Output details

The Architecture of Three Freetown Neighbourhoods

This annotated folio of measured drawings and photographs records the work of investigating 3 historically and culturally diverse but spatially adjacent city neighbourhoods in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The early 19th century downtown boarded Krio houses and prefabricated timber colonial Hill Station houses are juxtaposed with a new school, the Ivor Leigh primary school located in the peri-urban valley of Kaningo constructed as part of the research.

By involving themselves in the process of constructing a primary school with an emergent, post civil war community over 5 summer field trips, researchers led by Mitchell, revealed the deep social and physical problems encountered by poor Freetown residents. These include a sense of isolation from and a lack of engagement with the city. By systematically photographing, measuring and representing the 3 settlements within their urban topographies in two exhibitions and relating them to the oral histories of selected residents the rich architectural capital, neglected, underrepresented and largely ignored to date, is being steadily revealed as a cultural resource for everyone.

The architecture of these 3 Freetown neighbourhoods has never before been rigorously represented. As a result of the two exhibitions the newly revealed knowledge has stimulated debate about architecture in Freetown. The new knowledge will be included in the programme for the first architectural school in the University of Sierra Leone, Freetown due to commence in October 2014. The research is also a contribution to knowledge about recent city architecture in West Africa and to research practice globally in developing ways of working with poor city communities by fabricating modest amenity buildings as a tool for producing meaningful research.

As well as two exhibitions, the folio is published and sponsored by the British Council. They are based on work carried out for British Council International Architecture and Design Showcase 2012.