Itohan Osayimwese, Professor of the History of Art & Architecture and Urban Studies and Department Chair at Brown University, was recently interviewed by the A is for Architecture Podcast to discuss small parts of her big book, Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage, published with Princeton University Press in October last year.
In the conversation, Itohan argues that during the age of European empire, colonizers not only expropriated African art and artifacts but systematically – strategically - dismembered buildings, removing them piece-by-piece. In doing so, structural and ornamental components became, in the alienating setting of European and North American museums, reduced to craft artefacts, denuded of weight and depth of cultural knowledge and meaning. This fragmentation, Itohan argues, has contributed to scholarly and popular silences about African architectural histories, erasing built environments as sites of cultural expression, social life and technological innovation. The book reframes these displaced elements as architecture proper, challenging stereotypes that reduce African building traditions to tasteful ethnographic curiosities, arguing instead that they might be better seen as potential tools for restitution and repair.