Projects/Publications

Book Publication:

“The Brazil House”

Available  July 13, 2010 from the Brazil Embassy of Ghana (Click here)

An exploration of Accra’s urban growth through a critical geography of architecture

In 1836 when Accra was still divided into Dutch, Danish and British territories, the British steamship SS Salisbury landed on the West African coast. It brought to its shores individuals who had once left as African slaves but were now returning as Afro-Brazilian freed men and women. Fluent in Portuguese, distinctively dressed in top hats and coats, these seven families who landed in Ghana (then known as the Gold Coast) were fully incorporated into their host society. The very name given to these Afro-Brazilian returnees in Ghana, Tabon, is the Ghanaian localization of the Portuguese phrase ‘ta bom?’ or ‘esta bom’ connoting both the question ‘is everything okay?’ and an affirmation of well being in response. The Brazil House, located in Jamestown, was the first house ever built by the Tabon on the coastal strip, known as Brazil Lane, given to them by the Gas. Originally built with landcrete stone bounded by a local clay mortar, the architecture of the house has come to withhold pieces of Jamestown’s history as it changes with time and who occupies it. Using what is called a ‘critical geography of architecture’, a method of understanding the agency of architecture through the voices of not just its producers (architects, planners) but its consumers (inhabitants), I explore how change be traced or mapped in a fluid urban culture through the isolation of this house. The concept of architecture here is beyond representational, it looks at the building as an intermediary that expresses a culture’s ideologies and furthermore becomes an agent that negotiates and challenges. In the interwoven narrative of Brazil House presented, I locate architecture’s ability to reveal the relationships of politicized urban actors, to influence change, to sustain ways of lives, to select what is to be remembered and finally to demonstrate  imagined futures in this geography.

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Uzuri Landscape Design Project

SOSHGIC Tema, Ghana

for those of you who know me from SOS and were somehow forced to work on this project (hahaha!), you’ll be smiling (not) *shaking your heads* right about now..

but it lives! and one good day, I’ll finish it…meantime here is a link showing last summer’s (2008) progress. A Photogallery, blog as well as the design and building process is documented on the links below.

http://maelokko.googlepages.com/uzuri

http://maelokko.googlepages.com/*new*thedesign