Non-Aligned Architecture: China's Designs on and in Ghana and Guinea, 1955-1992

Abstract

This paper examines several architectural collaborations between the People’s Republic of China and two of sub-Saharan Africa’s first decolonized governments in Ghana and Guinea. As physical evidence of new Sino-African partnerships, Chinese design and construction projects in both Ghana and Guinea initially promised a welcome alternative to preexisting, colonial and Cold War-era infrastructural production models. Analysis of the works themselves, however, coupled with a closer look at the political and ideological rhetoric behind their production, reveals a kind of cross-cultural cooperation emblematic of new geopolitical forces yet inscribed with many of the same operational and epistemic imbalances that have marked other kinds of foreign architectural engagement with African countries.