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Jan.19th - 11H30

Investigating Technologies, Labor, Building Materials and Debris in (post)colonial Congo. What (Post)Colonial History can do for Construction History

Johan Lagae (Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, BE)

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In this keynote, I will discuss some recent and ongoing research at the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning that focuses on architecture, building and urban planning in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While this research has dealt with various aspects, from writing urban histories of cities such as Kinshasa, Lubumbashi and Matadi, to unpacking the policies informing the building of hospital infrastructure in colonial Congo, I will address here in particular a recently started, large scale project initiated with colleagues from Brussels’ based universities, entitled Construction History, Above and Beyond. What History Can Do for Construction History.

 

If in 2006 Antoine Picon argued that "construction history offers a unique opportunity to rethink the relations between technology and culture" (Picon 2006), this project starts from the observation that this opportunity has still not been grasped in its full potential. Within this project, I am heading a research team that deals more in particular with setting up a dialogue between the disciplines of Construction History and Colonial History, in an attempt to substantially broaden the historical sensibility of Construction History while enhancing the disciplinary relevance of Construction History as a field with “a special flavour that is not to be found in other fields” (Picon 2006), thanks to its combined attention for technology and culture, including its social, economic, political and environmental implications on society.

 

Building on our long lasting research on architecture, building and urban planning in colonial and postcolonial Congo, and drawing on recent scholarship that presents innovative ways of writing the history of edifices, the broader built environment and its materiality, I aim to illustrate in this keynote lecture how new venues for research can be explored by engaging with source material that has not yet received ample attention of architectural historians. This includes understanding the particularities of working with the archives of building firms and contractors in Central Africa, as well as the need to critically deconstruct colonial discourses on technological advancement and progress, in particular in the way they relate to practices of building. I will point out some of the challenges regarding the study of (the division of) labor in colonial building processes, inviting us to engage with the blunt use of violence and disciplining, as well as with moments of empowerment that occurred through training. Finally, I will demonstrate some our ongoing efforts to unpack the sometimes complex material flows undergirding the assemblage of buildings in colonial and early postcolonial Congo, both local and global, as well as how the practice of building and planning resulted in ruination and debris, the often disturbing impact of which can be felt till today.

Rather than presenting final conclusions, this keynote lecture thus seeks to address new and timely questions and issues through a series of case-studies recently or currently under investigation.

Johan Lagae is Senior Full Professor at Ghent University, where he teaches 20th Century Architectural History with a focus on the non-European context. In 2007, he was a chercheur invité at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris and was a 2019-2020 fellow at the Paris Institut des Etudes Avancées. He holds a PhD on colonial architecture in the former Belgian Congo and has published widely on the topic, as well as on 20th century architectural and urban history in Central-Africa, and on the notion of colonial built heritage. He co-authored two books on the built landscapes of the city of Kinshasa and together with architect Nina Berre and anthropologist Paul Wenzel Geissler recently co-edited a volume entitled African Modernism and its Afterlives, that appeared with Intellect Publishers in September 2022. He (co-)curated several Congo-related exhibitions, such as Le mémoire du Congo. Le temps colonial (2005), Congo belge en images (2010), A chacun sa maison. Housing in the Belgian Congo 1945-1960 (2018) and collaborated with several artists from DR Congo, among others Sammy Baloji and Patrick Mudekereza. From 2010 till 2014 he co-chaired a European research community devoted to the theme “European Architecture beyond Europe” (COST-action IS0904), and he currently is co-editor of ABE-Journal, a peer reviewed, open access scholarly magazine devoted to 19th and 20th century architecture beyond Europe.

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