Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Puzzling Makeover of Entrance Building to the Oba’s Chambers in the Palace of the Oba of Benin 2

Great thanks Cornelius, for introducing me to Hassan Fathy and his ideas, his  work complementing the conceptualization of mud  as artistic and building material in Benin centuries before his 20th century achievements, even as his verbal summations suggest the need to adequately and critically foreground older ways of knowing and doing.

Benin is a Mecca of knowledge inadequately aware of itself. 

The neoclassical make-over of the Oba's palace is not as impressive as that at the entrance to University College, London, where I studied, and yet UCL, with its massive knowledge complexes in curricula and infrastructure, as one of the premier  universities in the Western university system, cannot replace the cultural depth  and cognitive range of Benin's cognitive ecosystem.

The difference between the Western knowledge systems represented by UCL and Benin  knowledge systems,   in the latter's embedding in the Edo-Yoruba complex, its closest similarity within the Igbo, Cross River and even Fulani and other knowledge complexes in Nigeria within the larger classical African and neo-classical African knowledge systems, is the ever escalating levels of organisation, application and institutionalization  of the Western knowledge systems, in contradt to those of Africa, the investigation, systematization, application and institutionalization of which is a vast network, many of its arteries, its connecting nodes, in need of clarification and development.

Benin's  magnificent culture  of sacred trees, for example, needs to be adequately presented and explored, both at theoretical and experiential levels, their cosmological implications spelt out, their cognitive potential explored, their physical environments beautified, their character clarified to explorers as part of a distinctive exploratory network with significant educational and tourist potential.

This culture  of arboreal spirituality may be correlated with the superb vegetative landscape of the University of Benin, shaped by exquisite fields and remarkable trees, the city/university correlation suggesting, not only correlative values in relation to landscape, one spiritual, the other purely aesthetic, but the value of this synthesis as a matrix of study of these values.

My forthcoming essay on the spirituality of trees in Benin thought will contribute to this vision. I will also share my pictures of the University of Benin landscape.

These possibilities may be correlated with the glorious landscape of Obafemi Awolowo University, the university in a forest, both universities, OAU and Uniben,  and the endogenous nature philosophies of the environments, Yoruba and Benin,  in which they are located, in relation to a broader spectrum of responses to these magnificent natural spaces, coming together to generate a powerful knowledge network, even more potent when the Oshun forest at Oshogbo is added to this complex, taking advantage of the work of Ssusanne Wenger and her collaborators in developing relationships between space, nature, art and architecture in a great philosophical and spiritual convergence, Yoruba thought in dialogue with non-African streams of knowledge in a glorious synthesis.

Great thanks

toyin

 

On Fri, 25 Nov 2022 at 05:55, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:

Right on ! Even if some of the uncle toms think you are too revolutionary whilst others among them may think that you are too conservative, and restrictive, considering that after all, the world and all its civilisations and glories of the past, the present and the future belong to us, for us to use as we should like to and that includes fashion ( clothes) medicine and all kinds of technology etc etc etc.

Re - "mud is the primary building material in Benin architecture, serving both as a cooling mechanism, according to one view, and as symbolizing the nexus between life and death, spirit and matter that defines existence, as suggested by the liminal character of mud, both earth and water."( Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju) 

 Indeed, mud as the main building material was conceptualised and put into practice by the Egyptian architect  Hassan Fathy who was awarded  the  Right Livelihood Award in 1980, " For developing an 'Architecture for the Poor'.

His Acceptance Speech begins with

"We need a new way of knowledge. The enforced academic knowledge of schools has alienated us from nature just as industrialisation by force has taken away the possibilities of our participating in satisfying our needs. We have only ready-made solutions, prefabricated ideas to be carried out. In the fields of life which need a high cash outlay, like housing, we have been cut off from solving our problems by using our own hands and our own potential…"

Nowadays, in Nigeria for example, cement is the staple building material , don't know the lay of the land now, but back in the early 1980s the bandits would put some chloroform in the air conditioning and that would send everybody nicely  into a coma or deep sleep for the count of as long as necessary for them to complete their grand larceny/ looting…

Remember the saying, " Blood's thicker than mud"

Not that we are about to witness the beginning of a Mud Revolution starting with the building reconstruction revolution from -cement-to-mud starting at the Oba's Palace - as that is likely to be seen ( not only by the nouveau riche and culture imperialists as regression not progression. With such assumptions some of the Oyibos in the Wild West imagine that  they are  giving  some of us a hard time explaining that our last abode in Africa / " shithole countries"  wasn't exactly mud houses.

 In Nigeria the mud revolution is unlikely to take off any time soon when you consider these main facts about the role and status of cement in Nigeria 😂: "Nigeria possesses the largest cement industry within West Africa, with at least 12 registered companies amounting to a merged cement capacity of 58.9 Mt/yr."

On Thursday, 24 November 2022 at 08:01:07 UTC+1 ovdepoju wrote:

The new architectural style in use in a part of the palace of the Oba of Benin is grounded in Western aesthetics, philosophy and architectural history and has no direct relationship with Benin culture.

The neo-classical style employed by this make over resonates with ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of beauty and style, relating to the work of such thinkers as Plato and Longinus, thereby suggesting the thought and practice of another clime, importing this into a primary cultural center in a different world, another cultural space.

The palace of the Oba of Benin needs to showcase Benin architecture, evoking its philosophical, spiritual, artistic and historical significance bcs the palace is a focal point of Benin culture.

Unlike the newer orientation to using cement in the building directly leading to the chambers of the Oba of the palace of the Oba of Benin, mud is the primary building material in Benin architecture, serving both as a cooling mechanism, according to one view, and as symbolizing the nexus between life and death, spirit and matter that defines existence, as suggested by the liminal character of mud, both earth and water.

It is clear, from examples in Benin, that mud can be a very long lasting substance, when adequately built.

Benin architecture represents the symbolizing qualities of Benin culture,the transformation of nature into culture, the generation of immediate, terrestrial and cosmological

meaning in relation to practically every aspect of existence, from trees to roads to colors to houses, unlike the use of cement in Western architecture which has no direct symbolic significance.

Where else should this far reaching architectural creativity, evoking realms of knowledge unifying earth and cosmos,be showcased, if not in the palace of the Oba of Benin, the Anthill of Totality, as he is known, the conglomeration of Benin culture, the present as it radiates backwards to the past and forwards to the future, carrrying into the unknown the seeds of an ancient civilization, a unique contribution to humanity's efforts to make meaning of existence, the palace a privileged center for learning about this ancient culture of perennial significance.

Change may have its value but the outright importation of an architectural style from another civilization into such a prime cultural center is problematic.

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