Hauptstadt von Ostafrika

On the same April weekend that I passed through Nairobi Airport's ill-fated terminal, I had a few hours to walk around Central Nairobi during a busy Monday. This was only my second visit to the Kenyan capital, and I don't know much about the city's history or its architecture, and I don't have time to research them enough to write a post equal to an equatorial Urban Trawl. But I so enjoyed wandering around the center of town that I wanted to share a few pictures of the city (which I couldn't narrow down to much fewer than 40). 

Moi Avenue at Tom Mboya plaza, with Stanbank House at right.

Nairobi is one of the most important cities in Africa and the hub of a large multinational region of nearly 200 million people. Like many a 20th century metropolis, it has its origins as a frontier railroad junction. Today the city sprawls southern California-style across an area where drier savannah meets greener hills, however the heart of town is a relatively small and compact grid, reflecting the colonial ordinance of more than a half-century ago. At independence it was a city of 250,000, and the population of the entire country (about 8 million in 1960) was closer to the population of greater Nairobi (over 3  million) today. 

Moi Avenue looking south from City Hall Way and the Hilton,

 the Ambassadeur Hotel at center.

While Kenya's economy has been growing rapidly in the past decade, along with much of the Africa, and its importance as a regional hub burgeoned simultaneously, Nairobi, like its airport terminal, retains a distinct air of the immediate post-colonial period, with striking examples of English mid-centuryism. While central Nairobi has constantly added large buildings in the 1980s, 1990s, and the past decade, and office towers are sprouting across the city while the urbanized area has oozed outward for miles, much of the city center's largest and most prominent office buildings all come from a building boom that built momentum in the optimistic ebullience of post-independence, and peaked in the early 1970s. 

Kenyatta State Hospital, like a Tricorn Centre on the horizon.

Bruce House, Muindi Mbungu Street.

20th Century Plaza cinema, Mama Ngina Street.

There are a number of such buildings around central area of the city, some in a certain state of dilapidation, from what appeared to be a lack of maintenance and heavy usage more than city-center abandonment, while many others which were examples of classic quasi-colonialist modernism. 

Norwich Union House, Kimathi Street.

It is somewhat astonishing to encounter, for instance, the Norwich Union House, with its bright yet faded paint of primary colors, and even without the incredible plaque depicting the grandly bucolic Norwich Cathedral emblazoned on its concrete elevation, it seems straight out of Oxford Circus. Nearby, the Hilton tower has stood for decades, and there is nothing so much like its presence on the divided boulevard of Moi Avenue than the London Hilton on Park Lane, or so it seemed to me. 

The Hilton, by Tel Aviv-based architects Zevet.

Norwich Union House is only one of many examples of facades featuring bright paint jobs, shaded in a range of color-television linoleum palette. There are two bright blue buildings within one block of each other on Utalii Street, one the Chester House, which seems to be a staggered arrangement of balconied apartments, and the other Jamihiriya House, which apparently has its origins as the Libyan government's building, although I would have thought that would make green the choice of color. 

Jamahiriya House, Loita Street. 

Chester House, Loita and Market Streets. 

I wasn't able to enter many of the buildings, just in general this wouldn't be feasible anywhere but in Nairobi especially, there is high security at most important addresses; this is the city of the 1998 embassy bombings. One tower I was able to enter was International House, due to its double-storey lobby of nothing but airline ticket offices (could there be anything that lends more to mid-century atmosphere than a city-center airline ticket office?). A hanging dual stairway, paneled in red marble, allowed access to the mezzanine, although only South African Airways was selling tickets on the 2nd floor, as the gentleman at the Air Malawi office regretfully informed me that the company has temporarily paused offering flights to Blantyre due to "administrative issues."

International House, built 1968-71. 

Double stairway, mezzanine level of the International House.

There is much else to central Nairobi besides Brittania and brutalism. The influence of the Arabian Gulf on East Africa is ancient, but as in most everything, everywhere, the influence of Dubai has crept in recently, although not so much in the way of wavy blue mirror glass curtains. What reminded me most of the UAE was this fascinating trio of tall buildings standing side by side together on a narrow alley, like nothing so much as one of the less impressive and updated stretches of Sheikh Zayed Road, or so it seemed to me. 

KEMU Towers and siblings on Utalii Lane.

Utalii House, Utalii Lane.

Nearby is Kenindia House, with a butter-colored billowing buttress sloping down from its columned face. Presumably, the name is a combo of Kenya and India, as South Asians have had a major commercial presence in East Africa at least since the British facilitated their arrival in the region. 

Kenindia House, Utalii Lane/Utalii Street

The heritage of South Asians in Kenya is only further evidenced on the Mokhtar Daddah Street, facing Jevervee Park, where 70 year old storefronts, most built by Indian merchants, make for an orderly if forlorn block in a less happening stretch of downtown. 

Mid-century commercial houses, Moktar Daddah Street facing Jevanjee Gardens.


The Old Mutual, Kimathi Avenue, a pre-independence edifice.

Probably the strangest-looking building in Nairobi is the dual-turreted Nation Media Centre, its floors alternatively striped in light grey, an unintentional Adolf Loos reference, with some sort of broadcasting mast, bright red, vertically up the center in the space between the two towers (which I will avoiding referring to as a warrior's spear).

Looking north down Banda Street, terminating at Nation Centre.

 I'd love to spend some more time understanding this architectural class, this exuberant, over-complicated, mis-fired modernism. There's an unwritten book on weird buildings like this, all across Africa. Indeed I think a belt of them is arrayed across the middle of the planet, from Marrakesh to Manila, where giddiness and non-existent zoning allows such strange creations. 

Kenyatta Avenue looking north to the Nations Media House.

The western edge of downtown is defined by the University of Nairobi campus, which is seemingly unaltered from the mid-1970, right down to the decorative-grille doorways and signage: 

On the other side of town sits Harambee Avenue, Kenya's Wilson-era Whitehall, which like its London cousin is surprisingly diminutive and off-center from the capital's larger axes. Instead of colonnaded Georgian blocks, Harambee is a parade of vintage modern office blocks consisting of the treasury, the ministry of finance, the President's office, and the state-backed Kenya Power company in Electricity House.

MOMWE Foundation, Parliament Road at Garden Square.

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Electricity House (now Kenya Power House), Harambee Avenue, 1974.

The Old Treasury Building, with the National Bank Building at left.

Like many an African capital, much of Nairobi's commercial-looking skyline is in fact government offices, including the massive Telepost Tower, home to the Ministry of Post and Telecoms. 

Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, Kenyatta Avenue.

In a narrow alley off Harambee, is the Zentech House. Internet research has not even confirmed if I have the name correct, or what goes on inside, and I couldn't even understand if two wings enclosed a courtyard, but it was nonetheless a beauty. 

After this astonishing set of elevations, I came upon the much more massive Kingdom Securities House, infamous as the sight of the 1998 Embassy bombings which blew out all its windows, but today fully refurbished and looking sleek in its angled blue glass fronts framed in concrete, like a sub-Saharan Solow Building in New York, although the white stone siding looked more Marble Arch than mid-town Manhattan. A matching sloped banking hall sits at its base.

Kingdom Securities House. 

Nothing quite embodies the Englishness of Nairobi's architecture so much as the stone-sided City Hall, which could be plopped down on Euston Road tomorrow and no one would notice. 

Nairobi City Hall.

Like many developing countries, Kenya is a difficult place to do business, especially something as capital-intensive and physical, in all senses of the word, as real estate. Lack of skills, higher costs, and corruption drag development. It's hard to get buildings built here, and generally only the government (or its donor partners) have the means to, which leads to very conservative constructions, so its all the more remarkable when there is any style, flair, of thoughtfulness. While such statements are generally true globally, like so much of society's hard edges, the realities are sharper here. A bit of decent design becomes an exuberance, a touch of dated decor a marker of a moment when the country tried to lurch forward, such as the early-desktop computer era octagonal openings on the block-long Kenya Commercial Bank, built sometime in the early eighties, inspired by the nascent aesthetic of personal computers as the first ones arrived in Africa:

Kencom House. 

Or, equally but in a completely different way, the rugged, raw-concrete daring of the Kahawa House, the offices where Kenyan coffee's commoditization is centralized. I was so mesmerized by this Umoja-Harambee Unité d'Habitation that I actually ignored the honking of a shared taxi and nearly got run-over photographing it. 

Kahawa House, the Coffee Exchange, Nairobi Aviation College, Haile Selassie Avenue.

These are curious buildings, their Britishness either overtly the result of Home-country firms dominating Kenyan industry and professional expectations and standards during and after colonialism, or the lack of glittering 21st century towers. The continued presence of so many nearly-historic mid-century buildings much more the result of dysfunctional economics and corrupt politics than historic preservation or aesthetic dedication. I wonder, as Kenya surges toward 50 million people by 2050, and Nairobi seeks to position itself as the super capital of Central Africa, which of these buildings will stay standing, which Kenyans continue to value. 

Terminal am Ende

 ©Google.

NAIROBI.

In early August, the terminal at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, by far Kenya's largest and busiest, and one of the most important on the African continent, caught fire and was largely destroyed.

Top Photo from the AP via the Guardian. 

Bottom photo from Business Traveller Magazine.

The end of this building's life, a dramatic conflagration throwing a huge tower of black smoke into the sky, was all the more newsworthy and ignominious a funeral pyre amid widespread press reports of emergency service tardiness and ineptitude, as well as scandalous stories of the police and other bystanders looting duty-free shops, money changers, and luggage hall before fighting the blaze.

The Arrivals Hall on August 8th, photo from the Christian Science Monitor.

Only this last April, I stood in this very arrivals hall at a late hour, looking for a ride that hadn't appeared, deciding how many shillings to withdraw, and which bank card would successfully approve an ATM transaction in another random African country, and preparing myself for a stern confrontation with a taxi driver to successfully haggle for a ride into the city. It is a typical set of chores upon exiting customs, in a not atypical mental state, having flown all day, starting the journey at an equally early hour, traveling across the continent through three other airports. I took the above blurry photo of the arrivals board as I was waiting for a car that never came.

                                      

                               The Arrivals Hall on April 8th, ©2013 Bauzeitgeist.

Jomo Kenyatta's main building is not atypical, either: tired, outmoded, worn and under-cared theatre in which such contemporary toils are performed. My first visit to the airport, 4-1/2 years earlier, in November 2008, was infused much more with the optimism and excitement of being in a new airport, a new city, and a new country for the first time. Indeed, my first moments on terra firma australis was in that undersized room, as I was for the first time south of the equator.

©2013 Bauzeitgeist.

That November morning I also had to search for transportation into the city, and so went outside, wandering toward the taxi rank with my luggage. In that bewilderment, two observations struck me: first, it was roughly as cool that morning as it would be many parts of England or the US in autumn, despite the equatorial coordinates. I wore a t-shirt, the taxi drivers and touts wore wool sweaters. I had naïvely assumed that everywhere in Africa was blazing hot all the time.

©November 2008 Bauzeitgeist.

My second sensory intake was of the broad boughs of British brutalism wrapping around the parking forecourt. The terminal building was a muscular rendering of rough, sandy concrete in a thick, rectangular proportioning. It looked like a terminal at Heathrow, a rammed-earth replica of the Queen's Building, complete with a low blanket of grey overhead. It was a scene at the way station of the empire, the building a Victoria Terminus on the high-altitude savannah. I was so surprised and pleased that I took out my camera.

 Above four images ©November 2008 Bauzeitgeist.

The structure, along with the rest of the international airport, was designed in 1971-72 by the international firm founded by Scottish Brigadier General Alexander Gibb, and completed by 1978. The project was financed by the World Bank, and somewhat astonishingly the original proposal document is in PDF form on the bank's website, noting East African Airways links to West Pakistan and South Yemen and Denmark, among other delightfully vintage details of that era. The report's appendix includes these lovely drawings of the terminal and airport in plan.

 ©1971 Gibbs Consultants/World Bank

Note the placing of a future, identical, second terminal in the center of the airfield. Aside from the World Bank PDF, there is scant history of the terminal's design on the internet: searches are dominated by news and images of the charred ruin of three weeks ago. But presumably Gibbs Petermüller were influenced by contemporary airport designs, especially the Berlin-Köln-Kansas City heritage of semi-circular terminals, the latter of which, having just opened in the Missouri flatlands, was envisioned as the supersonic Mid-Continent transit hub for Trans World Airlines. The Master Plan for Kenya's Department of Aerodromes likewise foresees a jet harbor for an emerging region with the limitless horizons of a post-independence future.

Forty years later and its all wrong. Whether Nairobi's airport was ever loved, the jet age is now no novelty, and the airport has often been ranked among the worst in the world, in part because of  Kenya's realized success: its capital city has indeed become the regional hub, and the airport handles more planes and passengers than it was ever designed to accommodate. However, much like the TWA Flight Center at JFK or the Pan Am Worldport, or Kansas City or Tegel, how airports have to flow and what is expected of them from authorities as well as passengers has changed completely.

Above presumably by Gensler for the Kenya Airports Authority

Even before the fire, a new passenger pier was under construction and plans were devised for something more fitting an emerging Global City.  A master plan for a future Bangkok-style midfield terminal was plonked down on a Google Earth screenshot rather than pulled forth from the draughtman's pen. The new concourse and the plan, by global firm Gensler, conforms to contemporary expectations of terminal design, generic, oversized and glazed, employs evocations of the savannah and Kenyan identity while ultimately seeking favorable comparison with much larger, more important airports around the world.

From the African Aviation Tribune

It is undoubtedly colonialist for the capital of British East Africa, with what can be felt to be a delicate, English climate, to possess a unapologetically British airport terminal, so it would be controversial in that sense to lament its razing. The new terminal will be a better performing building in a number of ways, certainly. But it will be yet another airport terminal that could be anywhere, any place, regardless of where the journey begins or ends.

Mitwerken Sie die Hässlichkeit der Welt

On the afternoon of May 31st, Istanbul's Taksim Square filled with the people. Residents gathered in Gezi Park to protest the uprooting of old sycamore trees by local authorities, the first physical act by the government to unilaterally moved ahead with a plan to replace the open space with an ersatz, Ottoman-style shopping arcarde. I half-sarcastically tweeted:

Although the protests in Istanbul, which would later spread across Turkey, were not solely about the the fate of this public space, it was the lack of public input into the transformation of a beloved, historic park into a kitschy shopping mall (and the corruption lubricating real estate speculation) that initially drove people to assemble. 

Likewise, while the very-similar mass protests that filled the streets of Brazilian cities earlier this month were about broad issues of economic and social inequality, they started as the airing of grievances against a hike in municipal bus fares, and came to encompass discontent over the government spending spree on massive sports stadia for international events, and the corruption that such deals involve. 

Renderings of Taksim Square with new mall.

In earlier (and on-going) uprisings in Bahrain and Cairo, public spaces such as Pearl Roundabout and Tahrir Square became symbols for the protests that they hosted. The issues in both Brazil and Turkey are political and social struggles that go beyond spatial debates; indeed, government concessions on Gezi Park's fate in Istanbul and bus fare rates in Sao Paulo did not diffuse the protests.

Yet, the events in both Turkey and Brazil originated in and are embodied by issues of architecture, urban planning, and public space. Rather than simply platforms on which protests take place, public spaces, and their access, use, purpose, and design are what these crowds are asserting as their right, what they value and what they demand to have control over.

"'People are going hungry and the government builds stadiums,' said Eleuntina Scuilgaro, an 83-year-old pensioner at the protests here in São Paulo." - New York Times, June 18, 2013

In a series blog posts at the New Yorker about the Gezi Park protests, American journalist Elif Batuman employed the Benjaminian term Aesthetic-Political Controversy to describe the issues which brought the crowds into the square and eventually into confrontation with the authorities. In some of the world's largest, fastest-growing cities, citizens were taking to the streets to demonstrate their frustration at a corrupt, unfair system that has been usurping tax money and urban space for the benefit of a few.

"...many of the proposed transportation projects were shelved or delayed -- such as a bus lane in the northeastern city of Salvador and a light-rail trolley in Brasilia -- while work on stadiums moved forward." -Bloomberg, July 10, 2013

Brazil and Turkey have been held aloft in the last decade as prime examples of globalization's inarguable virtue: fast growing GDPs, physically manifested by fast-developing cities, which were bequeathed with a shiny new trophies of global luxury, especially high-end shopping malls, high-rise apartment buildings, such as those which have been invading Istanbul. More severe iterations consist of Brazil's World Cup soccer stadia and Istanbul's bizarre litany of ahistorical megaprojects, of which Taksim Square's alteration was only the most centrally located, not nearly the most ambitious. 

Recent media coverage of Brazil and Istanbul reveal just how much of a shift these protests are from this globalization-success story. As recently as last October, the appearance of glass skyscrapers over the minarets of Istanbul was a sign of unquestionable progress- and the smart leadership that goes with it: Istanbul was a city with a growing private equity and property scene, 200 international non-stop flights, plans for the world's biggest airport. This lead it to be crowned by globalization's ultimate accolade: The Emerging Hub. (In fairness, the FT's subsequent report was slightly more balanced and hesitant on this new Istanbul, hinting at dissent for these massive projects, including at Taksim, while trotting many of the same global-growth bromides). 

Headline photos from FT's October 2012 Articles about Istanbul becoming a "Global Hub"

On the eve of the eruption of Gezi Park's occupation, this formula was lucidly and loquaciously summarized by an unintentionally ironic,  fatally-timed video on Istanbul's dreamy progress in Monocle, which perfectly concludes with a eye-watering optimism towards Istanbul's candidacy for the 2020 Summer Olympics. (Subheading: "With the city’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics in full swing, the fabric of Istanbul is shaping up. We meet the cultural and commercial players flexing their muscles." Tags: "2020 Olympic Bid, Urbanism"). The narrator speaks of Istanbul's "renaissance," and Turkey's "endless ambition to become a global powerhouse...a global hub for businesspeople" and references "old buildings replaced with new structures." The video is worth watching not only for its avant le deluge cluelessness, but especially for the brief remarks by renown author Orhan Pamuk, who desribes contemporary Istanbul as "sugary."

Equally notable in terms of poor timing leading to unintentional irony is Monocle's video covering early July's New Cities Summit in Sao Paulo. The conference was titled "The Human City" and promised, according Monocle's video, "How to make cities listen better to their residents," and, in the case of Sao Paulo, "how to turn this forest of highrises into a city that works for everyone," while Sao Paulo continues to cultivate a "rich, complex global brand." 

Still shot from Monocle's video on Sao Paulo, July 2013.

The New Cities Summit featured not just "city fixers and financial folks" but academic Saskia Sassen, and while the conference clearly did not connect adequately with the working class of Sao Paulo to head off a protests (or with the transit authority in considering hiking fares), one of the more thoughtful analysis of the protests was offered by New Cities Chairman John Rossant in a televised interview on France24, in which he speaks directly of inequality, and its embodiment in a segregated built environment, as a source of discontent. Rossant also wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times, although his written words were much blander, without any mention of inequality or corruption. 

Despite my tweet's call to attention, much of the architectural media had little coverage of the protests. Domus had a comprehensive first-hand account of the park occupation, but that publication's most insightful coverage of Istanbul's current condition was a feature from last year on Paolo di Pietri's gently ominous photographs of high-rises and real estate developments on Istanbul's fringe.

Paola de Pietri, Istanbul New Stories, via Domus

Gezi Park's events have been well covered at Archinect, thanks largely to that site's Turkish-born editor, Orhan Ayyüce. As with most posts at Archinect, his short posts didn't delve deeply into the issue, but the comments section did provide one of the few venues for architects and designers to discuss Istanbul's development and the protests, and Ayyüce seemed well-connected to Turkish architects and academics covering the protests and surrounding issues.  Like Batuman, Ayyüce suggests that Turkey's domestic design profession, and its output will be profoundly altered and impacted by the events of the last eight weeks. 

Kartal District plan, by Zaha Hadid Architects, 2005.

The decision to demolish the park is really a most recent assault in accordance with the over commercialization of this historic city of 16 million people. The blunt action to send bulldozers to uproot the trees certainly hit a nerve with thousands of protesters who are fed up with government's draconian measures of late, threatening the basic liberties of Turkish society at large and the invasion of the publicness of the open spaces in Turkey's largest city. The oppressively social and urbanistic nature of the unilateral action of the government and the regional authorities seem to hit a particular nerve with the public who has been occupying the park in order to save it with an unprecedented determination.This is an important turning point in Turkish urbanism when the public is showing an increasing resistance to violent police action never seen before for the urban design policies of the government. This is a behind the doors deal of the government with their favored development partners for consumerist profit making. This is at the cost of public access to much needed green spaces in this densely overbuilt city. This is a top down urban policy repeated across in this world treasure city with 4000 years of cultural history. -Orhan Ayyüce, Archinect

Hyperallergic also had an excellent first-hand account of Gezi Park's occupation, by Jesse Honsa:

For too long residents of the city have sat by as their government incrementally destroyed Istanbul, the beautiful ancient seat of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Forced evictions clear the way for tabula rasa urban renewal in historic districts, the Turkish housing authority (TOKI) is building luxury gated communities in infinite quantity, and a new bridge and airport in the forest to the north will write the death certificate on the city’s source of oxygen. This resistance has been less of a political demonstration and more of a territorial battle: citizens physically defending their beloved city of winding streets and charming old facades from the global forces that want to turn it into a Dubai, a commodity of glass and highways. -Jesse Honsa on Hyperallergic

While Turkey's media, with state oversight, have been a largely unreliable source of coverage of the protests, it is interesting to note that in May a court ruled that "three massive skyscrapers" on the edge of Istanbul had to be torn down, as they were spoling Istanbul's historic silhouette." This month, as police and protesters fought in Gezi Park, Turkey's parliament passed an omnibus bill to protect the historic skylines of Turkish cities from such ruination. 

These gestures just patch over bigger, more difficult issues, like trying to make a crumbling structure new by painting the outside. Until more of the city's residents feel that they have a say in, and a benefit from, the changes to their urban spaces, those alterations will not be seen as improvements, and will be resisted, not only for their appearance, their edifice and bulk, but for their shadows: the unfair dirty deals, the embezzlement and bribery that their sleek façades conceal. 

In the march of progress of economies and countries, journalists (and governments) should realize that the development of civic protest and democratic assembly are part of a society's improvement. And when lines are drawn between people and power, architects and urban planners should be conscious of which side they are on.