History Designing Architecture: Performance and Architecture in Africa & its Diaspora
Channel: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Date: 2023-10-19

17/05/2023
A series of talks and discussions showcasing new research and approaches to thinking about buildings, cities, and landscapes in Britain and elsewhere.

Paul Mellon Centre and Online

A king dancing, playing music to the accompaniment of the poetry of his palace in order to construct a new one in late twentieth-century Southwest Nigeria. Songs sung and danced to, to commemorate artists and architects in the same region – a tradition that is at least three hundred years old. Peter Adjaye, a composer, ethnomusicologist and disc jockey collaborating with his brother, Sir David Adjaye over two decades, by composing soundtracks of David’s buildings. All these cases are some instances in West Africa and in the African diaspora where the craft of creating history, the built environment and performance have been treated as a holistic unity.

Another common thread running through these scenarios is the way that all the architects have a keen sense that there is no distinction between the past and the present; each architect enlarges and contributes to multidisciplinary traditions of place making.

This presentation will explore the ways in which this type of place making has remained a vital force in how certain buildings are erected amongst people of African descent in West Africa and its diaspora – providing a nuanced contrast to the inductive way of architectural design that dominates the field of architecture in many parts of the world.