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Diversification of the architectural canon by African vernacular architecture: a cross-reading from V.Y. Mudimbe (1988-2025)

par le Maire de Romsée, Judith ;Brunfaut, Victor ;Bungiena, Trésor Lumfuankenda
Référence "Diversifying the architectural canon with 'crossed histories’" International Workshop, ETH Zurich (2-4 November 2025: Congressi Stefano Franscinci, Monte Verità, Switzerland)
Publication Non publié, 2025-11-02

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

Our contribution to the testing of the concept of crossed history to enrich the architectural canon is based on an ongoing pedagogical and research experience on vernacular architecture in the Congolese context. The crossings are multiple, and of different nature: territorial, linguistic, social, disciplinary and cultural. They are also temporal and spatial: we revisit the analytical categories of architectural culture and canon that are at stake in the historical intersection of colonial and post-colonial processes of domination, from a temporal point of view, and between Belgium, the USA and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as a space frame. We will see that, in these crossings, the disciplinary boundaries themselves are being distorted. Indeed, the Congolese physical territory is modified by the Belgian cultural domination during the colonization of the Congo at the end of the 19th century: the Congolese vernacular architecture is not considered by the invaders as an integral part of the architectural canon. It is rejected outside the great civilizations of builders and the disciplinary field. It is demolished, transformed, discredited, and largely erased from the Congolese territory and relegated outside of universal architectural knowledge. This crossed history is rooted in the issue identified during the exercise of supervising research in architecture and pedagogy for the teaching of the history of architecture. A self-reflexive grasp on the categories and our research objects led us, from 2022, after about ten years of thesis direction with Congolese doctoral students, to a fundamental questioning: how to conduct research according to the standards in force at our European university, the Université libre de Bruxelles, with research questions asked on an African territory, in the DRC, in a context where sources are practically absent? Libraries looted in the 90s, archives brought back to Belgium at independence or practically inaccessible for those "preserved" in DRC, partial statistics,... old planning, bureaucratic heaviness and reluctance.