Similarly,
African architecture, erased memory vernacula:
What if concrete was only an episode in a much longer, denser, more rooted story? Nevertheless, And if African architecture did not find its origin in the grid plans of colonial urban planners. Consequently, but in the palm of a mason of Banco, in the gesture of a blacksmith sculpting a lintel, or in the gaze of a child Toucouleur recognizing the forms of his memory in those of a grancy in a raw earth?
Before the word “architecture” was locked in academic grids or international competitions, it was experienced here as a breathing. Furthermore, We built with the earth, not against it. However, The Bassari dwellings were based in the slope of the hills. Meanwhile, the Sérères boxes opened their conical roofs in the sky, the Mossis granaries took the form of the function, without ever yielding to the superfluous. Therefore, The african architecture, erased memory vernacula ingenuity was housed in adaptation: natural freshness, bio -based materials, short circuits before the hour. These forms were not disguised poverty, but built wisdom.
And yet these architectures have gradually become invisible. Neither cited in textbooks nor integrated into urban policies, they were relegated to ethnography or folklore. Worse still, they are sometimes perceived as relics of a shameful past, to erase behind painted cement or cheap tiles. It is to forget that there was. in each space constructed, a fine understanding of society, its hierarchies, its links of solidarity.
The paradox is cruel. While the world rediscovers the virtues of sustainable architecture. Africa continues to import energy -consuming models, often unsuitable for its climate, its uses or its resources. Where we should draw on vernacular genius to draw cities of tomorrow. we mimic glass facades in neighborhoods that lack water, or soulless towers in cities that suffocate.
To do justice to African african architecture, erased memory vernacula architecture is therefore more than a memory exercise. It is a contemporary emergency. It is to relearn to build with the place, with time, with the men and women who live there. Additionally, It is to rehabilitate knowledge. not to freeze them in a museum, but to make it the raw material of rooted modernity.
Because our cities do not need an imported style to be modern. They need soul. meaning, and this intelligence of the territory that our ancestors, without diploma or concretenière, controlled better than many architects of today.
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Auteur: Aicha Fall
African architecture, erased memory vernacula
Further reading: Hello Ketty. Chalon’s quirky images in the street of our photographer – For 13 years, Elizabeth and her triangle house at € 40,000 inspire an entire generation – The incredible story of the painter monkey which conquered the heart of Picasso, Miro and Dali – An exhibition of photographs and vinyls decorated in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin – William Paredes, this young Narbonne painter who takes your portrait.
