Between Particularism and Universalism: Cultural expressions in architectural design

Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Uruka identifies four trends in African philosophy: ethno-philosophy, philosophic sagacity, universalist professional philosophy, and nationalist-ideological philosophy. The debate generated by Essel-Appiah’s work reflects two of these trends: ethno-philosophy and universalist philosophy.

Ethno-philosophers believe that all African philosophy should be drawn from the pure unadulterated confines of African culture, thus drawing on theories from past glories of history, cultures, folk tales, myths, poetry, proverbs, customs, and traditions of ethnic societies. This is what a second commenter in the audience would describe as ‘loving our own’ and may encompass traditional arts and crafts. For the reader's references, the late Senegalese president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and renowned Ghanaian philosophers Anthony Appiah and Kwame Gyekye subscribe to this approach. For the ethnocentric architect, the usage of African themes and symbols as underlying concepts, and inspiration as an approach, is essential to design.

Universal philosophers, however, do not fully subscribe to the hard lines of ethno-philosophers. Even though they acknowledge the importance of ethno-philosophy to African identity, and believe in scientific ways of reasoning in African philosophy and firmly reject myths, legends and spirits as part of African philosophy, do not consider borrowing concepts from the West a ‘sin’. Among them are famous names like Kwesi Wiredu, Paulin Houtondji, Peter Bodunrin, and Valentin-Yves Mudimbe. For a universalist artist or architect, African works of art or architecture do not need to have an underlying ‘African’ concept or even look overtly African.

The universalist view, supported by Okeke Agulu and Okwui Enwezor, professors in Contemporary Art Studies, suggest that contemporary African art has joined the global world. The African identity of today has shifted from a geographical basis towards a more global, multi-cultural identity based on socio-economic and political conditions. To them, contemporary African art of the ‘new Africa’ does not subscribe to “rigid borders, outmoded hierarchies and anthropological certainties” or to “ethnocentric positions and affiliations”. Agulu and Enwezor would probably describe the Monologue in terms such as ‘new African’ or Afro-cubist’ without regard to the original inspiration of Kente patterns. To the ‘particularist’’, the design should visually acknowledge its source of inspiration; but to the universalist, the design should acknowledge itself and not particularly its source of inspiration. To look at both sides of the debate, our analysis starts by examining Kente itself.

The production of Kente falls within the textile weaving arts of West Africa – Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire in particular. Its origins go back to an Ashanti folklore of the "spider-weaver" and a keen observer who, by studying the spider’s art of spinning webs, was enlightened to build the first loom to produce the first Kente cloth from cotton yarn. A more probable, less mythical account is that it originated in the 17th century when a man named Ota Kraban travelled to Gyaman or Kong (now in Côte d’Ivoire) and brought back the first loom, setting it up at Bonwire, a town now famous for its Kente fabrics.

The word ‘Kente’ comes from ‘Kenten’ meaning ‘basket’ in the Akan language. In the cultural context, Kente embodies history, oral literature, ethics, social values, religious belief, and political thought. It is a garment of bold colors. Blue, green, magenta, red, and yellow are typical colors used in different combinations and patterns with each color embodying virtues and symbolism. As a symbol of prestige, wealth, and status, in the past, Kente was reserved for royalty and nobility and worn on socio-sacred occasions such as marriage, puberty, child-naming ceremonies, and other special communal occasions such as festivals and historic events. Kente is internationally known, especially in the United States among Afrocentric sections of the African American society and the diaspora who celebrate Kwanzaa, an African American pseudo-religious celebration based on traditional African harvest. It is an annual celebration of gift-giving to signify African unity, community, heritage, and culture, as well as creativity. During the season, families decorate their households with objects of traditional African art and colorful cloth as a symbol of Black awareness and consciousness.

From Kente to the Monologue Facade

For the design of the Monologue, the architect chose Kente as the source of inspiration for its clear, cultural dominance among the rich textile traditions of Ghana. His fascination with Kente was not only for its geometric patterns but also with the loom itself which, in action, presents a strong sense of dynamics. The architect describes the lateral and vertical movement of the pattern heddle and shuttle by both hands and feet of a traditional weaver as ‘visual rhythm’.

In his own words Kofi Essel-Appiah describes the facade: “The front façade which faces west, though seemingly random, follows a poetic pattern, a “concrete” crystallization of a screen composed of simple masonry white walls and glass inspired from the Ghanaian Kente fabric.”

As an architect, Essel-Appiah believes in making bold facades or building envelopes that respond to the local climate and weather. The Monologue’s western and eastern facades, naturally control solar incidence by utilizing the tools of the ‘brise soleil’. The inspired use of this ‘Kente brise soleil’ allows abundant natural lighting and also serves as a sun shading device, preventing direct solar ingress into the internal spaces and balconies. They serve as sun breakers diffusing light and shading the recessed windows. The resultant facade is reminiscent of the brise soleil by British architects in the1960’s, whose tropical modernist buildings in West African cities were designed in response to the climate.

With this in mind, he takes Kente through six stages to arrive at the facade.

Stage 1: The examination of the various patterns of Kente and the selection of a portion to use.

Stage 2: Formal analysis of composition and extraction of lines.

Stage 3: Development of preliminary pattern and the elimination of colour.

Stage 4: Computerized abstraction of shapes.

Stage 5: Conversion into the concrete structures by geometric paracentrics.

Stage 6: Engineering and construction of the finished product.

The architect’s design process reveals a link between the particulars and the universals through a process of geometric abstraction paracentrics. The resultant facade is a unique cubist composition derived from the Kente pattern.

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‍Uncovering the Secret of the Masters

Essel-Appiah’s design approach unearths the hidden links between famous works of the globally known modernist master architects and artists of the early 20th century and traditional sub-Saharan African sources of inspiration. This is revealed in new investigative research by art and architecture theorists and scholars. African-American scholar Melvin Mitchell, a staunch Black culture advocate has posited that some of the work of the Swiss architect Le Corbusier shows clear signs of West African influence (Steyn,2014).

This echoes Sigfried Giedion’s writings on Space, Time and Architecture (Giedion, 1941) in which he confirms Le Corbusier’s frequent visits to museums in Paris such as the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro from 1917, when he sojourned in Paris. The museums, at the time, had extensive sections of African art. Le Corbusier himself, in 1964, unwittingly revealed his sub-Saharan inspiration when he proclaimed, “ seek out primitive men, not for their barbarity, but their wisdom”.

South African research professor Gerald Steyn investigates Mitchel’s claim. Even though there are no written records to ascertain the influence of West African art on his work, Steyn looks for comparisons between Le Corbusier’s voluminous sketches and images of African art available in museums and archives at the time and discovers some striking similarities. His statements and remarks also reveal, as Steyn suggests, that there is a great possibility that African art, artefacts, and traditional construction comprised a secret conspectus that provided him with formative ideas for his architecture and urbanism.

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Another academic professor, Garth Rockcastle in 1987, claimed that "The primitive was appropriated by some members of the architectural avant-garde via cubism…More suggestive, however, was the impact of the primitive on the structure itself, most evident in Le Corbusier’s work, where the traces of the primitive mask were incorporated into architecture through the exploitation of the “free plan".‍

Unlike architecture, the link between modern art and its traditional African inspirational sources is no secret. The great modern artists admit, in words and writing, their fascination for African art, which drew large crowds curious to see exhibits from the ‘dark’ continent in museums throughout Europe in the early 1900s. French scholarship on African art’s impact on the Cubist and modern art movement abound. The Cubist art movement began in 1907 led by Picasso and Parisian painter Georges Braque. Information from ethnographic researchers who had spent considerable time in the Colonies in Africa reached print houses in Europe. This popularized lectures on ‘primitive art’ held in town halls across Europe. Artists flocked to these lectures and exhibitions for new inspiration. The works of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso and French painter Henri Matisse, two of the world’s great painters, were influenced by African masks.

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African American scholars Anthony Browder and Michael Brown (1992) write on the African influence on Western civilization. They assert that there are several cities and monuments in the United States that were influenced by Nile Valley architecture and symbolism. Browder cites the Washington Monument, built in 1884 as a memorial for the founding father George Washington, which has the form of an Egyptian obelisk. The seated figure of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial has an uncanny likeness to the seated figure of Pharoah Rameses II at Abu Simbel in Egypt. The USA has numerous examples of cities and towns with ancient Egyptian names such as Luxor, as well as modern architecture based on the Great pyramids, such as the Memphis Pyramid, a 32-story glass-covered pyramid in Memphis, Tennessee.

These examples of the works of the world’s most influential architects and artists demonstrate that the fascination of artists and architects of the Western world tapping into cultural resources outside their own is not new. Essel-Appiah may just be scratching the surface of a goldmine of art as inspirational design resources yet to be fully tapped by African architects. In another vein, the American architects of these structures on American soil, which mimic symbolic monuments of African civilizations, did not have the portrayal of African identities in mind, but drew on them as symbols of power and enigma. The question remains: How relevant is it for design to overtly acknowledge its cultural source of inspiration in today’s universal multi-culturally diverse world?

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