Good intentions and bad deeds

Report on the exhibition "Afritecture: Building Social Change" at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. Following the death of Nelson Mandela this proved a timely exhibition on Africa's built environment. South Africa's "Reconstruction and Development Programme" is perhaps Mandela's most troubled legacy - the ANC ambition was "to decently house" 12.5 million South Africans but it failed. In terms of architecture, the potential to fall into murky territory between good intention and bad deed is huge. 29 practices whose work featured in this ambitious exhibition straddle the lines with varying degrees of sophistication, success and ease. There are some beautiful and moving projects and clearly much cause for hope. The vast majority of the works featured are by Western-trained architects, and although more than half of the projects are by African architects, most studied or worked in the West, tasked with the difficult job of translation between local, culturally specific practices and global standards of aesthetics and production. There are all sorts of complexities producing distinctive results. "Afritecture: Building Social Change" prompts questions of how we are to judge them, and by whose standards of taste, sensitivity or ethics, and in what scale and context. (Quotes from original text)