Understanding the multiple architectural modernities in colonial and postindependence Nigeria

Abstract

This paper investigates the multiple architectural modernities in colonial and postindependence Nigeria. After examining the theoretical basis for multiple modernities and the use of architecture as a vehicle to study modernity, it identifies the colonial, tropical, and postcolonial modern as multiple architectural modernities that existed in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria. The criteria with which the multiple modernities were delineated were historical settings, key participants, distinguishing features, and meanings. This provides a plausible framework to understand modernities in other contexts beyond architecture and opens the possibility of elucidating various modernities and enriching the repository of modern heritage. Devising such broad definitions of modern heritage responds to the call of the Cape Town Document on Modern Heritage for expanded definitions of what constitutes the modern, while enabling the accounting for and stratification of multiple memories and narratives, and the inclusion of many types of modern architecture in conservation conversations.