only to find themselves overcrowded or dealing with declining maintenance. In that sense, the promise of the good life can also produce new forms of constraint. >> But I also want to underscore something that I found especially powerful in your paper, which is the role of nostalgia that comes in at the end. CCAP occupies a very particular place in Dakar's urban collective memory. Something I've encountered repeatedly in my own work and frankly something that I've experienced myself. I lived in CCAP libert for about 15 years off and on and there's a real attachment to these neighborhoods, the walkability, the quiet, uh the green, the sense of order, livability. What your paper helped me do to do is to put my finger more precisely on where that nostalgia comes from. I think the contemporary nostalgia for CCAP is not simply about what those neighborhoods were, but about what they promised. A path of urbanization that would be predictable, a form of development that would be prosperous, a city that would be orderly, legible, and tidy. The interviews you present are so telling in this regard. Residents long longing for the cleaner, more predictable, less messy city that they were promised. Narratives about waste and disorder are always political. The accumulation of waste in public space over the past decades is not incidental. It is the material manifestation of austerity, crisis, and the unraveling of the modernist nationalist project, including its promises of full employment and managed urbanism. So in that sense, CCAP becomes nostalgic not just as a place but as a relic of another time, a symbol of a broken promise, a moment when the state appeared capable of producing and maintaining a certain kind of urban order. Um, so I want to move to Luchia's uh chapter or uh paper here. Um, so I see this paper as reframing what's often seen as a failed architectural experiment um, as a window into late colonial governance rather than a dead end. The airformed domes reveal how the materiality and mobility of housing were central to imperial strategies of control and adaptation. What emerges is a broader story of architecture and urban planning in the service of empire, one that is always fraught, incomplete, and which leaves a conflicting residue. What stood out most to me was your focus on mobility. On the one hand, these structures are part of a colonial desire for mobility. The mobility of materials, mobility of construction processes, efficacy and standardization of cookie cutter designs that could work anywhere. the ability to build quick quickly and cheaply for colonialism on the cheap. But on the other hand, what they produce is almost the opposite. They fix people in place, inserting them into highly regulated spatial and social arrangements. So there's a powerful tension here between mobility as an imperial aspiration and fixity as its lived outcome. This is especially evident in your discussion of spatial transition zones between infrastructures between the city and the periphery, the imposition of private property logics, and the attempt to reshape African households into nuclear family units modeled on European norms. I also found the discussion of material mismatch particularly compelling. The lack of correspondence between the designs and the local climatic material and architectural conditions. Here again we see a a familiar colonial move. The claim that these forms can be indigenized that they resemble the kaz traditionel when in fact they flatten or erase the diversity of vernacular forms. The fact that many of these domes were implanted in Yaf Wakam Gore and the other Lebu neighborhoods with long-standing vernacular architectural traditions was particularly striking and um Zinga spoke about this earlier uh especially as they impose a bounded a bounded standardized domestic unit onto contexts historically organized through the bench. a compound form defined by flexibility, fluidity, adaptation, and the ongoing reconfiguration of space around a short uh shared courtyard that we don't see of course in these domes. >> Finally, I was especially struck by your discussion of refusal, which is also the title of my forthcoming book. I saw that >> as you show, refusal by labor unions and by residents is a key mechanism through which people can test these imposed spatial logics in their moral orders. This resonated strongly with me because of this work I've been doing um on exploring refusal as an everyday social and political practice through which Dakarwa pushed back against being made legible, governable, and to conform. As an ethnographer, I found myself wanting to hear more about how that refusal took shape on the ground. So, I don't know if you were able to talk to people who lived in those domes, but it would be fascinating to hear what they say. In what terms did people refuse these spaces? In what terms did they adapt these spaces? Um, in what ways did they domesticate these spaces for their real life uh messy families? How did they um exceed and rework the intended uses of these spaces? And to connect back to Greg's paper, I also found myself wondering about their afterles, whether any forms of attachment or even nostalgia emerged around these spaces, their apparent solidity, order, coherence, even as they were sites of contestation back in the day. So, a couple of uh crosscutting themes that emerge when bringing these two papers together. First, housing as a political technology of belonging. Both papers show that housing is central to the production of urban citizenship. Not just who lives where, but who counts as modern, respectable, and deserving of infrastructural investment. And the material materiality of these infrastructures is a structuring force in that process. Second, displacement and belonging are co-produced. In both cases, inclusion is selective. To install some populations is to exclude others. to create order in one space is to produce disorder in and elsewhere. Third is what I call the aesthetics of the modern gaze. Both papers show that modern urbanism is not just about efficiency or function. It is also about appearance, cleanliness, order, legibility. These aesthetic regime regimes shape who belongs and who is rendered out of place, disposable or in need of reform. So, one final theme I want to end on is the question of afterles of what these housing projects leave behind materially and effectively in Dhakar today. Have to say I've spent 25 years being in and out of the neighborhoods you mentioned. I've never ever seen one of these. So, I was so delighted to to see the images. They must be >> You got to look for them. >> You have to look. They're very small and they're behind tall fences >> and there's walls now, but you can see them now. You can visit them. >> Yes. Um, so both papers show that these were not simply technical or architectural experiments, but projects that carried powerful promises. Promises of order, modernity, mobility, of a certain kind of urban future. And following James Ferguson, we might think of modernist development here as the management of those promises, one that is never fully realized. What we see in Daar today are the residues of those promises. In the case of CCAP, that residue inspires a deep nostalgia, a longing for not just what those neighborhoods were, but for what they represented. A vision of urban life that was orderly, predictable, maintained. And as I've argued in my own work, the increasing visibility of disorder and infrastructural breakdown in the city becomes a kind kind of counterpoint to that earlier promise, a material sign of its unraveling. In the case of the air forms, the residue is different but re but related. Fragments of an architectural and political experiment that sought to abstract from place to impose futuristic, highly mobile, modular forms, but that ultimately left behind uneven, dysfunctional, and contested imprints on the landscape. So in both cases, what we're looking at are not failed or completed projects, but ongoing afterles, spaces where past visions of development continue to shape how urban life is imagined, remembered, and contested today. >> But thank you so much. >> We have like 10 minutes that we have you. >> Um, thank you. I uh I mean I can answer some of the questions but I think that what you're talking about where you're managing the future so the promise is of future development of control development in my case that the domes are actually futuristic it's something that I've haven't kind of shied away from because I didn't particularly have a way to say it but I think that is of the essence >> of the nostalgia with which people talk about it. So >> when many people have now been interviewed I have not done any of it but I could you know one could go and there are tours gives tours and >> um and the people are very willing to talk about them the inhabitants and the inheritors and there's it's as differentiated as anything else in deca there there's like artists who have made their domes have renovated them into courtyards others who have just added things on um there's a spectrum basically but the attachment it's to what they say the atypicality, the fact that it was atypical, that it and I think you're right that the futurism, the idea that it was promising something more than itself is definitely Yeah, that's good. >> Um, how did they adapt? I mean, that's really hard. There's one guy, remember, in the archives who says, and that's why he wants to move, like my house is not waterproof enough. It's um yeah, I mean I guess you'd have to do more oral history and more kind of detective work of how exactly things were moved. It's a little hard because they were not all built at once and some of them were literally bisected by walls. Um I tried to what you said was that they represented a nostalgia for order and coherence. Uh I mean I I tried and I will hear feedback. Um, I was trying to focus on the objecto hood because unlike the backtoback homes and unlike the very conventional architecture of arches and pitch roofs, this is basically designed to be an object. And I was trying to say that even though it really doesn't work for any reason, it just doesn't work. But it makes visible the house in such a way that clicked something for the negotiators and for yeah, I suppose for the imaginary too. So for me the fact that it's an object is the thing that people are feeling even now in their afterlifees. Remember when we had a thing even though at the time it was an inconvenient thing. So >> um yeah so and it's also the film I was going to show was of the governor general walking around and with people like you know following him >> and yeah it's like running around bubbles even though they talk about the interior it's not like the later seeup where you have commodities etc. It's these objects which one can dance around. So, but yeah, the afterlife and I'm glad that you're >> I need to get your book. Is it refusal or refuse all? >> It's it's ref it's refusal with the word refuse. >> Yeah. Great. >> Thanks. >> Uh yeah, as expected. That was wonderful. Um so I'll try to be quick. Um yeah, so this this idea of kind of I think yeah, I'm probably overplaying my hand to say it's just selective installation, not mass displacement. Um, but I think what I'm trying to get at there and then in I in the other part of the book that's also showing how in a very different way, West African labor migrants are doing something similar in Paris that these projects work through kind of select populations becoming invested in these colonial and postcolonial projects that in kind of going against this kind of man binary image that that these projects were just kind of like the Bulamatari kind of like crushing stone that there are these select populations that become become their own livelihood, their futures are directly materially um dependent on these government programs. Um and that is part of how they become sustainable. But select West African populations kind of get an investment in these programs that allows a sustainability and they're certainly predicated on dispossession on the other side. But I kind of wanted want to reexamine kind of how select kind of groups emerge out of their investment um and they become dependent on it for their visions of the future which allows them to you know remain in these places. But it also allows it kind of helps to understand how programs like CCAP became so durable to a certain extent even if they're predicated on an exclusion. It's not just the strength of the colonial state which is extremely limited. It's also its ability to get new clients, get people who are dependent on its um on its resources. So that's kind of what I'm trying to highlight. >> Um yeah, and I think the nostalgia thing is huge and I think I need to think about it more and it's just so overwhelmingly present in the conversations. Um, and I think there's also a generational difference. Um, but I I needed to think about that more. But the kind of the norms operator I think are really interesting. I mean just kind of the one ane kind of one example I'll give is um so when so in the mid1 1970s mid1 1980s it depends on who you ask. Uh kind of as enters this financial crisis uh after the loss of French investment the residents push to kind of be able to kind of buy outright their homes at a much lower price to kind of like accelerate their rentto buy contracts. And so there's kind of a wave of privatization. You know, this is, you know, you could it's kind of like a Senagalles version of Thatcherism. Um uh but um very quickly they realize that there isn't but as more and more people are coming in during the Exod in the 70s and 80s, they can't they can buy the house, but they you know there still there's no plot to build a new house. So they have to build up and up and up. And so CCAP neighborhoods don't look anything like what they didn't because and people explain they had to build kind of these formerly one-story homes are now three or four story homes are the aesthetics are completely unrecognizable and some people have read that as oh and see this is kind of the African residents finally being free to like build as they want and I and the way that I was going is like this is constraint this is they you know they they needed they wanted to remain in these neighborhoods that had become kind of symbols of privilege and kind of an increasingly kind fiscally tenuous operation. It was one of the only places you can get housing, but they have to bring in their families. And so they suddenly these single family homes become extremely multigenerational. All my interviews like the mother is is upstairs, the children are downstairs. Um and so these homes become kind of and residents kind of talk about the loss of shade. Suddenly the because they're now three-story homes, the shade is everywhere. It's not the bright sunny streets that there used to be. >> Courtyards are filled in. >> The courtyards are filled in. And so kind of these the kind of recognition of kind of the bringing in kind of rural relatives to kind of this is the only place in Dar that they can get and it's good neighborhoods that still have you know good schools. Um but it leads to this kind of typological transformation in the houses that people kind of some people have celebrated as a sign of freedom and I see as more kind of a sign of the constraint of DAR in the 1980s and 90s. Um, and so this is kind of these other these pushing back around the seat the original CCAP plan is often not celebrated by residents and some people do, you know, like the new homes. Um, but they the crowding is not what they were promised and not what they expected to kind of get at this nostalgic question. Yeah, I like the phrase of like the promise. I think that's really >> what is rooting so I mean so much of Senator Lee's kind of or Darw urban politics since I mean as you know better than anyone since the 80s is the kind of failure of that promise over and over and over again. >> I love that you were able to attest >> with your own oral history of your home. >> Yeah. >> Was it a original one? >> It was an original one that was in a corner plot. So, it had a gigantic courtyard that was like the last remaining huge courtyard in all of, you know, CCAP. >> I'm feeling nostalgic right now. >> Right. >> Yeah. On Rose. Um, yeah. >> Uh, should we self moderate or >> I don't know. Pass it on. >> Maybe. Yeah. >> Yeah. No, thank you so much. I think what I found really fascinating in in both talks and I even think actually the it could be developed further uh was especially you Gregory at the end like you really show the way in which this kind of a desire for the cleaner less messy urban or domestic space is also related to enforcing the patriarchal you know nuclear family model which again I really think the both papers should kind of since you're dealing with family homes you know should really benefit could really benefit if you look also into you know the anthropology of the evolution of polygamy in Seneagal because obviously I haven't read like studies on polygamy but from what I know for so for instance like in terms of the ethnical division of sagal you know if you look it always depends like for instance the south like the joler are more matriarchal families the wallops are you know anything basically is coming from the north is more like patriarchal organization then obviously if you look I I mean even today like the way in which polygamy is is being structured. I mean just you know it's kind of funny because in polygamy I mean if you're a polygamous man basically what can happen either the two wives conspire so you deprived of power or basically I mean in Islam if you want to be polygamous you have to treat all the wives equally meaning that for instance you should be if one gets a house then the other one also gets a house. So then the man is also stressed and kind of deprived of power in a in a certain way you know and then you have all the family structure coming in like for instance the the strong influence of the label you know the the mother or you know the the paternal aunt like so-called bayen like in which like and the ways in which for instance the child care you know is being kind of in the traditional lifestyle is being socialized you know through these like uh closenit close-knit communities And I again I haven't read studies on that but some scholars I spoke to like were kind of saying that you know for instance after the independence the polygamy was kind of recessing you know and then when the structure adjustment come and you know the state went bankrupt you know people returned to these very conservative you know uh kind of traditional family structures and now the polygamy is obviously booming. >> Maybe it's more conservative maybe it's efficient. >> Yeah. Well, I mean it's whatever that's another discussion. But but you know, I just I just wonder even for the like membal. Yeah. I don't know if you encountered things like that in which it it it it comes into the forefront because obviously even for the colonial power it was a big discussion like can we have a French citizen who's polygamous you know if they're like inhabitants on the contour. there was a huge discussion on on on that to what extent we can have situ like you know that's that's a that's a big question so again I think it would be really interesting to actually I mean it was there but it would be interesting to to look >> thank you >> I think >> thank you so much for this fascinating papers, I was struck by what seemed like a slight tension between um what seems like the the residents um positive memories and nostalgic memories of the site of the of the mison balon and your own obvious critiques of that history and of that phenomenon of cap and so I'm curious to know what would or what have sugap phenomenon what would a professor of architecture and urban planning at university say about this history? >> I mean the I have not encountered the only record of the miso in the literature on architecture in Dar is in that massive uh sort of it's an urban history that inventories all the typologies. It's very small um and it's very matterof fact about its establishing basically square courtyard property lines. Um the I mean uh if Nzinga was still here, she would talk about the fact that it was really the architects who found the mison again and when they write about them, they write about in in the same terms as this morning's session was talking about, which is that it's a complicated legacy. And one can think it's more interesting to theorize um how they survive and and and the mixity that they contain than to either dismiss or embrace them inequivocally. Uh but in terms of the um and I was going to say this to Jana as well. There was a moment in the 70s when um anthropologists and architects kind of got together and it was also when there were good architectural schools in the car and they started drawing. They they had all these students going to all the compounds, all the villages, and they started drawing them. And those drawings actually uh I think Zinga showed one. They're very they're very beautiful renditions of the of the compounds, but they're very regular, you know, they're round. And so there's something in the way in which this was formalized all at the same time that you could draw the bonal, you could draw a hut, there's something there where the um Kazandur was imported into architectural discourse. So I would maintain my critique even in the architectural discourse because that has a romanticization as well. Aren't these you know you would draw the hatch very one by one. Um that plays a role but it has nostalgia in it too. >> Yeah. Um so yeah that's it's a really great question. So I mean I so ccap is kind of this iconic space. It's written about you know quite a lot. I mean the one example I think is a sun sex kind of classic metropolan that's already been cited. his 1970s work. Um, he has a a section on CCAP, a section on housing. And for him, I mean, the promise is again emerges that he, you know, they're very critical of CCAP that people, you know, there's been a long-standing critique of CCAP's exclusivity among labor unions, kind of more leftist critiques, but he's also there, you know, there were plans in the mid60s to kind of create kind of um foyer mod kind of like lower price. And he's he's so enthusiastic about the he's like the promise is still there. Like CCAP is CCAP has shown that the Senagalles government can produce quality global standard quality housing but now with this new financial scheme it'll be accessible to all that it's so there's kind of this both and that I think there's a pride that Sunset kind of demonstrated in CCAP's ability to produce kind of global standards and you know the architects are bringing it to international conferences in the 60s but at the same time aware of its limits and so they but they hold on to the promise that through new reforms it'll become accessible. Um and then this you know collapses in the 1970s with kind of the this withdrawal. So there's and then and but again this so then it shifts to this nostalgia and when I talk to people in DAR I mean CCAP still has this reput an ex an elitist reputation. The the boy CCAP is there's a category of kind of the well-groomed um savvy desirable um man and that like endured into the 80s. um the kind of orchestra BABA merges out of CCAP neighborhoods. So it so and I think in the the literature there kind of is extremely aware of this tension and and it recurs um but there the the I think there's a real attachment to the idea that the Seneagalles government at one point had the capacity to do this and in the seven in the the early literature and then all we need to do is reform the financial system and then it'll be open and then ever since it's become you know a much more complicated um analysis uh that is kind of critical but you again they still hold on to this and nostalgia. >> Thank you. >> I'm afraid we're we're going to have to leave it here. Uh but there will be an opportunity at the very end uh to ask your questions. So um we'll be meeting back here around 1:15 I think or sorry 2:15 uh a little bit later than yeah than than planned. Um and well we thank everybody the audience for being here for your questions and of course the speakers and the moderator. Thank you very much. Um, and we'll see you in an hour. >> Now, could you send me welcome back everybody? We are character uncharacteristically exactly on time. Uh, welcome to our third uh panel uh which is titled postwar modernism or something like that. Um, our first speaker uh will be Martino Sterling, who is the Philip Johnson chief curator of architecture and design at the MoMA, a role he assumed in 2015. Steerley oversees a wide-ranging program of special exhibitions, installations, and acquisitions in the department of architecture and design. He is also the author of Montage and the M and the Metropolis. Uh, that's a 2018. Las Vegas in the rearview mirror, that's 2013. and he's currently working on the exhibition Architects of Liberation, Modernism in Western Africa, which will open to the public July 1st, 2026. >> July, >> I'm sorry, July 5th. Oh, yeah. Because the fourth is of course uh our second speaker will be Jana and Bangova who is an architecture theories philosopher writer and publisher and researcher at the institute of philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences. She completed her dissertation a productive misunderstanding architecture theory and French philosophy 1965 to 1990 at 2020 in 2023 at gab she runs the publishing house suture press she's the author of lela debsulu a book of interviews with anu um and her novel oh I can't say that in English promise of future happiness is scheduled for publication at Argo in the fall of 2026 and Giving us a response will be Sulleman Basher Yan who is professor emeritus of French and philosophy at Columbia University. His areas of research and publication include the history of philosophy, the history of logic and mathematics, Islamic philosophy, African philosophy and literature. His latest publications in English include, >> so you have to imagine there's many others in many other languages. uh in search of Africa universalism and decolonial thought 2020 African art as philosophy sangal bakon and the idea of negatude in 2023 I'll say one more no two more from language to language the hospitality of translation 2025 and Ubuntu conversations with Franis Bloom 2026 so please um help me in join me in welcoming Martino STALEY OKAY. SO, how do I move? Hello everybody. >> How do I move? Uh, >> okay. So, >> backwards. >> There it is. Perfect. Great. Down. Great. Okay. counterintuitively, which is actually the second word in my presentation, so I'll have to say it twice. Thank you so much, Luchia, Ralph, and Hugo. Hugo, um, for this convening. It's been extremely stimulating. I'm very honored to be part of this, you know, group of of speakers. I'm obviously not an Africanist by training. I've spent the last four years thinking about uh Africa, Western Africa specifically in the context of an exhibition that Luchia just mentioned. And of course, I'm I would be remiss not to thank my collaborators in this project. Some of them are here, the fabulous Mallerie Cohen who has been part of the entire journey for the last four years. Then I also see that Sarah Beavenon is here who is our current MRC fellow and the Colombia PhD student and of course also um Sophia Cury many others who have um helped us along the way. Some of the people who are who spoke today are part of our advisory board. So it's very much a collaborative effort. I'm presenting an excerpt of some of the research that went into this project. Perhaps counterintuitively, my discussion of the concept of asymmetric parallelism in the independence era senagal starts with a geographic detour to Ghana. In 1958 in Acraqamin Kruma, the leader of the Ghanaian li Ghanaian liberation movement and the country's first president in a famous passage uh of his speech at the Al African people's conference discussed how newly independent nations should embrace a cosmopolitan modernity while at the same time acknowledging the specific cultural and economic conditions. Here is Kruma outlined the dilemma in his speech. quote, "We want to develop our own community and an African personality. Others may feel that they evolved the very best way of life, but we are not bound slavish imitators to accept it as our mold. If we find the methods used by others or suitable to our own social environments, we shall adopt and adapt them. If we find them unsuitable, we we shall reject them." End quote. Kruma raises a distinction here that is crucial I think for a discussion of modern architecture in post-independence period in western Africa. Whereas adoption per perpetuates foreignb born concepts without changing them. Adaptation conversely transforms such concepts in order to make them viable in a radically different cultural and economic context. And Kruma invokes the period of slavery which had been abolished in the Gold Coast later Ghana in 1874. In his view, true liberation could only be completed by breaking the shackles of colonialism including social structures and aesthetic approaches. Change of scene in Franophhone Western Africa. One of the most powerful concepts developed as part of the struggle for pol political, economic and cultural emancipation was of course that of negritude. In the words of the eminent laurate late curator and scholar envisor, the concept quote posited a conscious intellectual dramatization of African authority and insisted on the reality and originality of African culture in the making of modernity. End quote. As many of this of as many in this room will know, the term coined by the Martineik author Emmy Z Cesar was appropriated by a group of black students from the French colonies studying in Paris in the early 1930s. Among them, of course, the future first president of Seneagal, Leopold Sedar Sangor, himself a poet. Sangor popularized the term in his 1948 anthology of black contemporary poetry which included John Paulo Sartra's introduction black orphus for single negritude. Negritude encompassed a series of quote values of civilization that were shared by all black peoples around the world. In politics, he identified a quote pattern of community-mindedness that was evidenced in quote again concentric communities scaled up one over the other from the family to the kingdom in a system of what he what he called reciprocal integration. In the arts, Sangor identified quote rhythm and symbolic image as emblematic of negritude. As we will see, all of these characteristics, namely concentricity, the fractal organization of space, rhythm, and symbolic imagery produ prove productive in the modern senagalles architecture of the independence period. As the audience will be well aware, later critics pointed out the exoticizing and essententralizing tendencies in Sangor's theories and traced his use of terms such as vital force, essence, and black soul to the work of German anthropologist Leo Finenius. While Satra spoke of Sangor's anti-racist racism, the Nigerian author and Noel Prize laurate Wles Yinka famously asked quote must the tiger declare its tigretude. So Yanka accused Zangor of foregrounding artificial cultural issues while ignoring the socioeconomic problems that newly independent African countries were facing. Nevertheless, Sangor's theory of black cultural empowerment proved fundamental for the articulation of an African mold of modernity in the independence period. Specifically for Sagal, Sangor introduced the notion of quote asymmetric parallelism which I would like to discuss in my paper today. Asymmetric parallelism can be understood as an extension of negritude thinking and as an early formulation of the need to negotiate between universalist modernist concepts on the one hand and cultural specificity on the other that I outlined at the outset. I think it is also worth considering asymmetric parallelism as an instantiation and articulation of the problem of hetemporality as discussed by Deprabarti in his provincializing Europe. According to this concept, instead of adhering to a linear view of modernism's history, we need to pay attention to how ideas and technologies get translated, transformed, and differentiated across space and time. Seen in yet another way when comparing the dichotomy between adoption and adaptation outlined earlier according Kruma parallelism would relate to the adoption of modernist concepts thereby stressing the ways African cultural development is aligned and in sync with contemporary cultural conversation across the globe. Conversely, asymmetry in this understanding would relate to the adaptation of modernist concepts in the sense of an acknowledgement of cultural specificity. I believe that the notion of asymmetric parallelism being an oxymoron is not an accident, but a deliberate invocation of the inherent contradictions of what a genuine African modernity might entail. Moreover, in addition to the desire to infuse universalist modernism with a sense of culture and local specificity, as asymmetric parallelism carries a connotation of geometric order as prevalent in the patterning of many art African artifacts, in particular textiles that asymmetric parallelism was a guiding principle of Seneagalles cultural conversation in the period and specifically in its application to architecture is evidenced by the fact that in 1978 the so-called quote law of or of the orientation of Seneagalles architecture went so far as to codify the architectural application of this concept into law. I'm quoting from this legal text. Quote, "Without imposing a specific style that would limit any evolution and any creative inspiration, give architects a general orientation so they can draw their inspiration from the values of black African civilization, particularly the Sutano Sahelian. For this purpose, the law, and I'm continuing to quote from the law. For this purpose, the law postulates that architectural creation without departing from the requirements of modernity is subject to the principles of asymmetric parallelism. End quote. Importantly, the legislators did not call for a return to pre-colonial architectural traditions or for neocclassical president translated to the present, but invited architects to draw inspiration from them rather than a prescript prescriptive binding legal document. The law served more to articulate a desired trajectory of cultural development specifically in the realm of contemporary senagalles architecture. It is of note that similar strategies were negotiated under different titles in other African nations such as the Congo where in 1966 President Moubu initiated the doctrine of quote raot authenticity so the recourse to authenticity which likewise sought a simultaneous embrace of modernity and tradition. A prime example uh of the application of asymmetric parallelism is the contrast national extre sineagal commonly known as cees and just featured in the film that we all watched together by the young French architects Jean Francois Lamuru and Jean Louie Maran the convention center was completed in 1975 so before as asymmetric parallelism was officially codified but in my communication with them. The architects suggest that Sangor coined the term in response to their design. The expansive complex on the scale of a miniature city boasts sweeping exhibition pavilions, a number of lecture halls and a visitor center. An intricate system of plazas and elevated walkways facilitate encounter and interaction. The entire complex is exposed is is executed, excuse me, is executed in exposed concrete. Asked about this choice of material, the architects explained there was a cement factory nearby and we've heard that before um in Lugia's presentation. Whereas other materials such as steel or even wood would have required importation. According to Lamiro and Mara, the use of concrete signified an embrace of modern building materials as well as the affirmation of the specific economic conditions of postindependence Africa. A view that was broadly shared among leading architects in the postcolonial world of the global south, including in South Asia, but also in Latin America. From this perspective, concrete construction was in itself a gesture toward the Africanization of modern architecture or in other words an adaptation of modern construction technology to the local context. The triangular motive is the defining visual feature of the complex almost obsessively reconfigured and repeated. It is not only prevalent in the pitched roofs of the pavilions, but serves as an organizing principle at all scales. From the footprint of the plazas and the silhouettes of the exposition halls to the exposed structural system within, the shape of the portals leading into the exhibition spaces, the furniture, and even the profile of the handrails of the stairs leading up to the elevated walkways. While this triangular obsession may easily be dismissed as a mannerism on part of the architects, it proves a strong visual identity and integration of the complex as a whole, as evidenced also in the ceases logo. According to Lamuru and Mara, images of African villages were the inspiration for their design. While the nondescript nature of this general reference is perhaps rather telling, the loose grouping of the individual buildings around communal plazas would seem to point in that direction. However, the repetition of an identical motive at all scales. In this case, the triangle is a defining feature of fractal geometry which has been identified not only as a structural principle of African textile patterns. I'm showing you here some examples of Seneagalles mangjuk cloth but also of traditional settlement structure and it also appears as we have seen in Sangor's definition of negritude while Lamuru and Mara deny direct relation relationship of their design to the fractal organizing principle they do acknowledge the geometric patterns of African textiles as a source for their design. In Lamuro and Maran's account, Sangor required that notable local artists be included in the design process to compensate for the fact that the architects of this large-scale nationally significant project were in fact French citizens. Carefully selected to represent this country's seven uh different regions. The artists among them Amaduba and Sedu Barry among among others were each tasked with designing a relief that would give the front facade of each of the seven pavilions a unique regional identity. Hence, CES can be characterized as an architectural scaffolding designed by foreign architects yet superimposed with a layer of symbolic expression of cultural specificity in the form of reliefs by local artists. In a disc discussion of strategies of adop adoption or adaptation of western president, it is worth comparing cess to other convention centers in the region from this period namely the trade fair complexes in Acra Ghana and Lagos Nigeria. Unlike Ces, these two projects were designed by architect team from the socialist world, Yugoslavia in the latter case and Poland in the former. Although the complex in Arab was designed under the GNCC's Ganaian chief architect Victor Adekbit Betin, the architect's nationalities demonstrate shifting geopolitical alliances in a region that was seeking to assert its independence on a global stage. As compared with CES which embraced a modern material and architectural expression but adopted to the specific economic and cultural context of Seneagal, the Lagos and Ghana trade fair compounds are deliberately much less rooted in the local context. While the decentralized organization of the Lego trait fair with its circle pavilions again evokes the structural logic of an African village and in fact the architects had conducted extensive field research and traditional settlement patterns. The architectural expression of the joy and and the choice of material, specifically the met metal facads evoke space age imagery and present a marked contrast to the fabric of the West African city. The same can be said of the Acra trade fair whose central circular pavilion was clad in a shiny aluminum envelope as if a spaceship from another time and world had descended onto the site. The Acra complex exemplifies President Kruma's intention to employ a more generic version of modernism so as not to give preference to any group in the newly established multithnic nation state. A concern shared by other independence leaders across the region. Thus, the circular aluminum roof was intended to recall the shape of an umbrella to signify prestige and power while conveying a sense of inclusion. Both of these trade fair complexes in Nigeria in in Lagos and in uh in Ara represent situations of adoption characterized by a deliberate flattening of cultural and national differences in order to foreground internationalist and pan-African aspirations. They invoked the promise of a future grounded in technological and material advancement. And in this sense, both designs adopted technoutopian worldviews widely prevalent in both the capitalist and the communist spheres during the cold war. But to return to Dhakar, the iconic triangular silhouette of the cis complex brings to mind the form of the pyramid. The archetypal form is uh is remnant in a number of prominent designs from the independence period in Sagal and beyond. The Seneagalles architect Pierre Gudabi Atepa's office from 1977 has the shape of a truncated pyramid as you can see here and more akin to a graphic abstraction of the pyramid. Fern Bonamese building communal the administration building in Dar features a screen facade made up of a pattern of isosles triangles. The triangle is the triangle is also a historical figure of traditional architectural ornamentation originating in the medieval imperial state of Takur where it spread across large swasts of the Sahel. Another more literal reference to the ancient pyramids is the unrealized project of the Acropolitude in Dar by the Frenchborn architect Oris. Its title which unmistakably anchors the project in Sangor's cultural politics and philosophy indicates that the frequent occurrence of the pyramidal form and by extension its graphic abstraction in the shape of a triangle in this specific historical context is not a coincidence. Indeed, the pyramids of Giz and the Egyptian high culture more broadly received a remarkable reinterpretation precisely during this period. If Egypt had long been seen as the cradle of Western civilization, Jake Antadop and other prominent black historians and intellectuals argued that ancient Egypt with the pyramid pyramids representing its most monumental accomplishment had in fact been a genuinely African civilization. The the iconic office tower la pyramid by the Italian architect Ronaldo Olivieri which defines the skyline of the Ivorian port city of Abijon underlines the currency of the prototypical form even outside of Sagal. The immediate sight of impact of the Negritude philosophy with its metal cladding and futurist interior that invoke evokes again a space age aesthetic. The building is quite distinct from the more traditional materiality of the seneagalles presidents. However, in its double embrace of the imagery of both ancient Egypt and the space age, Olivier's design eloquently embodies the conflicting temporalities of African modernism, thus evoking Zangor's mandate for an asymmetric parallelism to conjure an idea and image of Africanness in the in their designs. Architects also went beyond the visual tropes of the pyramid and triangle. In Sagal, two prolific Frenchborn architects, Ferno Bonami and Orishamet, I've already mentioned them briefly, looked towards the formal and material features of the traditional Sudano Sahilian architecture of the region for inspiration for some of their most significant buildings specific to the semi-arid grasslands of the transaffrican region of the Sahel. Sudano Sudanohilian architecture is primarily constructed in modern brick, mud brick and adobe plaster with the more monumental structures of this style featuring wooden beams that jut out from the walls as evidenced most prominently in the great mosque of Jenn in Mali. Sudano's ailian architecture has a massive steratomic appearance that features rough haptic haptic plaster surfaces in earthy tones. two characteristics that would seem to be at odds with the tenets of modernism. Two buildings by Bonami are particularly noteworthy in this context. The first is the private residence of President Sangor on the Cornish north of Dakar's plateau neighborhood. The building was completed in 1978, two years before Sangor stepped down from his long tenure as head of state. Besides the ubiquitous ornamental and structural application of the triangular motive, the stately building with its blocky fortless fortless like appearance features a rough plaster treatment in earthy tones reminiscent of the most iconic examples of Sudan Sudano Sahelian architecture and notably as we have seen this traditional style of architecture is explicitly mentioned in Sangor's law regarding the application of asymmetric paralle ism to contemporary seneagalles architecture. It is only consistent that for his own creation, Bonami would draw from historical examples of regional architecture to align with Sangor's mandate and the underlying philosophy of synchronizing the past with the present. The student dormatory complex of university gast in San Louise speaks a similar formal language. Besides the elements already identified in Sangor's residence, this large housing complex features other motives, such as permeable ornamental screens to shade and passively ventilate the hallways or rectangular gargos that evoked protruding wooden beams of the great mosque of Jana as well as of course lorbiz often copied water spouts in buildings such as his monastery in Lretet, France. The complex is remarkable in the context of Sangor's vision for contemporary architecture. Also on the level of the plan, the individual dormitories are arranged around a central courtyard in order to enhance a sense of enclosure and community while seven of these clusters are in turn grouped around a central plaza. This fractal organization of space speaks to what Sangor discussing the concept of negatude had described as a quote pattern of community-mindedness that is ex exemplified in again quot a quote singor concentric communities scaled up on one of the other from the family to the kingdom in a system of reciprocal integration. The practice of shame and his multinational bureau is another case in point and I think we'll hear more from about shame from Jana in a moment. Shomemet was not only a practicing architect designer but also reflected theoretically on his position as a foreigner operating in postindependence Africa and more broadly on the impact of modernization on the continent. In this regard, he differentiated three periods of intervention by Europeans using modern techniques in Africa. According to his somewhat romanticizing theory of the history of contact after an initial period of traditional architecture, there followed a boat period, an aircraft period, and a period of modern architecture, which means his own contemporary time. During the boat period, according to Schomet, European settlers lived with very little contact with their place of origin. Quote, they were African by circumstance and often by heart and understood the problems in terms of res resources and local needs. End quote. In the following aircraft period, the French colonial apparatus had been bureaucratized and centralized. decision makers were far removed from the actual side of action and pre-fabrication was the typical building strategy. Shame's own period then was that of modern architecture which contrasted marketkedly with the preceding area of the colonial period. In the words of Leon Duayup No Duple, it was quote no longer about designing and exporting architectural models from Europe, but about living Africa, adopting to Africa to its soil climate and its means of production. End quote. So in this theorization, it didn't matter that he shamett had been born in France. What mattered was that his architectural production was deeply grounded in the specific economic and cultural context for which it was designed by means of adaptation. On Shomemet's BEHC set up local offices in each of the countries in which they were active resulting in work that is highly regional specific. The engagement with Sudano Sahilian president in Sangor's tenants can best be studied in some of Shamet's buildings in Seneagal and Kotivoir. While the white pebble facade of his auditorium building at Dar University, Jake Antadop mimics the material roughness of Sudan's ailian plaster walls. While the pattern of cubes ornamenting the underlying ground floor brick facade seems directly inspired by the typical protruding wooden beams. The facade of the headquarters of Lassoci Deong Ceb in Abjon with its characteristic earn collar similarly displays a horizontal organization rough materiality and protruding c protruding cubing cubic elements but here on the scale of an entire city block and crowned with a highrise tower. The rhythmic articulation of horizontal bands on the main facade alternating between massive rough plaster walls and sleek transparent windows seems to interpret asymmetric parallelism as a dialectic juxaposition of traditional materials and ornamentation with industrial means of production. Shaken Gome's Fisal building in the plateau district of Dar displays a similar system of horizontal layering on the facade, but the material dichotomy is here further exaggerated with the massive elements forming sculptural geometric ornaments. Nome is widely revered as the first Seneagallesborn modern architect and besides Apa the only one of his generation who was able to garner significant commissions alongside his French colleagues from the senagalles state besides the fal a number of his high-rise buildings punctuate the car skyline in including the headquarters of the bong central deet west the bcao aon sinire a collaboration with aa and the FAD building. And this brings me to my conclusion. I have argued that how the concept of asymmetric parallelism constituted a strategy by which modern architects in the independence period sought to Africanize architecture. While one camp of architects rejected the notion that a traditional architecture could serve as a base for a new Africa liberated from its col colonial bonds. The other saw the other side saw such precedents precisely as the precondition for a truly self-determined and self-reliant society. Depending on their point of view and operating along a gradient, architects gravitated towards the adoption of modernist architectural language with its futurist outlook or conversely toward an adaptation of that language to the specific cultural and economic context as asymmetric parallelism with its base in President Sangor's cultural theories of negatude was a quasi quasi official endorsement of the latter. It can and should be discussed to what degree the distinct body of work that can be associated with this loose concept constituted a kind of national style. And moreover, asymmetric parallelism may be one of the few instances where an aesthetic concept for contemporary architectural production was codified into law. But as we have seen, the law was non-binding and rather an encouragement than a prescription. It explicitly encouraged contemporary formal expression and technology while at the same time suggesting a continuity with a living tradition. This perhaps invites a larger conversation on the agency of architects in the context of a larger ideological project. Thank you. I guess Yeah, my slides. >> Oh. Okay. >> Okay. So, um well, I'll just briefly begin by thanking uh my colleagues uh Ralph and Luchia for doing this amazing and hard organization work with this conference which is simultaneously moving for me because it's my first talk since I graduated from Colombia obviously. uh but also it's so amazing to see so many great scholars working on this very niche topics of like Seneagalis architecture and urban planning. So totally um totally um um very moving. So my my talk today is actually uh kind of an excerpt from a longer paper in which I deal also with uh Sangor's Marxism and the influence on architecture but which is something I won't be discussing that much today. Um there's also an interview with Terry Melo which is soon to be published in Kay architectural and urban in French. So again, if you want to learn about this crazy research uh um uh that I did for one year, basically for one paper, you know, um you're welcome to follow that. Um I don't know. Okay. >> So as Martino already said in 1978, Seneagal approved the law of the so-called law on the orientation of Seneagalis architecture under the presidency of the poet and writer Leop Paul Sedar Singor. The law constituted a culminating point of an era spanning from uh the 1971 competition for the international trade fair in Dhakar won by Jean Franuela Muru Jeanlu Maran and Fernand Bon Bonami until Sango's resignation in December 1980. This decade was marked by formal experimentation and by a search for a new symbolic expression of a newly independent West African state for the artistic and architecture embodiment of the concept of negritude. The aim of this legislation uh from 1978 was to promote a building in permanent materials or and to establish a clear framework for the development of Seneagalles architecture by providing free architectural assistance to any individual for construction or modification of residential buildings even those of minor importance. The law also endeavored to depart from the colonial period and its material expression in the built environment by codifying the aesthetics of a new seneagalles architecture. In the preamble to the bill, uh, Sangor defined its objective as postulating that architecture, I quote, architecture creation without departing from the requirements of modernity is underpinned by the principles of asymmetric parallelism. The law clearly stated, I quote, that the use of the built space must conform to the needs and aspirations of Seneagali society in accordance with its genius and culture. And that architecture creation takes its inspiration mainly from the values of Negro African civilization, particularly Sudanosian and from the demands of modernity. End of quote. So rather than imitating uh western models, architecture should embody the values of West African culture. But how can these values be defined? How can they be separated from the successive historical strata of colonization that had shaped Saggali's identity? What vocabulary should architects use in a region whose major architecture monuments are limited to mosques and villages which are often built with impermanent materials such as straw and mud? In what theoretical on in what theoretical basis should a new seneagali's architecture be grounded? What does asymmetric parallelism mean? Neither the 1978 act nor Sangor provided a clear answer to those three to these questions. To this day, architects and scholars interpret the notion of asymmetric parallelism in multiple and often radically divergent ways. Uh you know I can give you a whole series of definition of what that term actually means. Everyone says basically something different. I think it is however possible to determine the meaning deductively rather than inductively. In this paper um I'll try to do so um by looking at the use of regional culture elements and the illusions to Sangor's notion of the civilization of the universal in the 1970s projects of the Dhakar branch of the bureau. The projects of this office embody a fruitful combination of architecture theory and practice with political thought. Since 1965, Terry Melo, an architecture student at the Echol de Bazar, had worked in the Paris office of the bureau and Shomet during the May 68 uprising when the school was occupied by protesting students and classes were cancelled. Schomet invited Milo to work at the AY's office in Abijang. There he collaborated on projects such as the National Institute of Youth and Sports of the Ivory Coast, printing houses in Yaund Cameroon and 10,000 uh unit social housing complex in the suburbs of Abijang and the design of decorative elements for the Ministry of Finance in Abijan's plateau district. After completing his diploma in architecture in 1969, Melo lost his exe exemption from the mandatory military service. Through Shomet's intervention, he moved to Seneagal in 1970 where he worked as a military cooperator and technical adviser to David, director of the urban planning commission in Dhakar. And by the way, if you ask who's the second person, this is young Gyabi Atipa on this uh picture with uh with Melo. On March 1st, 1971, Melo was received by President Sangor thanks to the recommendation of the linguist and semiologist Maurice Calv. Melo presented to Sangor Shamid's ideas on the importance of designing architecture rooted in West African tradition and produced on site. A sort of immediate complicity, at least according to what Melo says, emerged between the president of the republic and him, a recent graduate in his 20s. From that moment on, he maintained a regular contact with the president's office and prime minister Abdu. This allowed Melo to open the Dhakar branch of the B or Bitut where he was joined in early 1972 by urban planner Ronald Pre u you know this photo is obviously posterior to to that first audience this is from a journal also posterior so 78 that's not the first audience because you already see the project of the echolormal administr um melo with sangor If you have time to read this letter, that's quite funny too. Um, so Bakar sought to put put Sangor's aesthetic theories into practice and further developed the architecture principles of Shomet who defined urban planning as I quote a material expression of politics. Schomemed's bark oriented emphasis on the notion of composition which is present also in the logo referring to geometrical symbols of golden section constitutes one of the distinctive marks of the office. While Schomet defined the urban planning as I quote the first phase of composition and of the material framework of society. He also argued that I quote only the quality of the composition of volume, spaces and buildings and not the disorder can respond to the beauty of a site. In his view, composition was uh I quote artistic activity aimed at defining the spaces, volumes and characteristics necessary to harmoniously satisfy the physiological and functional elements uh of the program. Terry Melo uh shared this fascination with mathematical proportions. He even affirms that in order to dictate size of various construction elements on the phone in Abijang, he was basically using Fibonacci numbers as functional shortcuts. In the projects of Bashe, the classical compositional elements remain parallel and perhaps I would say asymmetrical with the influence of the dissymmetries inherent to West African arts and crafts and might therefore be interpreted perhaps as a critical regionalism of their time. In uh the article the evolution of African architecture, Shomemet writes that all great architecture includes an element of cultural importation or culture appropriation, but that a truly great architecture emerges when only those who design it have it truly lived, understood, and expressed the country regardless of their origin. Therefore, he distinguishes between the architecture of the so-called boat period and of the airplane period in Africa. He notes that true masterpieces of African architecture were created when travel to the continent was only possible by boat. Since architects had to leave their homeland and become temporary Africans for many months, they were more inclined to respond to local needs and to rely on local materials and crafts. A typical example of such boat period architecture is the city of Gambasam in Ivory Coast. In contrast, the airplane period enabled faster forms of exchange and the importation of solutions insensitive to local needs. It created a situation in which even minor decisions had to be approved in Europe. Shomemet's consistent effort to establish local branches of his office in multiple African countries was motivated not only by his rather pragmatic attempts to please the executive power of the newly independent African states, but also by his interest in the architecture of the boat period, African crafts and other vernacular forms of savoir. On March 1st, 1971, Melo presented these theories to Sangor, arguing that Daka's beauty lies in its status as a city of the boat period. It is likely that the classically trained Sangor was receptive to such to their emphasis on composition and then he may have seen such approach as a visual and material translation of his notion of the civiliza civilization of the universal. The asymmetric and parallel combination of compositional elements and elements evoking West African sculptures and crafts turned the turn the beakar architecture in a curious oxymoron empizing cultural ambitions of the era. The bears dakar projects cannot be interpreted outside of the context of Sangor's theories on on politics and aesthetics or what Jacier might aptly label as the politics of aesthetics. The material, aesthetic, and constructive choices of these architects embodied a consistent effort to materialize abstract concepts of Sangor, such as his critique of the Greek and Roman theory of archetypes and of the notion of the mises, his notion of the rhythm as ar as the architecture of being and his underscoring of the importance of poetic images and edimo Sangor's emphasis on the necessity of decolonizing through culture did not impact uh art, architecture and urban planning only at the level of symbolic representations. During his presidency, at least 25% of the state budget were allocated to education and culture. He saw these as a backbone of the nation building and as tools to encourage the emergence of a new class of African civil servants and state employees. He dreamt of establishing a so-called echolo dhakar and of transforming Dhakar into an international artistic hub and a global center of the civiliz civilization of the universal. He sought to forge new culture identity through architecture, literature, theater and visual arts. It was under his governance that the first world festival of negro arts was organized in Dhakar in 1976 uh 1966 sorry stressing the reciprocal influence of Europe and Africa such as the links between western avanguard art and African wood carving. And again this is a very another very funny image. You see the high life of Dar. This is from Vogue. Actually, that guy over there is Terry Melo. There are two models. There's a French actress, I think, uh, Nicole Kalfan or something like that. And Jeam Michelle Reo, you see the Pulmananga behind. So, you know, it was in Vogue, very fancy. So, Sangor believed that there was little little room for for Lar in Africa. He thought that African art was inherently functional because its purpose was to establish community and to anchor human beings at an ontological level through the creation of myths and symbols through rhythm and what Sangor in line with Burkson describe as the breath of life. In in negritude and humanism, Sangor argues that rhythm is a typical trait of the black man that it is, I quote, the architecture of being, the internal dynamism that gives form, the system of waves emitted to the other, the pure expression of vital force. It is, I quote, the vibrating shock, the force that seizes us at the root of our being through the senses. Rhythm acts as the least intellectual component of the human being and is embodied in a direct manner. It can be expressed through I quote the most material sensual means lines, surfaces, colors and volumes in architecture, sculpture and painting, accents in poetry and music and movements in dance. The rhythm has the ability to transform art into a form of communion and a means of communication. For this reason, African art is social and committed or angstrate further. This emphasis on the rhythm is evident in the built and unbuilt projects of the bashed car. The architecture of the office recalls a curious oxymoron, an encounter of the bizarre symmetries so typical of Schomet and the inherently asymmetric Sangorian rhythms. Interestingly, Sangok's aesthetic theories might be seen as a different take on a on problems which in the 1960s were often uh discussed by semiologists and structuralists. For he writes also that the merit of African art is, I quote, that it is neither a game nor a pure aesthetic enjoyment, but that it signifies. In a 1974 uh article, Negritude, Sangor affirms that, I quote, the value of negritude can be essentially summed up in the rhythm and the symbolic image. In his view, every African work of art is, I quote, an image with a sign with a signification that is so say that meaning and the Negro African poem is a network of metaphors in which the meaning of the analogical image is however efficiently expressed only by the rhythm. In a rare article, the affiliations of Seneagalis architecture uh which was published in a journal Etiopic in 1977 uh and written on the request apparently on the request of the president at least according to oral histories. Uh Terry Melo attempted to translate the aesthetics of negritude in architecture. Introducing his text by a quote from Roland Bart the empire of science. He describes the seneagalis culture as a product of the metis of animistic uh Islamic and colonial or western culture influences. He argues that modern architecture such as lobiz buildings or mis fandereoya's pavilions could not have been created without the influence of African arts which shaped the avanguard. In line with Sangor's rejection of imitation, Melo writes that the African art is non-mimetical, abstract, and conceptual because it, I quote, uses symbols and expresses interpretation of reality and not its appearance. referring directly to president's theories on the symbolic nature of African art. He notes that I quote any statue or object is a system of signs that Leopole Sedar Singor defines as a symbolic and rhythmic image. According to Melo, the p the pioneers of modern architecture sought precisely those qualities when they were developing new forms and concepts and discovering a system of signs which based on clear new technical data resulted in architecture expression. Lorier and black African sculptors share their desire, I quote, to reveal or deage the symbol through treatment of material and volume. Therefore, uh, modern architecture cannot be seen simply as a western importation to Africa. Traditional arts of the continent have always already been modern. Senagali's architecture should avoid falling into the mimemetical pastiche of the neosudani style and instead embrace its inherently conceptual and abstract nature. It should draw inspiration from two cultural sources. from the formal non-figurative geometric abstraction of the Islamic culture on the one side and from the sculpture freedom of traditional African art on the other. Both source sources share I quote the capacity of symbolism and abstraction and they are able to signify more than just a simple form to imbue the form with meaning that it would not possess on its own. Such unapologetic embrace of Sangor's negritude appears already in the Bash says Dakar first project the planning scheme for Laitkot a coastal area on the south of Dakar. In 1971 the prime minister of Seneagal Abdul Yuf uh asked Melo to do a tourism development plan of this area. With the support of Anishomet Melo convinced the urban planner Roland de Pre to leave B Abijang and to join him in Dar at the beginning of 1972. This commission enabled him to open the Dhakar branch of the office. Besides including themes that might be relevant for the present moment such as the protection of nature, the emphasis of on sustainable development as well as a critique of the commodification of a landscape by mass tourism. U this tourism development plan includes a clear statement that its authors seek their inspiration in popular artistic tradition and in concepts of negritude. The accompanying text bears strong imprint of Melo and defines architecture as I quote the tangible translation of the civilization that is contemporary to it. The authors of the tourism development plan describe their goal as creating contemporary architecture which would have a certain unity and be closely connected to the region's human and physical realities. They clearly affirm that the new seneagalis architecture should avoid a fashion and folklore typical of touristic architecture. Echoing Sangor, they define their main theme as follows. I quote, the deeply African rhythms and beats, the dynamics of forms, the seneagalis popular art and openness to the outside world, whether African or not. They assert that rhythms and pulsations are the I quote the deep source of African art and must be translated into architecture in order to create what the head of state defined in a striking shortcut as asymmetric parallelism. They note that neither the traditional abitita nor the colonial architecture correspond to the needs of contemporary sineagali citizens. And they strive to ex I quote to express new architecture that is no longer based on the formal aspects of the past or folklore but on present and cultural human themes. They argue that architecture should em embrace the splendor of bodies and costumes, the beauty of celebration, the dynamism and vertical rhythms of the seneagalles renaissance and the intimate courtyards, closed walls and differentiated spaces of seneagali daily life. Reiterating Shamat's theories on the boat period and airplane period, uh, Melo and Depre argue that truly new African architecture emerge only in the last 20 years thanks to, I quote, the work of a handful of architects who lived in Africa instead of just traveling through it, who loved it instead of ignoring it, who investigated its possibilities, the real but unexploited technical solutions, who educated its construction managers, and its enterprises who penetrated its cultures, its people and its ambitions obviously including them, right? So you see the self-promotional aspect. Uh these are still these were still images from the from the development plan. The built and unbuilt projects of Bakar epitomize the search for the architectural expression of negritude in the national school of administration in Dhakar built between 72 and 75. The triangular ornaments on the facade evoke patterns of traditional seneagalis handwoven fabrics so-called panis and the carved wooden handrails recall African sculptures. The construction materials of the set this set of edififices include local white rufusk stone. The building is separated from the nearby popular neighborhood of the Colan market by walls which simultaneously constitute an enclosure and a part of the structure. A stunning architecture element is the so-called kazmurid with its sophisticated interior wood cladding housing the school refactory. Its pyramidal form uh might be interpreted as a n to antage theories on in nionra eur from 1954 on the black fars and the pyramids in west sudan as the origin of civilization in Africa. The national school of administration relies on a distinctly shtian vocabulary. It combines classical symmetries with African elements and in line with the tendencies of the 1960s it blurs the distinction between urban planning scheme and the architecture one. The auditoria of the university antob in Dakar completed in 76 further developed this formal experimentation by integrating the elements of Seneagali sculpture simultaneously in the plan in the facade and in the materials of the building. Terry Melo devised here a sophisticated interior ventilation system for this building that effectively solved the problem of high indoor temperatures. The facade of the four volumes of the the this edifice recall Seneagalles art and crafts. The upper volume is covered with seashells pressed onto white cement, a technique which was inspired by popular practice of that time of decorating concrete flower pots with shells. While the base of the building is clad in terraotta bricks arranged in a pattern reminiscent of African sculptures such as the donor or the so-called bordon the courtyard um the the cladding of the facade has the uh functional role of thermal insulation while also evoking this distinctly West African architectural symbolism. The courtyard connecting the four auditoria constitutes a communal gathering space and materializes Sangor's theories on the social nature of African art by referring to the traditional village structure of the ping which uh Nzinga was already mentioning pangbot which is I think the only actually ping I never I mispronounced I'm sorry in in the in Dar plateau preserved uh until today in Wof the the peng basically designates both the local community and the place where this community gathers. It is the empty space in the center of the village often bearing the name of the founding federal chief and including a big tree so-called arra appalabra at its core. The modernized version of the pench is an idiosyncratic element that appears in many 1970s projects of the bash sedakar. It is included in the 1977 unrealized project elaborated primarily by a younger member of the office Andre de Pre. Um and it's a project of national school of technical education which was supposed to be located in a politically and symbolically charged urban area in Dhakar called Se Bulan on a symmetrical axis to the National School of Administration. It also appears in the flagship project of this period, the Museum of Black Civilizations, which was designed by Bakar between the years 1975 and 1986 following the initial collaboration with the Mexican architect Pedro Ramirez Vasquez. The museum, which was never built, was supposed to become the major cultural testament of Sangor's presidency. Its museum program was devised along with Jean Gabus, the director of the ethnographical museum in Nohatel and Jacqu Kerash, a collector of the African art. If you go to Kandi today, there's still a wing of Jacash. Actually, Kerash's ideas on African art can be deduced from his later 1988 article included in the volume Africa. In this text, Kerashu recalls the notions of signification and of universality that might recall Sangar's theories by describing African art as I quote the alphabet of mother signs of matrices from which modern man in his necessary quest for universality can and must draw. Like Sangor, he stresses the inherent functionality of African art, arguing that I quote, "The more important the function of an object, the more obvious its aesthetic qualities has become. There is a close link between function and beauty, with one supporting the other by promoting its development and the other magnifying the first by enhancing it. Kerash who was well aware that African sculpture expresses monumentality through its proportions while being I quote generally small in size rarely exceeding 1 meter and very rarely 1 m 80 directly advised Melo on the proportions and organization of spaces. The plans of the museum of black civilizations used the circle as their main theme. This circular horizontal form metaphorically translates the idea of the civilization of the universal for it reminds of the sun whose race leads to collections representing different African cultures. The communal space of the central ring-shaped patio evokes both the structure of pench and the architecture of the implovium huts in Kazamos. The cone structures um the cone structures covering round rooms might be a nod to astronomical observatories and pyramids in West Sudan. The museum was supposed to include a planetarium in the section dedicated to the environment. The spiral-like forms um in the sections such as um African man are reminiscent of the nautilus shells representing the golden section present in the logo of bee. In general, the plan we could say that the plan of the museum very circular team themes at different places and levels, thus creating a rhythm in which uh to quote Sangor, the effect of the whole is intensified not without nuances. Likewise, the names of the exhibition sections of the museum such as Africa outside of Africa, general history of black Africa, Africa of the kingdoms, the influence of negro arts on western arts and witness object or object moan translates as ideas on the mutual crossfertilization of African and European cultures as well as Jean Gabu's notion of museum objects as testimonies conveying the emotions and the realities of life. It is clear that and that the political project of decolonizing Seneagal through culture, perhaps due to its inherently contradictory nature has never been and perhaps could not even be realized at its full scope. At the end of December 1980, Singar announces the mission and voluntarily relinquished power. His successor, the president Abdul Juf, had little interest in realizing his cultured testament, the Museum of Black Civil Civilizations. The most telling symptom of the political character of Sangor's regime might be the ultimate failure of the funding scheme behind the museum project. Initially, the French president promised to fund 90% of the project while the remaining 10% were pledged by the Federal Republic of Germany. However, with the election of Fran in 1981, the Senegalis project was abandoned and gave place to the French large state competitions of Grand Travo such as LR decelet and Institute de Montab. It is perhaps the irony of the sort that one of the reasons of the failure of the project of the Museum of Black Civilizations was the withdrawal of funding by the former colonial power. Terry Melo whose um professional opportunities became restrained in Seneagal following Sangor's demission where I must say he you know often it was like command direct I mean there were some competition but it was very much like direct uh command um so his uh professional opportunities basically became restrained um relocated to France in the early 1980s leaving his archives in the office of Roland de Pre and Andre Job de Pre The structury adjustment policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund on Seneagal at the end of 1980s, dismantling and li liberalizing the state and privatizing public services ultimately destroyed most of the cultural and intellectual ambitions of Sangov's presidency. These reforms led to the fact that the communal land in Seneagal has been divided into small plots and subplots sold and privatized therefore radically limiting the possibility of realizing larger scale public projects. And yet it is clear that the ambitions of that period failed not only due to an external intervention on or unfortunate historical events but also because of their inherently contradictory nature. After all, it was Seben Usman, the godfather of Seneagali cinema, who formulated perhaps the most scathing critique of postindependent Seneagal in his 1973 novel Kala and its 1975 film adaptation. He portrayed the new class of civil servants subservient to French interests as alienated, classblind, and literally impotent. Therefore, I believe that today only elucid critical analyszis can really pay homage to Sango's politics of aesthetics and its architecture and urban manifestations. Thank you so much. Shall I do it here? >> Let me be in the middle of these wonderful people. >> Thank you so much. >> It's a pleasure to be here. It's really it's really a pleasure and I'm grateful for the invitation to uh be part of the conference as a discussant of these two great papers on uh uh the concept of asymmetric parallelism. uh I have uh to offer not so much points to discuss uh but comments to propose to expand or I hope the discussion uh now that uh I am emeritus and I've been presented I am emeritus uh I will just do what very senior scholars do which is tell anecdotes you know quite quivering voice. And uh so I I'll start with an anecdote, but you will see that I'm not totally out of order here. The anecdote is a younger me visiting Leon de Laare which is Sangor's house home on the cornish of Dhakar and visiting with Seagore because I'm old enough to have known him and I am uh fortunate enough to have benefited from his uh I would call it affection even because he had that's what he showed me. This is in the late 1980s. He was still returning to Dhaka uh from France and from the French academy. uh and uh uh so he would gather uh people that he himself appointed to be uh at the found Sangar taking care of in particular a review Seneagal review philosoph and I was a member of the uh of that uh journal but he would also see me alone to talk about echalormal class because somehow I walked in his footsteps and I know exactly the kind of geography, mental, intellectual geography he had in his head when he was younger. That's the kind of relationship we had. And the reason why I'm mentioning that is that that day I had a private class on asymmetric parallelism by Sangar himself showing me on his collection of African art what he understood by asmetric parallelism. I hope I had revelation to make but unfortunately no. Basically what he told me that day was exactly what you heard in the movie by Lawrence and and the fact that it is in other words resume the rhythm without repeating it without resuming it truly. This idea of uh rhythm resuming the rhythm and repeating it without repeating it is basically the definition he gave of par as parallelism. Depending on the different places, he would give different definitions. When it comes to talking about literature, he would see as a literary device. The equivalent of asymetic parallelism would be paraxis. Parataxis as opposed to syntax. You have just the two uh members of of the of the of the phrase uh juxtaposed confronting each other in a way without real conjunction without syntax that is when it comes to uh uh literary devices and he mentioned that as the style partic the the style of uh of Africanness and the sign of uh of Africanness. So uh basically uh there is no definition and he he would say as much himself there is no definition of asymmetric parallelism. And I would propose that reading the the two papers and what they have said about it and what Janna just said about the fact that there was no definition and you had as many definitions as you had architects or poets or everybody who thought that they were sort and applying his theory aesthetic philos philosophy because there is none. And so I would propose that par asymmetric parallelism itself is just an orientation and that the law that decide that said in 1978 you architects have to do asymmetric parallelism which was called a law of orientation in L orientation was as much orientation as is asymmetric parallelism itself. And I think that this is a point that you have made both of you which is important. At the same time you have this kind of uh head of state who uh have a law written about the orientation he gives to architecture in his country. One could understand it as some kind of you know authoritarianism something we are experiencing more and more in this world. uh uh but it was not in the same way when he created or theorized the school of dar in art there was not such a thing as saying telling the artist this is what you should be doing he was too much of a poet and a philosopher to have that kind of authoritarianism I uh I believe and then yeah the importance of rhythm uh as a definition of asymmetric parallelism. Your two papers are wonderful on explaining that. There are two instances where he defines rhythm. Janna, you have read one uh definition that that is the one he gives first in his very first published essay beside poetry which was published in 1939. and he comes back to it in 1956 in uh Leesthetic Negro African, an essay he published in the journal Joan and where he comes back to to to rhythm. And this is important to insist on because his idea of rhythm came to him through plastic art mainly through African sculpture. That is where he first constituted the notion of rhythm. This idea that you have volumes, geometric volumes uh uh anti-mimetic uh uh representation of reality and then they are held together through what he called an ordering force. And this is what he wanted to uh uh transfer from sculpture, African uh uh uh sculpture to uh architecture as you have said. And by the way in his definition both in 1939 and 1956 it is the same metaphor of uh rhythm being the architecture of being except that somehow wonderfully between the two definitions because he he he repeats the same paragraph almost almost because this is again asymmetric parallelism. You repeat without repeating. So in the first aspect what is dominant is the element of shock that you indicate and this is why also in uh uh when he talks about literature and writing he insists on parataxis and in the other one he insists more on spiritualization. The way in which you gather and you put together all these inferior forces so that together they are going to reproduce and to to grow and in the end uh uh reach a form of spiritualization that only belongs to to art. And I think that this is something great in the time of rereading of Sangor that we are in. And what you say about the civilization of the universal being actually the overarching uh concept behind uh above all these different concepts is I think very important and civilization of the universal and the role it played in Sagore is something that has been well explained by our very good friend Fred Cooper sitting here in front of me. and and and uh and this Sangor is important and Sangor needs to be read Aresh and to be just read. Many people who talk about Sangor have never read him. Many people who have criticized him in particular are English speaking who do not read French such as Wesinka. He does not read French at all. And people present wanka as having uted the ultimate criticism. Of course, if you say that, you are sure to have all the laughter on your side. But the only thing you miss is the response by nobody almost knows the response except Fred and my and I. Sang said, Well, my dear Shinka, because the tiger is a beast. His answer was a hidegarian answer. The idea that what distinguish the human being is that in the human being his own identity is a question. That is what he answered. But nobody hear that answer. Now fortunately it is going to happen because we have two readers singular leaders coming out at the same time. Both of them by former students of mine. One of them in Johan report the other one Jam Khun Doyle whom we almost hired here at Colia and second point general point. I'm sorry I'm being long. I have to go fast but all the people do that. Second point I like what you had to say about Kruma's adoption versus adaptation and that is very important. It does correspond exactly to what Sangor said about assimilation versus adaption is that you have to assimilate and not be assimilated. And this is something he will repeat and in particular anytime he talks about uh uh uh African art or African uh architecture. And uh and uh it is important to to use those terms because he heard somehow the warning by his brother in negritude who was MSair. uh a warning that MSE uh uttered during the uh in 1966 during the first uh black festival of black art. You have mentioned the the the article by Melo this young architect who who who came to do his service me there in Sagal and who stayed and uh did the work he did. In the article he he he mentioned that one should not be imitating the Sudano Selian architecture although it was uh uh considered a model of traditional west African architecture and I think Melo probably read uh uh the warning by MS during that festival when he said that African art is naturally antiises. It doesn't reproduce reality. It tries to capture what Sangor called the subreality or the vital force of of the thing. But uh Msel added the danger is not minesis is not imitating Europe but imitating our own self being in a state of selfimitation which is repetition and you'd be reproducing in a very mechanical way without adaptation uh the Sudanosian model. This is the greatness I oft precisely that used the Sudanoian model without really repeating it again. And for that matter you have both beautifully presented the CSS shown the the model it was constituting and what the bureau did the role it played in that. So I have one last point and which is a question that I want to pose to both of you. Uh uh the the question of the school of architecture. In other words, if I am Sangor and I want to teach uh parallel asymmetric asymmetric parallelism and I want that to be really applied by my architect in my I want to have a school that teaches that. So I would like to propose you have both insisted on the on the date 1971 uh uh CES uh the international trade fair international fair trade center uh as the beginning of the sang years and 1980 obviously when he leaves power as the end of the sang years and you have mentioned that Melo the architect wisely leaves in 1980 thinking that okay with the departure of Sangor time for his own emeritious status has come and he he he left Dhaka uh Dhaka. Then I would propose the importance of two other dates to both of you. One is 1973 and the other one is 1991. So 1973 is when Sangor wants the school of architecture to be created in Dhaka lean and one important character is going to play a very important role and I think that in a meeting like this we should pay homage to his memory to and that is Patrick Djarik. Patrick Djari is one of the founders of the school of architecture and urbanism that Sangor wanted badly in 1973 and it was created and Patrick Djari was not did not belong to the uh airplane period. He did not even belong to the boat period neither because he was saggales. He became sinagales. He loved this country. He embraced it. He became sineagalizes and he lived and died unfortunately very young as a synagogue in 2013. And Patrick Djarik was uh someone who he was a philosopher like yourself. He was an anthropologist as well and he was a great architect of course and what distinguishes him and the work he did was he went with his students. He took the time to visit many different places and different habitats, models and so on so forth. And he did great when he himself produced architectural work in Sineagal first uh 1995 the alias Franco Senegales of Kawak which won the Aakan award. Uh and second another alias Franco Senegal in 1999 the one in Zigans uh as well. And when you look at the pictures of what he did here, you have truly I believe what Sangor would recognize as parallelism in the motives in the in the in the wrong which has that are I I'm sure you have in mind many pictures of those aliens and I would propose that these should be probably shown at one point or Googled at least to be uh presented as what Sangal would have considered asymmetric parallelism plus the work he did with this wonderful restaurant where you should be all going when you are lag and lag reproduces a few motives also of what he did with these two alias and the reason why I'm mentioning 1991 is that that is when the school of architecture was closed And somehow this has been considered as the desangorization phase of culture in Sagal. You know that Abdul his successor has been accused of being of desangorizing and which meant also giving free rad to architecture. You do not have to bother anymore with parallelism asymmetric. You do it whatever you want. And uh now Dakar is in this verticalization that we we see we have highrise very soon it's going to look like Manhattan. So uh uh that is a date that is important because of that precisely except that he won his prize in 95. He did this other good work in 1999 and somehow it was the swan song of the sang years. When he won the Aakhan prize in 1995, he went to Abdul Juf. He presented him with the prize and gave him pictures of of uh uh of uh the work he had done. And Abdul Yuf was very moved by that because Abduluf as you have mentioned starting in 1971 uh was working with all these artist Sangorian architect Melo in particular for tourism etc. And Abdu was very moved by that and he told uh Patrick Darik this is great I'm sure Sangor would love to see something like this. So, what I'm going to do, all these pictures that you gave me, I'm going to put them in a package and I'm going to write to him a letter in my own handwriting to congratulate him for the work you have done if you allow me to associate him with your work. And the reason why I know this is that I was there. Last anecdote. I was in another life while I was still a professor at Shanty University, the cultural advisor of Abdul, the socialist president. So I was part of that conversation with Patrick Djari and I could not resist ending on that anecdote. Thank you. You >> can stay >> don't flee. Um no I mean uh Patrick Dar actually this is really interesting case I didn't mention it in this paper perhaps you know I was cutting it to fit the 30 minutes whatever but actually what I did not mention in the paper is that the m the civilization had to have a whole like exposition of uh African villages because with this like notion of the civilization of the universal the muse is like symbolizing the you know um a huge museum for the entire African continent was supposed to include an exterior exhibition of African architecture from all around meaning mostly the village architecture and that section was actually prepared based on notebooks of Patrick Dujahik which then I don't think were published uh you know because then he published the book and so on but at the time it wasn't perhaps in publication but they were like in close contact with me so they were preparing this uh this section bas basically uh on his re based on his research of of u of the plans of um African villages. So he's very much in the project. Um I mean all you said was really fascinating. Um as for the um uh asymmetric parallelism, it's very funny. I I could literally like make a list of definitions of uh asymmetric parallelism that different people gave me. Like I remember Andre de telling me oh it's the African masks you know anuga telling oh that's the triangles you know I mean I don't want to misquote but more or less uh that uh Jerry Melo says that it's basically when he presented the the market of the urban plan for the plast and pandas which was done um you know um the facet was kind of destroyed so it doesn't look like anything interesting now uh but you know that m was basically some I don't know plexiglass or you know whatever they used at the time in black and white elements and it seems um he says that he was presenting this market to Sangor and like some jury of whatever advisor ministers I don't know and then suddenly like Sangor exclaimed like oh the civil civiliz and negro African so like this is the parallel march of uh the two civilizations, the the the you know the the black uh African and the European western and that he basically did this exclamation seeing this like black and white plexiglass you know uh mcket in in in the plan of the so again like this these are all histories it's like you know it's super difficult to to verify but it's just to tell how uh blurry that concept indeed I think that's precisely the point though. Um you know I think I would make the argument that all great philosophical concepts are diffuse and that's why they are so productive and it gives us you know father for thought and I think what we see in this architectural production in the se 60s and 70s into the 80s and I guess even later is precisely um the fact that these architects are actually trying to grapple with something that is not so loosely defined that makes it so enormously productive and interesting. The last point you made I found actually incredibly interesting and important to behold. The question about the school of architecture. Isn't it um a remarkable um contradiction that you know Sangor and his government go all the way into you know codifying something you know a proposition into law in the 1970s but there's not really an architecture school of any significance until much much later and um you know Zinga who we heard earlier and others have recently you know done important work on this matter. or so underscore that. You know for me it is actually remarkable that Sangor who was clearly very interested in using or you know understanding architecture as an articulation of his larger cultural philosophy that there is not an earlier stronger emphasis on creating an architecture school that would sort of perpetuate uh this kind of thinking and you know part of that contradiction is also which I've tried to hint at in my paper and you know Jana made that clear too that most of the architects who were building for Sangor were actually not Seneagalles born I mean first of all there weren't that many around Jacen Gome was a prominent uh you know counter example but that is a a strange uh strange thing I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on of that why there isn't a stronger emphasis on this question of education >> if I actually may so sham it's like you know if you look at the births and the dates when they graduate. Sherang is the generation that's kind of older than me. So, and I think he went to Echolial with the Seneagali State Government Fellowship basically. So, there was a tendency to create a generation of Seneagalles, you know, black architect. But, you know, when the independence happened, it seems like there, you know, there were just, you know, it was kind of >> very few. Yeah. But even even after you know Gome came to to back to Dar he didn't get the big commissions. I find that really interesting. >> But still there I mean very recently Sineagal architects have uh paid homage to Shehum uh when because they have published together a book on Dhaka. There is this wonderful book on on Dakar that was published that just came out a couple of weeks ago and it was celebrated at the hotel deville. I contributed to the to the to the book and there was this homage to Shhum and I did not realize how many buildings actually in Dhaka are built by by Shang. He is our Jeanov in in a way in Da. Yeah. We're at the moment where we should be having coffee. So, anybody want Thank you very much. Thank you. >> Thank you so much is starting in July >> during the World Cup. >> Huh? >> During the World Cup. >> Exactly. Exactly. We could celebrate hopefully Senator Hopefully you'll be able to come. So nice to see you again. How are >> you? Perfect. Everybody agree. I have a question for the speaker. I just Happy Say hi. And finally, And that's what I It was There are so many Fantastic. That would be great. opportunity. Is there Oh, Thank you. >> Would you like Thank you so much. >> Fred, >> do you do you want us to sit here also or is it more of a conclusion? >> I was doing it so I could have the tape at the table. I I could sit here. Um >> yeah, but I mean do you want the the speakers to join here? up here or do you want to >> Oh, I think that may I think it might be better for them to be and >> in the room. >> Yeah. Not not to put everybody in the spotlight the whole time. Yeah. >> And then maybe we just have >> I don't care whether I speak from here or >> there's no need. >> Oh, the clicker is portable, isn't it? >> But somebody should somebody should get up. >> I know. We had some behind us. >> It's ready. >> Yeah. >> So, this is the pointing point this way and this front. >> This is forward and this is back. >> You have to point it at this machine. >> Oh, there it is. go very well. Maybe I need to be close. Yeah. >> You know what? It's this way. Oh, so you have to point it this way. But this is back. >> Oh, I see. >> That's forward. We're just trying to make it more. >> Okay. Okay. How are you? I did not get enough. Is this zombies? Are you This is my I told Yeah. Very similar. I love Emergency. Good morning. There's something Check your list. I think you can use this. >> Um, this is the event. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Which makes it easier. Okay. It's our um it's our great pleasure to welcome Frederick Cooper to give some closing remarks on today's presentations. Frederick Cooper is a professor emmeritus of history at New York University. He specializes in the history of Africa, of colonialism and of empire. He previously taught at Harvard University and the University of Michigan. Cooper is the author of well so many books I'm going to name a few of them a trilogy of books on on labor and society in East Africa um called Decolonization in African society the question of labor in French and British Africa from 1996 Africa since 1940 the past and the present 2002 and second edition 2019 colonialism in question theory knowledge and history um a pivotal book uh 2005 Africa in the world. Capitalism, empire, and nation states from two 2014. Citizenship, inequality and difference, historical perspectives from 2018. His most recent work, Postimperial Possibilities, Eurasia, Eura, and Afroasia. Um, written in collaboration with Jane Burbank, uh, and published in 2023. study the history of three transcontinental political projects that were designed to mitigate the imperial legacies of inequality and to offer alternative roots out of empire. Frederick Cooper is also the co-author with Thomas Halt Hol and Rebecca Scott of Beyond Slavery: Exploration of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Post Emancipation Societies. And with Jane Burbank, Empires in World History, Power and the Politics of Difference. It's a extreme pleasure to welcome you, uh, Fred, to Thank you Ralph for that generous introduction. Uh Ralph and Luchia and their wisdom asked somebody who knows nothing about architecture or architectural history to comment on this final session. Uh and I very much would like to thank them for giving me this unearned opportunity. Uh th this conference differs from many that I've attended. uh in that all the papers were excellent uh uh and they they I don't know if it's because architects actually have to make buildings and and architectural historians have to talk about the making of specific buildings but there's a kind of downto-earth and and specific quality about these these papers that's missing in so much of uh the discourse in the social sciences and and the humanities. So it's been a an instructive and pleasure uh uh pleasurable experience for me to be to be part of this uh this session today. uh now while I do not have any any uh methodological or professional experience that's relevant I have spent quite a bit of time in in the car starting in 1986 but my research there was concentrated in the dusty national archives of Sagal which at that time were in the uh ground floor of the building administrative they've said the ar the archives have since moved to to new uh headquarters This is not an anodine location to mention at a conference on architecture. It it is, as you see, a huge building, a dozen stories tall with erect linear lines common in post World War II architecture. It was built in 1953 at a time when colonial French colonial policy was moving towards what might one might call developmental colonialism. A large expansion of the interventionist capacity of the of the of the state and it intended to bolster both the French imperial economy and the standard of living of Africans. That meant a substantial increase in the size of the bureaucracy and attempt to bring more Africans into positions of responsibility. One can imagine civil servants looking down from the building administrative as they did their daily work. Many of the people who lived in the cop discussed by Greg would have worked in a in the building administrative. uh they were not working for Sagal but for the government general of French West Africa Sagal's capital was in 1953 not Dar but San Louie it moved to Dar in 1957 Dakar was the capital of of not of Senad uh and uh that means that the the kind of imagination that was going into how the building industry uh was going to be used was you might say imperial. It c it was not specific to to a to a to a place. Now many Africans including Leopold Sedangor were also thinking in terms not of a Senagalles nation and I'm talking about the 1950s but in federalist terms moving slowly perhaps towards some kind of federation or confederation on an African or a transcontinental scale. That was the perspective that was that was at the heart of this of the opposition in French West Africa to French colonial rule as it then as it then was. And this this breadth of vision is I think important to the kinds of things we're talking about today. When I first went to the car in 1986, the building administrative was far from the kind of structure that one might imagine as as integrating into urban life. Quite the contrary, it had an imposing entrance which was heavily policed and everyone entering had to produce an ID to get in. Decades later, the building was renovated by the Seneagalles government, reopening in 2019 as the building administrative Madu Ja. Now herein lies a story. Uh the building physically embodies in steel literally in steel and concrete a complex history of the French attempt to revitalize imperialism after World War II followed by attempts by Soran and others to build an African federation uh whose capital would have been in Dar and eventually to Dar becoming the capital of the Seneagalles state. Uh so it's it is in 1960 that after the catastrophic failure of the Mali Federation that incorporated the French Sudan and and uh and Senagal to that was the the kind of the the limited end of Sor's federalist hopes after the catastrophic failure of that in August of 1960 that's when Sagal became a national project and not an African pro project. Although Sangor remained true in lots of ways to thinking of what he his vision was an African one, but he was constrained at that at that point to be operating with institutions that were national. The name change of the building in Mr. T in 2019 seems to make amends, but in reality it covers up a key episode in the history of the independent senagalles state. Sore was in 1960 was became president of of Sagal. His prime minister was Madu Ja who had been his comrade in arms for the previous years years in the in the struggle uh against colonial rule. But in 1962 Sore not only fired Madu Jaw but put him in prison and he stayed there for 12 years. So this plaque that you that you see here uh conceals a very important part of the history of Sagal as an as an independent republic in which and all the other event of 1962 is it began a period of a single party state uh in in Sagal. Uh so we're talking we're if you want to go back to to 1940 uh to 1953 with the building of Mr. Tie go to 219. There's a lot in there's a lot in between uh that's relevant to any consideration of of how you want to think about and represent uh a uh uh environment uh that uh people are living in in in Dar. On my first trip to Daar in 1986, uh my wife and I lived in a studio apartment in another icon of postw World War II architecture, the building Majino, >> uh which those of you who've been there undoubtedly recognize. a very striking uh building between its its height and also that that kind of arcade-like structure on the bottom which are typical of of colonial era uh architecture. We lived I don't know sixth floor or something like that and uh uh in there for for several months. Uh now Majino after whom the building was was was made is known for the Majino line which was supposed to protect France against German invasion after World War I. And you you saw how su you know how successful that was. Uh but any anyway we were we were told in in 1986 that the building had been renamed the the building gay. And I tried to find any record of that on the web but would I it Google didn't produce anything that I could see. So I'm not even sure that's that that's true. But there was apparently some attempt to to to Africanize uh the building Majino. uh but it's if you look on Google it's still building mud you know that will that will produce results well uh I see in the in these in these buildings uh an historical context that's that that is that is useful uh and Zinga in her presentation this this this morning used the term typology uh and she was suggesting that one should think of a typology of of architectural forms and the and something like the building majino know or the building administrative are certainly part of that that uh typology and they represent something that's that's really quite important for the for the post-war uh history uh which is a model uh of of change of including a model of Africanizing uh that is ex explicitly euroentric uh and uh is is uh posits a vision of modernization that senagalles should profit from. But a vision that that that is based on uh on Europe and and as you're seeing it's it's uh in literally in uh iron and and concrete. Uh but uh as as her as her paper and and others to today make make clear, the typology is is a broad one. At the same time that this that this uh vision of what the what a modern city is supposed to look like is is being uh is being constructed. Uh there were there were there were uh people in both Africans and sympathetic Europeans who were including architects who were thinking of alternative visions of of cultural change and cultural uh interaction. uh but also at the same time there was a big wave of migration into Dar from the the hinterland of of uh of Sagal and other from other parts of West Africa uh too of people that had to improvise uh wherever they were uh to live faced not just with the meagerness of resources available uh to them uh but with the fact that this that the the state was trying to push precisely those people to peripheral areas. So there would be less visible parts of the urban uh environments. So the some some of in Zingga's uh photos that we we saw show in a single image uh the uh a foreground uh of what were cloally known as as huts or uh kaz uh in uh but built out of whatever materials people could find against the the high-rise architecture uh that was part of the car's landscape uh both during and after the after the colonial uh period. So the the contrast that we that we've seen in in all the images displayed in all in the very in the papers uh today is is not only uh uh quite striking the differences uh but it's interrelated. It's it's not a it's not just a juxtaposition. It's an interreation uh that we're uh that we're talking about. The society that was being forged by the postcolonial as well as the colonial state was differentiated hierarchical uh and and segregated uh and the segregation uh this differentiation was was built was part of the built uh environment uh and persists not just because the buildings persist but because some of the ideas behind them persist. uh the papers of of Jana and Martino uh made direct reference to Sangor's phrase of 1978 asymmetric parallelism and that was the major focus of discussion at our last uh session and I'd like to continue uh that with my historians bent uh because I think I think it has it has two quite important uh significances. one is chronological. The basic idea in Sangor's phrase of 1978 was actually suggested by him in 1945 uh in a in a actually in a chapter that that uh that uh Mashia Gian alluded to but didn't give a date but the the date is 1945 and the book where Sangor used uh the phrase that I'll uh that Bashier quoted uh was entitled communer Franc that's the title of the book in which appeared co his co-authors were somebody from France and somebody from Indochina um Sangor's chapter was entitled Noirim uh and that's the that that last phrase is what is what Bashir uh quoted so this is 1945 in a book called launote emperial France says uh actually there's some there's an echo in Bashir's recent book universalism of this of this title in that in that Bashiri chose to use a verb uh in the in the form of an infinitive universal and uh and he meant to contrast it with the adjective universal. So he wanted to emphasize that universalizing is a process uh not a not something that one describes. And I think Sor is making the same point when when he you uses uses assimile as a verb and he and he means uh to to uh adapt critically again a phrase that's been used today rather than just to uh adopt something uh something wholes wholesale. Uh and so one sees that Sore is make is using in 1945 this phrase uh and it's and it you can see the line that leads to his his uh his asymmetrical parallelism uh in in 19 uh78. uh in between and in in between you're see you're you're seeing uh a uh a complex history but in 1978 he's saying this question is still open. It hasn't been decided whether Senagalles people are are going to assimilate or be assimilated and it's up to them to take uh action to uh to go in a in a constructive way. Uh now the phrase imperial community of the book's title was not at this time an oxymoron but it was the key to understand what Sangor was was was up to and his demand for what in 1945 he called imperial citizenship that is that's that Africans should have the full rights of of of any French citizen. uh and what's interesting in particular in today's context uh is that what Sangor was was arguing for in 1945 was to take the citizenship law that applied to Dakar Sanlie Gore and Rufis the Catra commune and make it general for all of French Africa. uh so so the people of direct reference were already experiencing uh a a and working with a form of French citizenship. Uh now Sangor was was in in the fall of 1945 elected to the assembly nasol constituent in Paris and he played a a very vocal and very I think quite influential role in the writing of the constitution of the fourth French Republic which ended up including uh the provision of citizenship uh that was similar that was ba based on the the Catholic communion uh version which meant that that uh African French African citizens would have the rights of the citizen without having to come under the French civil code the way the citizens of European France did. So favors of marriage and succession etc uh could be regulated under different regimes including Islamic law or was called customary law uh in uh in in Africa in African in African France. Uh so this was written into the into the into the constitution. Now one can argue about all the limits this has had. was far from uh an egal an equal uh exercise of citizenship by by no means uh but as long as one thinks as I think one should of citizenship as a claim-making concept then its importance is quite acute and it became a basis for a great deal of of uh of politics in the in ensuing uh ensuing years uh that Africans could could then make claims including claims to housing or claims to participation in decisions about about cultural as well as economic uh affairs. And in and in that sense uh when one is talking uh about uh what is going to be built for whom uh these concepts are are are quite uh are quite gerine. Well, the imperial community of 1945 that's a phrase that was that very rapidly dropped out of use. The word imperial has certain connotations that quickly became uh uh pro problematic. Uh but it's by 1960 we end up with the national community. But the road between them as as I've been suggesting is is not was not uh was not a straight one. uh and issue issues of urban planning, housing, public public buildings uh were dealing were were all being dis had to be discussed in rel in relationship to a community whose boundaries were not clear and were contested. the imperial community uh the Dakarwa community uh African community in in the pan-African uh sense all these were were possibilities that were in play during the decades after 1945 and the uncertainty uh about what the how uh the the body of people who could consider themselves citizen I I think is important to to considering uh what you mean by uh by asymmetrical parallelism. Who is who is going to be uh uh included in these uh in these categories? uh and hence all the debates about whether one should talk about uh uh Sudano Sahalian style uh or some other kind of unit in relationship to what is conceived of as as as European all these uh you're you're talk you're talking about concepts that are being contested at this uh time. Uh the second focus I'd like to bring to uh asymmetrical parallelism is is the word asymmetrical. uh and uh I I sangor clearly was talking about interaction but he was not naive enough to think that interaction occurred on a level playing field. Uh much of the literature on colonialism uses the word domination. Uh it is often and domination is often contrasted with equality. uh and some scholars would like to emphasize bottom-up agency like to talk about negotiation. Uh but I think both domination and negotiation are problematic terms in colonial studies. The first doesn't take into account the weakness of of colonial institutions on the ground and the second negotiation misses what the actual power dynamics were. uh in a a situation in which some people had limited power but their power was not zero and it's not zero that is I think the uh point that the term asymmetry is very helpful in making us uh in making us think about uh about uh and that uh is uh and I think all that came out in in a lot of the specifics that were being talked about uh uh today uh the presentations take us back to the early colonial period including Steven's juxosition of early 20th century edififices uh like the the governor general's palace in Dear contrasted to the style of the pavilion in the exposition colonial in in in Marseilles with its pseudo sudanic uh style as if the French audience needed a lesson in orientalism and the African audience needed a lesson in power uh uh it is it is revealing that some of the most striking examples of an explicitly colonial architecture like the train station or the machete carl have recently been renovated by the seneagalles uh government. I'm glad that Nzinga included Pikin within her purview. Uh for this zone is where it be it it where uh people with the fewest resources had to invent something for themselves and they had to do it with a particular invent inventiveness. Um uh Gerard Salem has argued that the very insecurity of land tenures in such areas as pe uh made politicized people because they they had to they they couldn't uh rely on a land title in a court of law to defend their access to housing. They had to derive depend on political relationships. Now, these relationships were often of a patron client type rather than the citizenship politics we all love and uh like to participate in. But nonetheless, this is a this is a kind of of politics that knows directly about issues like access to land, access to housing, access to water, uh access to all the kinds of necessities uh that the built environment uh requires. Oh, another uh category of people, including some of my Senagalles friends, built houses north of the old airport in in Y or Parcel Lai, where people built a house one room or one story at a time, often over many years, advancing a little when money from savings or remittances from relatives in Europe uh came in. uh and and I and I think other social scientists would be eager to to to learn uh the kind of the architectural history of this kind of uh uh of uh of housing. Uh that's uh it's on uh it's often of people of of with with secure employment or uh uh well established in in in in Sagal. Uh but what are the specifics of uh this kind of uh uh of of architecture? It seems to me as least as interesting a question as that of the of the great buildings that are uh that are built uh built downtown. Uh and we've we heard today about the specifics of neighborhoods, the Medina, the Plateau, Pikin. Uh and we've also heard a lot about the labeling of of what goes on in them. whether something's called a kaz or or uh or a maison and and that uh uh but then the but the next question is is is the the the specifics of what it what is built. I was I was quite struck by a picture that that that Greg showed uh of a dining room table and a refrigerator. Uh and I think that that that I think should inspire people uh to think what does it mean to have this in your in your in your house and what does it mean not to have it which is the case uh of many people in the greater DAR uh area. Uh now uh Luchia and and Greg uh have focused particularly on a period which is which has been the focus of my own research in in France and Sagal the 1940s and 1950s. This was the the the period as I've said before of good of challenge and and and uh uncertainty uh where the possibilities of uh of reinforcing colonial rule by orienting it towards a little more development, a little more uh political inclusion uh both came uh to an unexpect for for in Paris and London unexpected uh ends. These papers showed that colonial officials had ideas about social structure uh and how they wanted it to to uh to evolve uh and that the and that the these ideas again show a certain degree of of uh of creativity and a certain degree of of constraint. Luchi asked what kind of historical experiment did the air air forms constitute? But if officials were trying to mold a society the way the way one molded an air form, they would find that they couldn't. But they could still accomplish something. Uh they could convince themselves that they could abandon the direct rule over colonies and think that Africans would still be bound by and would accept social norms, including their material manifestation so that they would participate in the global capitalist economy and a system of international relations that was predictable. And if not what Europeans most wanted, at least it was something they could live with. This change of thinking was a necessary step towards decolonization. Uh but did not lead to the kind of world that architects like economists and labor inspectors were trying to devise. Greg makes a related point. CCOP was intended for a specific niche in an emerging colonial society. civil servants or salaried workers whose income came from mechanisms. French officials thought they understood thought they could predict they could predict that these people would pay the rent. Uh and they thought that their lifestyles would would be appropriate to the kinds of spaces that were being constructed uh for them. He shows that Africans acquired an interest in preserving something of that vision, especially when it provided a degree of material comfort and social status, but not its totalizing aspect, not necessarily in family structure or in living off a wage uh income. Uh so chronological specificity is part of what is uh what uh our papers today uh brought uh brought out of what some of the of some of the architects in the phys in the in the symbolic sense of the term as well as the literal sense uh had in mind but not necessarily what they could uh achieve and it's and the story is a nonlinear uh one uh uh Greg in particular emp emphas emphasized uh the uh what you might call a rise and fall narrative that uh what was really important in the early years of SECOP was that it had an image of progress and a sense of possibility that the people who lived in these houses latched on to and became attached to. And then he points out to how difficult it became it came to be to maintain that and hence you go from an image of progress to an image of of nostalgia uh and and a different kind of uh of thinking uh uh uh about it. Uh this this leads me to talk uh a bit about another uh term uh that appears in the title of of this conference architectural modernity. Um now it appeared mainly in the title but not a whole lot in the in the discussion. Uh and I'm not entirely surprised by uh by that. I think the most specific use of the term was a quotation from Sore and his 1978 uh intervention where he referred to to integrating uh African ways of doing things with what he called the demands of modernity. Uh now this makes modernity sound like like kind of a physical object uh that you have to deal with and and there's a lot to that. How are you going to deal with a with a dense city like the car? Uh that it's not it cannot be the same way that you that you that you deal uh with a rare village. Uh uh so that's one meaning that the that the term uh uh has. Uh uh otherwise it's not clear what it means. maybe uh a a kind of general reference to the here and now. Um you know you have one modernity in 1912, another modernity in 2025. um uh it's or the sense of being with it being being okuron uh are getting away from the traps of tradition or maybe uh it means I think an an important meaning that we do have to confront is that what it means is Europeanization that it really is the European model uh gives you a definition of what modernity looks like and then that you're supposed to follow and I think that's a definition that while we don't like it we have to take it uh we take it seriously. Uh and then as as uh in Greg's paper the image of of the the the promise of progress that is probably the most uh uh appealing uh meaning but his but then we have to take uh the point and question of what happens when those when those promises are not uh were not fulfilled. Uh I won't dwell on this too much because I've I've written about it uh elsewhere. uh but I think that modernity is extremely interesting as a native category and not very useful as a social science category. But anyway, the papers that we that we heard uh today were admirably located in time, place and materiality. They refused uh linear chronology. Uh they did not assume uh that uh social variables all work together that family family structure secularism uh and uh market economy don't have to uh go together which is one of the essence of modernization uh theory uh and in in that way I think they we have very productive uh analyses of of uh uh of the specifics of of how people uh of how people uh live. Uh now in in uh their in their in their session uh Martino and Jana uh focused not just on architecture but on architects. Uh and an obvious characteristic uh of influential architects who tried to make architecture more more senagalles was that they were that they were French. And this came up in the in the last uh in the last uh session uh which is not to which is not to uh I don't mean this as a critical comment uh but as an observation uh about uh this the what you might say is the material conditions uh of uh uh of of economic life in a in a postc colonial uh country. uh the perspective that uh the architects uh that were uh that were talked uh about was African in the broad sense of the word which is which is consistent with sen with Sangorian uh thought. uh things like the the triangular uh symbols go back not just to Sudano uh Sahelian architecture but to the Egyptian uh pyramids and all that is make is making uh the the point that uh that Sore uh wanted to uh wanted to to uh to emphasize. Um and uh while uh Martino me mentioned the the the word authenticity and the name of Mabuto uh uh I think one should be uh make us an inference uh uh one should be careful about how one does that uh which to my mind exposes the vacuousness of the concept of authenticity. uh Mabuto talked about it while selling out his country to multinational capital. Uh and what is authenticity seems to me to go against everything that Sangor was trying to to say. Uh uh a complex interactive view of the world has as much authenticity as any kind of and more arguably than any kind of purist notion uh of any kind of reification uh of uh of authenticity. uh uh uh might have. But the but the the real point that that came up in the in the discussion just just uh now was was about education about schooling. Uh and uh again here you have a rise and fall narrative, an attempt to fund an architecture school that this then uh disbanded when times got uh harder or the the governing elite got less inclined in that uh direction. Uh but what interests uh me about it is is is not just the uh the training uh of uh of elite architects who are going who are going to uh build impressive uh public edififices. uh but of of architects who are doing the the nitty-gritty work of designing buildings that aren't going to fall down uh or or water uh delivery systems that'll actually deliver water. And how are these people being trained? And to what extent is one uh creating a uh category of uh of uh architects that's that's that's self- sustaining uh self-reroducing. Oh, so that seems to be uh something that that uh we might want to uh think about more. In the end, asymmetrical parallelism was not just a confrontation of African Europe, but of the visionary and the material. Houses, office buildings, conference centers, and schools had to come into existence with all their material realities and constraints to correspond to obtainable affordable material to respond to problems of scale in a population becoming increasingly numerous and dense to meet the constraints of a specific environment. All the papers confront in one way or another attempts to change Africa. Be it in the civilizing mission of the colonizers or the developmental politics of the final years of colonial regime and the national variant on developmentalism after independence. Sangor tried to argue that there was not necessarily a clash between European and and African ideas of a better future, but rather a complimentarity, but a complimentarity that one had to work on, and one had to work both with and against the asymmetry which the interaction necessarily entailed. What the papers today have accomplished and which social scientists and historians have not necessarily done very well is to examine the materiality of these issues. How the particularity of ways of doing things whether seen as continuity or transformation was was inscribed in concrete or in pieces of wood and tin. And thank you for your attention and I look forward to a discussion of all of today's endeavors. I'M HAPPY. I THINK we should have a discussion of everything. >> I'm happy to stay here. I'll pass around. >> I think I know >> I can't remember his name, but >> I think we might be good with We can move. >> Martino. >> Martino to the service desk. >> Martino, clean up on five. U but I just wanted to say one thing which is that um thank you so much for this very lucid reading of all of our papers not at all naive not at all unqualified but and you've identified this tick that we architectural historians have which is that you can't say modernism anymore and you don't want to say but modernization because that's very specific and so you just kind of wave at modernity but of course you're absolutely right that it's not an actor's category and that's not really our category we meant, you know, 20th century. >> It's like a big >> Exactly. It's a kind of bad but but correct >> sociologist friend of mine calls it place. >> Yes, it's a placeholder. Thank you. So >> um there's a question. >> So thank you for wonderful discussion. Um two unrelated very quick comments because this is on the oblique for me. It's not my specialty at all. But one is that as a comparatist it really is hard to find there is this elephant in the room which is there are no good par paradigms of comparatism and that's something that seems to me we have to take on board style categories genre categories uh historical periodizations they all for me are have to be worked on as translational in relation to their languages and so that's just a a general side comment But I think I've I've seen this a lot in literary studies and it seems to be a problem for any of these bianials that have a kind of global perspective. There's something really just unavoidably hard. A fact there's a fact that there's just no good paradigm that doesn't tilt asymmetrically in one way or another. And the other question is really um Martino and Jana, but this question of um fabric and weave and it made me think that I just want to hear perhaps a little bit more about this because there was the sculptural element of course, but there's something about um especially now since we're in a kind of craft oriented moment because you know there's a massive reinvestment and discovery of just what's been going on from, you know, feminism and needle work to what kind of expressions it the mixture of labor, repair, the histories of cloth. I was looking recently at um Kadair Ata's uh work on stitching. >> Um he stitches to buildings. Um, so this whole element of the reparative, uh, I know we can go overboard with this, you know, that's another in a sense rabbit hole with reparativity everywhere, but it seems to me that there's a legacy historically of some kind of repair work going on, but God knows how you would start with that. I mean, I'm not saying it's deterministic that you can say um there's a a thematic connection between the attention to fabric and weave and cloth and then to building design. Um I don't think it's causal. I think it's but but it it seems more than incidental too and you all mentioned that. So that's another question. I mean, I would say something to that. The what what you made me think was um of sort of bringing together the parallels between what what Jenna and Martino were talking about and the development of art schools in Sagal at the time because one of the biggest fosai for them was textiles. >> Yes. And so so there was a and and up in chess there textile making still is a major industry and it's a major way of training people and and it seems to me thinking about thinking about the not just textile production but the ornamentation on ceus you know all of those things are coming out of this I would call franophhone sort of way of thinking about what what modern art is in in Sagal in the 1960s. And um and and it seems to me that and you would know this better than I do that it's filtering into how one then thinks of a wall or how one thinks of you know the the CEUS has those really amazing sort of circles that air passes through those kinds of things that are there these sort of relations to how people are thinking of cloth because there is a whole you know school >> where people are thinking about this and making them and and it becomes is the art object that Sagal is perhaps best known for at that moment >> and also so you mentioned a tapiser obviously but you know I always find it Mary says it's too much graduate student but I find it like fascinating to what extent like this focus on fabrics actually relates to something like you know the role of fabric in like architecture with someone like Zere you know and the definition of uh and the colon you know the heart the colonial exhibition and so on. So I find it's like you know the fact that you're using you refer to textiles in architecture it's not like innocent it's already like heavily charged in many ways and then obviously you know uh even today like the traditional I mean if you look into fashion I mean saggalis they're like even nowadays like when you go to sagal and you think like what are you going to bring home well there's not that much things to buy actually what you can buy is is generally fabrics. It's pimmanjac. It's fashion. It's everything that's this that's what I think that's why meos is the the the sounds deplander, you know, this kind of a very distinct like lifestyle oriented things and the fabrics the traditional weaving. There's actually one um place in Maroban where the the Mangja community is doing the weaving where I'm buying my scarves and it's like extremely beautiful uh forms of textiles and then the traditional symbolism in African cultures like you know like pine ba panjak like every ethnne ethnic group like having its distinct like um you know symbolic fabric that you know are the gifts that are being given like from childhood and and you know stuff like that and that obviously in this kind of uh then they were pushed away by the v and the import of you know Chinese fabrics and stuff. So now they're kind of surviving in this kind of uh you know minority. But uh that's definitely for me like if I just like personally I want to build a collection of pine definitely obsessed >> by sets up I mean my knowledge of Sangor is minuscule but I was reading the English translation and that one of those essays just struck me. So that was also sort of franophhone. and it was a French collaboration uh with Sagal. I mean I think what you know you made an interesting observation in terms of textile being you know a craft and I think we were talking more about sort of the ornamental the pattern the rhythm but the ge geometry which is of course naturally appealing to architects but I think your observation about it being craft is precisely interesting because of what you were saying thinking I'm thinking about the I even said that it's basically an architectural scaffolding clad with you know >> so this this metaphorical understanding also of of of textiles as a as a you know and a cladding or a cra a crafting up of a of an abstract architectural scaffolding I find you know productive >> but but administratively you're on to something because the school the the art school was split into two parts so there were the plastic arts and then there were textiles they were two separate things two separate parts of of a bigger body and so there was this knowledge or this this consideration of perhaps what we wouldn't necessarily call art and craft, but there was something to this distinction between what was plastic and what was more homegrown indigenous and and that came under textile where you know in the in the art school people were brought from France to teach to teach the plastic arts where they were not brought in to teach textiles. And so there is that distinction. >> I was going to answer or try to answer the question of comparatism. >> Um I mean I agree there's no good paradigms. But so the case of DA let's say the case of Sagal offers um a history of that deficiency a little bit and also lessons in differentiation. And this is what Fred was saying throughout. Um and so basically the history of the this failure and in the case of housing which is what I was sort of researching you would think of all categories that would have been universalized and internationalized in the middle of the 20th century this would have happened but in fact the differentiation that happens even with the same words you know aita mortgage these things that we think of as highly technological responses to modernization whatever basically on the ground they correspond to completely different uh dynamics and uses. Um and that's a useful it's not a new paradigm of comparison, but it offers a lesson in having to compare in including the fact that the internationals in architecture were very frankophhone. So it's two different uh ideas of what is going to be a globalizable architectural unit fighting it out. Um so it's that that failure has a history I guess. >> Yeah. I mean and maybe just to build off on that I mean I was just for the grad course and um teaching kind of reading an stolier's work where like comparison also as an object of analysis that was critical to the imperial project and the post imperial that that these administrators are constantly comparing one techniques and technologies and you're seeing the same thing in post-war I mean pre-war housing as well but certainly in postwar there's this explosion of these international conferences that are making the explicit comparisons but then what's interesting is that also boils down to the residents. The residents whether explicitly or kind of implicitly in the way that they're framing themselves are part of the promise of modernization is because it's comparative to France. And this way is kind of also building on what Fred was saying that citizenship as a claim making process is comparing on these workers claims during the strike in 46 is comparing the Shemino of West Africa to the Shemino in France. So it's modernization is is itself inherently as a native category a comparative one. So I mean so again it doesn't really help the answer of what is a framework for us to do comparison but thinking of comparison as a critical mechanism in kind of this in kind of the creation of the colonial city and the postcolonial city not just for planners but also for kind of people remaking the spaces. >> Yeah. And I wonder if we should be following around the people who were doing the work >> because people moved from one colony to another colony to another colony to another colony. And so I think you know I was thinking about this today tracking those people. Where were they working when you know Rome came from Indochina came to West Africa went back to Indochina Ind was in Indochina you know talked about you know came to West Africa was up you know was in the south of France he they were all moving around and so so what would happen what would what would come out if we actually started following these people many of whose names we you know aren't aren't household names does not look guzier right so we're not looking right um but but what happens if we start following these officials around the empire. What kind of work can can come out of that? >> There's this amazing picture into other colonialism. >> There's this picture of Franom as like a young person in one of the special issues of colonial architecture. I don't know if anybody else has seen it. You It's whatever the guy is the director the governor general was and then next page over France as you know as a secretary of something. So that's where he ended up. >> But but yeah, but I think you're right. that it has to transcend the franophhone world. I mean like the Rockefeller Foundation becomes like this is an archive that we should be looking at for where these kind of comparisons are being made. It's I mean and this is kind of the work on kind of socialist like Eastern European architects in Ghana um in the middle that that it's you know the Sen the Senagal France relationship is you know >> it's a big one but it's not exclusive that that we're limited by only looking at franophhone >> um connections. Um, I think mine is more of a comment, but maybe it will elicit some questions. Something I was thinking about all day as we did this deeper deeper genealogy of asymmetric parallelism. I was thinking about Christa Thompson's work on shine. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. in uh you know a diaspora.