CONGREGATION
The built environment and its pedagogy are a collective endeavour with each practitioner’s work contexualised by the contributions of others. A key component of Ama’s practice seeks to both acknowledge and celebrate the wider landscape that her research sits within.
Congregation is a dynamic resource, gathering and sharing the offerings of other practitioners, researchers and collectives who explore themes resonating with dialogues traversed in her work. These references take various forms which include pavilions, exhibitions, communities, built projects, publications and bodies of work.
SOPHIE GREEN. Photography series 'Congregation' is a celebration of Southwark's Aladura Spiritualist African churches and congregations. Often referred to as ‘White Garment Churches’, Sophie’s images engage with these rarely documented dynamic communities who unite each weekend for Sunday service. Congregation asks questions about how individuals find collective identity and power within subcultures, and how cultural practice is assimilated into modern global contexts.
GILES NARTEY. ‘Communion’ is a communal pounding table designed as a reimagination of the practice of making ‘fufu’. The work looks to create and reframe a traditional Ghanaian process of pounding cassava and plantain with mortar (woduro) and pestle (woma) as a communal act where multiple people can collectively engage in the making of ‘Fufu’ as a shared everyday act transformed into performance. The design centers the process of collectively making and sharing a meal as point for exchange and discussion.
DAVID SPERO. The photography series 'Churches' features none of the monumental architecture or symbols of status and power of the historically dominant denominations. In these churches the architecture is contingent. The buildings were never designed to be churches and this ad-hoc collection of architectural structures has come about as the result of numerous acts of faith. Often temporary, semi-permanent or unconsecrated, they are sometimes anonymous and almost invisible.
SHAHED SALEEM. Founded in the 2000s in east London, Saleem's architectural practice, Makespace has delivered a wide range of buildings across London. He has built up an extensive track record and experience of working with faith communities across London in developing and designing their places of worship. Saleem also co-curated the V&A Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2021 and his book ‘The British Mosque’ was published in 2018 by Historic England.
BLACK FEMALES IN ARCHITECTURE. BFA is a social enterprise and membership network founded to connect and support black women within the architecture, design and construction industry. Through networking, advocacy, education and projects they serve their members, the industry and wider society, ensuring the contribution of black women to the built environment is recognised and valued. In acknowledging how the intersectional nature of their experiences informs their occupation of everyday spaces, they seek to challenge solely Western understandings of the built environment.
HOMI K. BHABA. 'The Location of Culture' rethinks questions of identity, social agency and national affiliation. Bhabha provides a working, if controversial, theory of cultural hybridity - one that goes far beyond previous attempts by others. He uses concepts such as mimicry, interstice, hybridity, and liminality to argue that cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent. Speaking in a voice that combines intellectual ease with the belief that theory itself can contribute to practical political change, Bhabha has become one of the leading post-colonial theorists of this era.
W.E.B. DUBOIS. 'The Philadelphia Negro' is a sociological and epidemiological study of African Americans in Philadelphia that was written by W. E. B. Du Bois, commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania and published in 1899 with the intent of identifying social problems present in the African American community. One of the first works to combine the use of urban ethnography, social history, and descriptive statistics, it has become a classic work in the social science literature.
BELL HOOKS. In 'Teaching Community' bell hooks seeks to theorize from the place of the positive, looking at what works in the world of pedagogy, questioning how we can choose to end racism and create a beloved community. hooks looks at many issues-among them, spirituality in the classroom and allies looking to end racism. Spirit, struggle, service, love, the ideals of shared knowledge and shared learning - these values motivate progressive social change
THEASTER GATES. Black Chapel, the Serpentine Pavilion 2022, references the bottle kilns of Stoke-on-Trent, traditional African structures, such as the Musgum huts of Cameroon, the forms of Hungarian round churches and other spaces which witness the sacred practices of the African diaspora. An operating bronze bell – salvaged from St. Laurence, a landmark Catholic Church that once stood in Chicago’s South Side – is placed by the entrance. Pointing to the erasure of spaces of convening and spiritual communion in urban communities, the historic bell was used to signal and announce performances and activations at the Pavilion throughout the summer.
MICHAEL BENNET. A 'sacred space' made from CLT panels was created by designer Michael Bennett of Studio Kër with the pavilion displaying sustainable building materials and techniques. The structure was displayed at Design Pavilion, an event by NYCxDesign, part of the programming for the city's yearly architecture festival, Archtober. Bennett created a community space using large-scale cross-laminated timber panels with the installation exploring community and sacred spaces as a place of refuge, with nods to environments like a church.
HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. 'The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song'. A book and documentary exploring the history and impact of the Black church in America, it traces the church's role from its origins in the slave trade to its involvement in the Civil Rights movement and its continued influence on Black communities.
JERALD ‘COOP’ COOPER. The ‘Hood Century Modern’ movement began with Instagram page @hoodmidcenturymodern after Coop’s hurt over the destruction of the church he grew up in - Revelation Missionary Baptist Church. Located in Cincinnati Chicago, the congregation updated the building with a modern addition in the 1970s but in 2019, that alteration was cited as a reason the church could not receive designation as a historic site, leading to the building being torn down in 2019 to make way for a soccer stadium. Its erasure was a catalyst for his archival research documenting architecture and urbanism of African American cultural significance.
ARCHITECTURE FOUNDATION. Staged in the newly refurbished undercroft of one of London's greatest nineteenth century churches, this exhibition addressed the changing nature of sacred architecture in Britain through the presentation of 23 buildings designed in the past decade. First installed in the crypt space of St Mary Mandolin Church, the travelling show presented models, drawings and images of buildings by 26 UK practices.
VENICE BIENNALE 2023. Curated by architect, educator and writer Lesley Lokko, the 18th international architecture exhibition appointed its first black curator, with Lokko also being the fourth woman to ever hold the role. Exploring themes of decolonisation and decarbonisation, Lokko called on more than 80 participants to contribute to the exposition. Her invited participants present a 50/50 gender balance and over half of these contributors are either from Africa or within the African diaspora.
AKALA. ‘Natives’ is the searing modern polemic and award-winning musician and political commentator Akala. Covering everything from the police, education and identity to politics, sexual objectification and the far right, Natives speaks directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain's racialised empire.
SOUND ADVICE. 'Now You Know' gathers the thoughts and reflections of more than 50 architects and urbanists of colour in an extraordinary compendium addressing the discrimination baked into our built environment. The 180-page paperback is designed by Joel Antoine-Wilkinson and edited by Sound Advice's co-hosts, the urbanists Pooja Agrawal and Joseph Henry. Its contributors range from MBEs to architecture students, artists to urban policymakers – each one accompanying their piece with a concise tip of the kind that has made the Sound Advice Instagram feed such a compelling resource, paired with a music recommendation.
AFUA HIRSCH. Blending history, memoir and individual experiences, Hirsch reveals the identity crisis at the heart of Britain today. Far from affecting only minority people, Britain is a nation in denial about its past and its present. We believe we are the nation of abolition, but forget we are the nation of slavery. We sit proudly at the apex of the Commonwealth, but flinch from the legacy of the Empire. We are convinced that fairness is one of our values, but that immigration is one of our problems.
FRANCIS KÉRÉ. Having outgrown its current building, dating back to the colonial era of its past, the parliament of the Republic of Benin entrusted Kéré Architecture to design a new national assembly. The project takes inspiration from the Palaver Tree, the age-old West African tradition of congregating under a tree to make consensual decisions in the interest of a community. The palaver tree is a timeless symbol, having borne witness to previous generations and inspiring respect for the majestic forces of nature.
Ama Ofori-Darko does not own the copyrights to the images shared within Congregation. Credits for all photographs and images used can be found at the respective links associated with each reference.