Events
Upcoming
November 12, 2024
Ann Arbor, MIThe Chronopolitics of Quantification: Economic Planning, Financial Auditing and Political Theology in 1960s Ghana
Time: 1:15pm-3:45pm
Location: Room 3146 A&AB
Speakers:
Gerardo Serra
Topics: Dr. Gerardo Serra (Lecturer in Economic Cultures, University of Manchester), will discuss his paper "The Chronopolitics of Quantification: Economic Planning, Financial Auditing and Political Theology in 1960s Ghana," which reconstructs the role of development planning and financial auditing in shaping political iconographies in 1960s Ghana. In it, Serra suggests that these tools (and the numbers contained in them) did not simply inform and support practices of economic management. Instead, they contributed to the construction of alternative versions of postcolonial utopianism. The focus is on the last years of Nkrumah’s government, until he was overthrown by a military coup d’état in 1966, and on the brief experience of the National Liberation Council (NLC), the military junta that ruled over Ghana between 1966 and 1969 (and which remains one of the least studied periods in the country’s postcolonial history).
November 13, 2024
Ann Arbor, MI
The Gift Exhibition: A Debate
Time: 11am-1pm
Location: TV Lab
Speakers:
Ayisha Ida Baffoe-Ashun,
Temuulen Enkhbat, Alice Korkor Ebeheakey, Uurtsaikh Sangi,
Leigh House, Łukasz Stanek
Topics:
Oblique Histories,
Land
Imaginaries
The gift-giving of buildings is an overarching force of worldwide urbanization today. Corporate and personal philanthropy has been a vital and controversial agent in European and North American cities, while inhabitants of African, Asian, and South American cities are increasingly concerned about their social and technical infrastructure being overdependent on European, American, or Chinese donors. This event will reflect on the exhibition The Gift: Stories of Generosity and Violence in Architecture (Architekturmuseum der TUM, Munich) which shows how uneven negotiations around the moral, temporal, and racial dynamics of gift-giving have shaped and continue to shape urbanization processes in four cities: East Palo Alto (USA), Skopje (Macedonia), Kumasi (Ghana), and Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia).
March 27, 2025
Ann Arbor, MI
Land, Deed, and Debt: University Campuses in West Africa
Speakers:
TBD
Topics:
Land Imaginaries
This symposium will debate the historical “gifts” or “grants” of land at colonial and postcolonial university campuses in Africa. We will discuss the consequences of the often involuntary ceding of land by Indigenous communities for their socio-spatial relationships with the universities. We will study the impact of such “gift economies” and the debts that they create on the design, construction, and uses of space on and around the campuses. Organized as a collaboration between Taubman College and the African Studies Center at U-M, this symposium will facilitate an international comparative perspective on the history of the University of Michigan and the status of its land as “gifted” or “granted” by indigenous people.
Archived
April 11, 2024
Ann Arbor
Oblique Histories: Nigerian Indigenous Architecture With and Against Zbigniew Dmochowski
Speakers:
Warebi Brisibe, Kathryn Ciancia, Łukasz Stanek, Adedoyin Teriba
Topics:
Oblique Histories, Archival
Justice
The symposium traces the oblique trajectories of the comprehensive study of Indigenous (“traditional”) architecture in Nigeria carried out by a Nigerian-Polish team between the 1950s and the 1970s. Symposium participants questioned this study’s contribution to the decolonization of architecture in Nigeria, and its ongoing appropriation by Nigerian educators, architects, and scholars.
January 29, 2024
Ann Arbor
Radical Planning Speaker Series: Climate Mitigation and Just Disaster Action
Speakers:
Tim Berke, Apil KC
In this presentation, Apil KC shared about his experience as a young planner post-disaster and some of what he learned from post-disaster reconstruction. Apil opened the discussion by poking some of the issues in post-disaster reconstruction in Nepal that he has witnessed that are interesting to discuss and take in comparison with cases from other experiences. Tim discussed the potential roles and skills that planners can bring to humanitarian settings, using specific examples from his experience in South Sudan.
January - March 2024
London, United Kingdom Building Africa Exhibition
Curators:
Kuukuwa Manful, Julia Gallagher
Topics:
The Sociopolitics of the Built Environment"Building Africa" showcased compelling stories about political institutions and identities across the continent, using architectural landmarks such as presidential palaces, courts, parliaments, schools, sports stadiums, airports, and the African Union building. The exhibition underscored how these structures play a pivotal role in shaping political landscapes. Architectural design teams from Ethiopia (Nahom Teklu), South Africa (Matri-Archi(tecture)), and Ghana (Lois Quartey & Augustine Owusu Ansah) crafted installations that initially debuted in Addis Ababa, Johannesburg, and Accra. The London exhibition was designed by Kuukuwa Manful.
July 7, 2023
Asutsuare, Ghana
Discussion: Asutsuare Rebound
Speakers:
Paulina Addison, Michael Gameli Dziwornu, Eric Don-Arthur, Vida Otoo, Łukasz Stanek
Topics:
Archival Justice, Oblique
Histories, Land Imaginaries
After Ghana’s independence in 1957, the village of Asutsuare became the focus of state-led, socialist-inspired agricultural and industrial development. A sugar factory was built, along with a residential area, a sugarcane plantation, and an irrigation system. Twenty years after its closure in the 1980s, the plant was bought by Chinese investors. Today, it manufactures paper and plastic products, while the sugar cane plantation was repurposed for the farming of rice, bananas, and fish. Asutsuare Rebound, first presented at the Rotterdam Biennale of Architecture (2022), studies the reuse, reappropriation, and revalorisation of modernist planning in Asutsuare. We have interviewed retired employees of the sugar factory and younger inhabitants who explained to us how the material infrastructure and memories of the plant are a resource for imagining and producing a collective future. By juxtaposing their voices with images by photographer Eric Don-Arthur, this project revisits the ambiguous impact of long-term planning on the landscapes of Asutsuare, including water management, agriculture, and social infrastructure. We understand these ambiguities not as evidence of failure, but as an invitation to rethink the future beyond both modernist techno-utopias and neoliberal short-termism
May 22 - 25, 2023
Asutsuare, Ghana
PhD Workshop: Building West Africa. A View from the Unilever Archive
Speakers:
Warebi Brisibe, Iain Jackson, Kuukuwa Manful, Łukasz Stanek, Claire Tunstall, Nwola Uduku,
Rixt Woudstra, Albena Yaneva
Topics:
Archival JusticeDuring this workshop, PhD students from the University of Michigan and the University of Manchester discussed architecture and construction in decolonizing Anglophone West Africa based on the records of African businesses owned by Unilever and preserved at the company archives in Port Sunlight, Merseyside.
October 18, 2024
Ann Arbor, MIFall 2024 UMAPS Research Colloquium Series:
Socio-Spatial Dynamics of Green Infrastructure in Ghanaian Cities Through Precolonial, Colonial, Contemporary Epochs
Time: 3-6pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Speakers:
Ayisha Ida Baffoe-Ashun
Topics:
Urban Planning,
Land Imaginaries,
The Sociopolitics of
the Built EnvironmentThis presentation explores the socio-spatial distribution of urban green infrastructure in two of Ghana's major cities, Accra and Kumasi, focusing on the historical impact of colonial and post-colonial town planning on its contemporary distribution. The research investigates the influence of urban planning policies across three key periods—precolonial, colonial, and contemporary—and their influence on green space equity, public health, and environmental justice. The presentation will also address the need for new strategies to foster urban green infrastructure planning and development in Ghana's rapidly urbanising cities for human well-being and environmental sustainability.
Taubman College of Architecture and PlanningAfricaAlliance@umich.edu