TY - JOUR
T1 - Architects from Socialist Countries in Ghana (1957-1967): Modern Architecture and Mondialisation
AU - Stanek, Lukasz
N1 - I am grateful for the funding and support granted to me by a number of institutions. This article results from a research project supported in 2010 by the Institute of History and Theory of Architecture (GTA), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH); the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; CascoâOffice for Art, Design and Theory; and Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw. The research project was initiated at the Institute GTA; continued at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., where I was the 2011â13 A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow; and completed at the Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC), University of Manchester.
PY - 2015/12/10
Y1 - 2015/12/10
N2 - Architects from Socialist Countries in Ghana (1957–67): Modern Architecture and Mondialisation discusses the architectural production of the Ghana National Construction Corporation (GNCC), a state agency responsible for building and infrastructure programs during Ghana’s first decade of independence. �ukasz Stanek reviews the work of GNCC architects within the networks that intersected in 1960s Accra, including competing networks of global cooperation: U.S.-based economic institutions, the British Commonwealth, technical assistance from socialist countries, support programs from the United Nations, and collaboration within the Non-Aligned Movement. His analysis of labor conditions within the GNCC reveals a negotiation between Cold War antagonisms and a shared culture of modern architecture that was instrumental in the reorganization of the everyday within categories of postindependence modernization. Drawing on previously unexplored materials from archives in Ghana, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the article reveals the role of architects from European socialist countries in the urbanization of West Africa and their contribution to modern architecture’s becoming a worldwide phenomenon.
AB - Architects from Socialist Countries in Ghana (1957–67): Modern Architecture and Mondialisation discusses the architectural production of the Ghana National Construction Corporation (GNCC), a state agency responsible for building and infrastructure programs during Ghana’s first decade of independence. �ukasz Stanek reviews the work of GNCC architects within the networks that intersected in 1960s Accra, including competing networks of global cooperation: U.S.-based economic institutions, the British Commonwealth, technical assistance from socialist countries, support programs from the United Nations, and collaboration within the Non-Aligned Movement. His analysis of labor conditions within the GNCC reveals a negotiation between Cold War antagonisms and a shared culture of modern architecture that was instrumental in the reorganization of the everyday within categories of postindependence modernization. Drawing on previously unexplored materials from archives in Ghana, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the article reveals the role of architects from European socialist countries in the urbanization of West Africa and their contribution to modern architecture’s becoming a worldwide phenomenon.
KW - architecture in postcolonial Ghana
KW - architecture in postwar Eastern Europe
KW - architecture in socialist countries
KW - history of architectural labor
KW - globalization of modern architecture
U2 - 10.1525/jsah.2015.74.4.416
DO - 10.1525/jsah.2015.74.4.416
M3 - Article
SN - 0037-9808
VL - 74
SP - 416
EP - 442
JO - Society of Architectural Historians. Journal
JF - Society of Architectural Historians. Journal
IS - 4
ER -