Liora BIGON, HIT - Holon Institute of Technology, Israel
Against the background of the fragility of the post-colonial state in Africa and its failure to provide basic infrastructure for its citizens and residents of the cities with an accelerating growth rate, second only to Southeast Asia, the issue of electric power supply will be highlighted. In particular, bottom-up decentralization of electric energy in urban Africa will be emphasized, in terms of the resilience of the space users, driven by a lack of choice. As stated by Joan Clos, a UNHabitat director, we need "radically different, re-imagined development visions to guide sustainable urban and other transitions in Africa over the decades to come" (2014). Till these visions will be found, the lecture will examine the anthropo-scene of Southern cities through a series of photographs by the Congolese photographer Baudoin Mouanda from the capital city of Brazzaville, entitled "The Phantoms of the Sidewalks", and through an interview with the artist.
The series documents the phenomenon of an unstructured 'urban library', in the open air, where many dozens of young people go out of the darkened households every evening outside to the main streets, to complete their studies under streetlights or while using portable lighting. We will analyze this phenomenon beyond the mainstream of the architectural and planning discourses that support an institutionalized, top-down professional approach involving the material world, towards a perception that sees people themselves as infrastructure, including their motives and movements in space. The lecture will ask: is it possible to think of the city beyond the material forms and representational aspirations as expressed in the more traditional discourse about infrastructure and architecture?
Mots clés : Urbanism in Africa|infrastructure|electric grid|Brazzaville|light, darkness and the 'shadow'
A102460LB