Butabu
For centuries, complex and intricate adobe structures, have been built in the Sahal region of western Africa, including the countries of Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. Made of earth mixed with water, these ephemeral buildings display a remarkable diversity of form, human ingenuity, and originality.
In a fascinating book, published in 2003, titled ‘Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa’, and co-authored by British photographer James Morris and Harvard professor Suzanne Preston Blier, a stunning visual array of these structures is displayed.
In his Preface to the book, Morris writes:
“Too often, when people in the West think of African architecture, they perceive nothing more than a mud hut—a primitive vernacular remembered from an old Tarzan movie. Why this ignorance to the richness of West African buildings? Possibly it is because the great dynastic civilizations of the region were already in decline when the European colonizers first exposed these cultures to the West. Being built of mud, many older buildings had already been lost, unlike the stone or brick buildings of other ancient cultures. Or possibly this lack of awareness is because the buildings are just too strange, too foreign to have been easily appreciated by outsiders. Often they more closely resemble huge monolithic sculptures or ceramic pots than “architecture” as we think of it. But in fact these buildings are neither “historic monuments” in the classic sense, nor as culturally remote as they may initially appear. They share many qualities—such as sustainability, sculptural beauty, and community participation in their conception—now valued in Western architectural thinking. Though part of long traditions and ancient cultures, they are at the same time contemporary structures serving a current purpose.
The mud from which these buildings are made is itself a controversial substance that tests our conventional views of architecture. It is one of the most commonly used building materials in the world, and yet in our urban-dominated society it is seen, effectively, as dirt. Buildings subtly alter in appearance each time they are re-rendered, which can be as often as once a year. Yet the maintaining and resurfacing of buildings is part of the rhythm of life; there is an ongoing and active participation in their continuing existence. If they lost their relevance and were neglected, they would collapse. This is not a museum culture…”
In this review of the book from The Guardian Newspaper, journalist Jonathan Glancey writes:
“What these magnificent mosques prove is that mud buildings can be far more sophisticated than many people living in a world of concrete and steel might want to believe. Mud is not just a material for shaping pots, but for temples, palaces and even, as so many west African towns demonstrate, the framing of entire communities. The very fluidity, or viscosity, of the material allows the architects who use it to create dynamic and sensual forms.
Morris’s photographic trips through the region in 1999 and 2000 record a world of architecture that, sadly, is increasingly under threat. Perhaps it is mostly poverty rather than culture and memory that keeps this rich and inventive tradition of building alive…”
This book is a treasure trove of imagery and information to any architecture enthusiast. Critical elements like space, light, and texture are explored in intimate detail, revealing a strong argument for this kind of architecture to be studied, documented, and profiled more wildly. As Morris sums up his preface: “I am still curious why West Africa’s adobe buildings receive so little serious consideration. If architecture is a cultural expression, perhaps it is the culture from which these buildings have evolved, so alien to the European mind, that keeps it in the academic wilderness, hard for the commentators to place.
Sadly, the English version of the book is now out of print. There are, however, used and new copies avaibale from independent oulets via Amazon.com
Photographs and Preface published courtesy of James Morris.
British Council, Lagos
Bristish Council
Lagos, Nigeria
Architect: Allies and Morrison
In 2004, the British Council decided to relocate and rationalise its Nigerian headquarters in Lagos to the eastern district of Ikoyi. The site is a large leafy compound, which, in its physical insularity and lack of engagement with the public realm, is typical of the hermetic character of the neighbourhood, and, indeed, of Lagos generally. Following an initial feasibility study by the Council’s in-house architects, London-based Allies and Morrison were appointed to refurbish the existing staff houses on the site and design a new learning and information centre that would act as a flagship for the Council’s activities in Nigeria.
At the heart of the project was the dilemma of how to engender a sense of physical openness and accessibility against the intrinsic insularity of the surroundings, security concerns and the intensely hot and humid equatorial environment. Allies and Morrison’s response is eminently practical, yet also subtle and considered, as the building gradually reveals itself through a sequence of permeable layers of metal, timber and glass.
Placed along the north-west edge of the garden compound, the new building is a plain, two-storey volume enclosed by crisply rendered white walls. Set back from the street, overlooking a small, semi-formal garden, its short north-west end forms its main public face. Instead of the more usual protective wall, however, the building is delicately veiled behind an open metal screen giving it a dignified and comprehensible street presence, albeit necessarily at arm’s length.
The metal screen marks the compound boundary, and its vertical bars are reprised in an intermediate colonnade of ribbed iroko that extends across the width of the building, framing and defining the main entrance. Resembling a giant garden trellis, the colonnade, an obvious archetype for hot climates, shades and protects, moderating between inside and out. Though essentially free-standing, the timber structure is lightly connected to the building’s concrete walls for lateral support. Behind the colonnade is an inner membrane of clear glass held in anodised bronze mullions that encloses a double-height information centre.
Materials are chosen with an appropriate regard for local sources and aptitudes. The locally sourced iroko timber of the colonnade is immaculately jointed and worked, but the concrete, which proved more of a technical challenge, is largely rendered, in the vernacular way, or simply left raw and boardmarked, its roughness a foil to the creamy Ancaster limestone of the floor. The hot, wet Lagos climate meant that some air conditioning was necessary to cool the interior and protect computers and books, but it is a much less demanding environmental control strategy than the local, aggressively airconditioned norm.
Throughout the project, there is a sense that, while intelligently acknowledging place and tradition, the design team was determined not to let the more unforgiving local conditions compromise what has turned out to be a very decent piece of modern tropical architecture.
The materials are a mixture of the local language of rendered stuctures and some carefully implemented translations of details which are more recognisably British. The timber screen which is shared by both the new garden and the building further accentuates the sense of transparency by graduating the otherwise formal transition from outside to inside.
AIST-Abuja Campus
African Institute of Science and Technology (AIST)
Abuja, Nigeria
2006
Client: Nelson Mandela Institute
Total Area: 240,000 m²
Architect: Massimilano Fuksas
Consultants: Arup Italia
The African Institute of Science and Technology has as its main inspiration principle the effort to foster Africa’s economic, social and political growth and development through the promotion of excellence in education. The Institute will address all the requirements of a modern world class academic centre, including teaching buildings, research facilities, residential space, a hotel, sport facilities and the associated infrastructure.
The site is on a green field plot between the city of Abuja and Nnamdi Asikiwe International Airport, with a design aspiring to wisely combine African tradition and cultural values with innovation applied to construction and cutting edge building management.
The buildings are organised along the main pedestrian axis, which crosses Nelson Mandela Square. The paved areas on the square are engraved with Mandela’s words to inspire new generations to build the peaceful common future of Africa.
“…Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor; that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine; that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
The Architecture adapts to the geography as a patchwork of African weavings.
The campus is arranged around a central axis which points to Aso Rock. Aso, means “victorious” in the language of the (now displaced) Asokoro (“the people of victory”). A visual axis towards the holy rock, a path that will drive students to their individual “victories”, to become the outstanding professionals who will use their knowledge and leadership to transform local communities and improve the human condition across the African continent.
Constructed from local timber, stone and brick, campus buildings will incorporate sustainable technologies, such as water harvesting and photovoltaic technology. Traditional textile patterns and African “red earth” structures inspired Fuksas’s design: In plan view, residential quarters are designed as long, sinuous interconnecting shapes. Individual faculty complexes, each one different from the other, comprise buildings grouped around internal streets and courtyards. Vertical openings in the buildings’ timber skin will filter light and promote natural ventilation.
