Many of the contributions to the main exhibition dig into their own particular, civilisational past, with a focus on materials, ways of building, of being, and modes of sociability that are firmly anchored in their place of origin. ‘Ghanaian architect David Adjaye’s work is framed by non-western narratives.’ Photograph: Antonio Calanni/AP And tradition – real or imagined – is everywhere in this Biennale. Modernism was an example of Eurocentric universalism.Īs an alternative to it, the Nigerian architect Tosin Oshinowo, writing in the Biennale’s catalogue, claims that only tradition can provide a “nuanced understanding of the environment, culture, and context”. That language may have acquired many accents, but it only had one vocabulary – and it was written in the Latin alphabet. Tropical Modernism, a contribution to the Biennale by London’s V&A, shows that precolonial building practices were actually highly influential in its development.īut modernism originated in the colonial centre and from it developed one language fit for the planet as a whole. Modernism, the architectural style that spread after the second world war, we are told, represented a “colonial invasion” of “the Indigenous nations of central Brazil”.Īnd yet, modernism was a universal language shaped by non-western architects such as Brazilians Oscar Niemeyer and Lina Bo Bardi, and Ghanaians John Owusu Addo and Samuel Opare Larbi. “The dominant voice,” Lokko writes in the introduction to her ambitious exhibition, “has historically been a singular, exclusive voice, whose reach and power ignores huge swathes of humanity.”īrazil’s show (winner of the Golden Lion for the best national pavilion at the Biennale) centres on unearthing – quite literally – the architectural and living practices concealed by the establishment of the country’s modernist capital, Brasília. But the 2023 Biennale’s curator, the Ghanaian-Scottish architect Lesley Lokko, is using international architecture’s most influential event to critically reassess that one-world narrative.
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