CLARA n°4 Architecture/Research

This fourth issue of CLARA Architecture/Recherche questions the relevance, reception and uses of modern architecture in developing countries.

In a special feature “Modernisme(s) approprié(s)?” (“Modernism that fits?”), a dozen authors examine the effects that modernism's models and principles had after they were applied to a different context than the one for which and in which they were initially designed. A new perspective is provided as a result, that of the residents and their daily lives, rather than that of the designers and their more or less contextualised demiurgic acts. In these constructed utopias, the uses, transformations, adaptations and subversions that are adopted reveal not only the tension between the liberating aims and the imposed nature of modernism, but also the mechanisms that foster unexpected appropriations. From Seoul to Lima, Mauritania to Mongolia, truly creative and meaningful acts are part of the shared manufacture of the built environment in occupied public buildings, housing estates, megastructures, and the urban fabric.

The special feature “Archives” looks at the role that Belgian architects played in the configuration of Congolese territory by examining the plans of one such architect, Guillaume Serneels for the new city of Mbuji-Mayi (formerly Bakwanga).