Forgotten Fort Kongestein

Olayinka Dosekun-Adjei

Forgotten Fort Kongestein

Olayinka Dosekun-Adjei

Forgotten Fort Kongestein

Forgotten Fort Kongestein

This report is the conclusion of an architectural studio that took place in the Fall of 2023, focused on a site in south-eastern Ghana, near the coastal town of Ada Foah, called Fort Kongestein.

A little known site, now almost entirely in ruins, the fort was built in 1783 by Danish merchants and originally erected for the trade in goods (such as ivory and gold) and, for a brief portion of its history, in people. It is one of many European fortifications, built between 1482 and 1786, which survive along what used to be known as the Gold Coast. These can still be seen along the coast of Ghana between Keta and Beyin spanning a distance of approximately 500 km; they were, in effect, links in the trade routes first established by the Portuguese during an era of maritime exploration. Purchased by the British in 1850, Fort Kongestein sits within a rich historical framework of cultural contact, commerce, and eventual colonial administration.

Through an architectural intervention on the site, the students were challenged to imagine a plausible or speculative future for the site (currently fallow and derelict) and through this exercise, explore potential new attitudes to historical preservation, adaptive reuse and the fertile and productive hybridization of old and new, of European and West African architectural models.

Studio Instructor

Olayinka Dosekun Adjei

Teaching Associate

Junko Yamamoto Students

Jimi Adeseun, Chandler Caserta, Catherine Chen, Olivia Harden, Aria Hill, Mariama Kah

Ava Violich Kennedy, Khan Muhammad

Zachary Slonsky, Aaron Smithson, Courtney Sohn, Gabriel Soomar

Mid Review Critics

Kofi Akakpo

Nelson Byun

Ruyi Igiehon

Final Review Critics

Jeffrey Adjei

Kwayera Archer

John Ellis

Florian Idenburg

Regine Leibinger

Simone Leigh

Toshiko Mori

This studio is entitled “Forgotten Fort Kongestein” because the fort complex of Kongestein in Ada Foah where it is sited is now almost completely dormant and neglected. Moreover, it is a relatively minor historical site, in comparison to many of the other, more prominent castles and forts from this era of Ghanaian history, such as Elmina Castle or Cape Coast Castle.

Centuries of erosion have totally destroyed and washed away the main fort structure, what remains are two secondary buildings and an old cemetery of British and Danish origin, all of which existed as part of a larger complex of European settlement near the town of Ada Foah.

In 1972 Ghana listed 25 of their extant forts and castles as national monuments. The same year, UNESCO collectively inscribed these forts and castles as world heritage sites due to their outstanding universal value. Fort Kongestein was not among them, due to its minor scale, among larger and better known examples, as well as its state of poor preservation. Today, though in relatively close proximity to the capital city, Accra and directly surrounded by the active living community of Ada Foah Town, the site is abandoned, partly as a result of inadequate funding for heritage management. But also, probably, due to a dearth of ideas for how to transform a site such as this and give it new relevance and meaning that is worth conserving.

The village of Ada Foah, located, as it is in a place of calm and natural beauty, where the Volta River meets the Atlantic Ocean, was once a prominent market town but has since lost its regional commercial status and is now becoming a attraction for nature-lovers and tourists wishing to escape Accra, the big city. There are beach houses, sailing clubs and boutique hotels dotted around the shoreline.

With growing prosperity and development along this coast, a new tension emerges in the overlap between the landscape of recreational tourism, spaces of historical memory, and land belonging to a living community. This studio is interested in how such sites of intersection this, with their problematic pasts, might be reclaimed and reused as generative starting points (both physical and metaphysical) with potential new narratives and multiplicity of meanings in connection with local communities and their futures.

Fort Kongestein, and other places like it, have a unique resonance for 21st century architectural dialogues. They are a fragmentary and material vestige of global commerce, trade and technological exchange in an era which saw the early origins of what we now recognize as ‘globalization’. They attest to a history of direct architectural transposition across oceans, from one continent to another (Europe to Africa), and to cultural dislocation without reference to context.

In our studio, we have taken this unusual and fascinating heritage site as a starting point that is both literal and symbolic; physical and metaphysical. We have asked ourselves how it might be re-appropriated and updated for contemporary relevance, exploring ideas about how a host culture might potentially approach the adaptive reuse and transformation of a building originating from another culture. In addition we have asked students to think more broadly about how to respond to the growing challenges of globalization and the homogenization of building practices across an ever more connected and multi-layered world.

Over the course of the semester, students were introduced to some of the inherited, pre-colonial architectural forms and material cultures of this West African region and invited to consider how they might be reinvigorated

or redeployed, in exciting and meaningful combinations and hybridizations with an existing colonial structure.

A fascinating precedent for this approach to cross-cultural architectural imagination occurred between 1922 and 1931, Britain and France hosted a series of large and spectacular World’s Fair architectural exhibitions. These reached a crescendo in the Paris Expo of 1931, when architectures from all parts of the colonized world were imported into Paris and visited by more than 6 million people. Through operations of juxtaposition and synthesis with one another and with western models, they were reinterpreted by the European architects who designed them in sometimes unexpected ways which opened up a potential for fruitful dialogue between different cultures and encouraged a creative spirit of ambiguity and mixture.

The studio has prompted design explorations which make intelligent and imaginative leaps between architectural past, present and future and find productive cross-cultural syntheses.

Map of Ada Foah along Atlantic Ocean Coast and environs including Volta River estuary Image credit - Zachary Slonsky (M.Arch I).

Across - Drone photograph of Fort by Alfred Quartey.

Brief, Site & Guidelines

Brief

The brief offered flexibility within limits, and encouraged the studio to think in terms of a constellation of broad themes and questions in order to arrive at an unique interpretation.

Some of these were:

• Re-framing architectural meaning though adaptive re-use;

• Casting an oblique look at the troublesome past;

• Re-appropriating dormant pre-colonial and colonial sites;

• Creating new spaces for community and for restitution of culture and lost heritage

• Architectural Hybridization, adding layers of local and African indigenous influence to sites of European origin

• Globalization and its outgrowths (originating in sites like this in the 18th and 19th centuries), its impact on material practice and architecture in Africa.

• In what ways could the emergence of new communal and museum buildings be materially and operationally sustainable and well integrated with the life of local communities?

• Assuming that no further coastal defense measures are implemented in the future and given the reality of coastal erosion in this region, how can new architecture activate historical sites such as this which have a lifespan limited to approx. 40yrs

• Is it important or necessary that communal and museum typologies in West Africa should differ from Western models and if so, how might they distinguish themselves from existing precedents in other parts of the world?

Program

Students were asked to integrate one or two of the following programmatic categories within their project: Museum, Archive and Community Centre.

The selection of specific programs within these categories varied greatly within the group with each student crafting a spatial and conceptual brief in conversation with the Studio Instructors

Museum Program

A regional museum possibly also including contemporary art and narrative history of the forts and castles along the coast and local area

Archive Program

An archive centre containing secure temporary storage for artifacts along with facilities for digitizing and cataloging.

Community Program

A visitor’s centre or community centre with spaces for engaging in learning and gathering such as for local festivals and events

Plan figure ground image showing remaining architectural structures on the site.

Across: View of Fort taken during site visit taken by Maggie Janik.

Adaptations and Gross Area

Fort Kongestein (unlike several other, more prominent forts) is not a UNESCO site, students were therefore allowed to make proposals which alter the existing fort so long as these alterations or incisions are meaningful for the project and thoughtfully considered.

This opened up the possibility of transforming the reading of the existing buildings entirely and arriving at mixtures and mutations which would not be permissible at many other locations.

Spatially, the target Gross Floor Area for the project was - Approx. 3,000sqm (32,000sqft) and may include area from both extant buildings or the main building alone. In effect, each intervention should have an approximate 1/3 to 2/3 relationship between old and new in terms of gross area.

Site

The site (situated approximately 70m from the water’s edge) is along the sparsely populated beach-front and surrounded by fields for smallscale farming.

There is a prominent and old Presbyterian church nearby and the main town to the north.

The original fort structure around which the other buildings were constructed, has been destroyed by erosion. What remains on the site now are two buildings, the old trading house (built c1850) and derelict captains quarters (built c1800).

Bottom: Axon image showing remaining architectural structures on the site. Image by Zachary Slonsky Across: Photograph of Captains Quarters by Maggie Janik.

Lectures, Guest Speakers & Reading List

Lectures : Pre-modern Traditions of Architecture in West Africa

At the beginning of the semester, there were two short lectures to introduce students to the major pre-modern paradigms of architecture and material culture in West Africa within the arid and tropical zones of the region. Hardly any extant buildings from these periods remain in the region, but they have been captured strikingly through early 20th century photography or mid and late 19th century drawings and etchings as well as detailed descriptions of European travelers.

Naturally, climate and the availability of materials play a very significant role in defining architectural practice in any region, but as we know from architectural traditions on other continents which vary greatly between countries, they are not deterministic or final. In reality different architectural and material traditions interact with one another, influence one another, and more broadly, they overlap and combine with other human considerations beyond climate such as symbolism, culture, social values, religious practice, lifestyle and status, among other factors. This is what explains the great variety in expression which we see in Africa as well in other continents.

Sudano Sahelian Architectures

The Sahel spans about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) in width, encompassing parts of over a dozen countries in West Africa, including Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and more.

Characterized by a harsh and variable climate. It experiences a long dry season and a short

Across: “Monument to the Restitution of the Mind and Soul” (2023), by Yinka Shonibare contains clay replicas of 150 of the Benin Bronzes plundered in 1897 by British forces.

rainy season, making it susceptible to droughts and desertification.

Sahelian architecture is noteworthy for its sculptural quality, distinctive forms and textural beauty. As with many other traditions in the region, the buildings are more ephemeral than most western architecture, primarily composed of clay earth, or ‘mud’ an impermanent

material; moreover the whole communities collaborate on buildings’ construction and maintenance which results in minor modifications and transformations over time. The buildings are always changing subtly with

Bottom: Example of Architecture in Sahelian West African Tradition: Hausa mosque using earthen vaults © James Morris.

each re-rendering of material, as they change also with weathering.

James Morris in the preface to his photographic collection of images from West Africa remarks: “there is an ongoing active participation to their continued existence; if they lost their relevance and were neglected, they would collapse. This is not a museum culture….[my] photographs are a reflection of this architecture at a moment in time; they are a permanent record, but not a record of permanence”.

These buildings embody a timelessness and rootedness in the landscape through the use of basic raw materials such as earth, water, straw, and timber. Striking for their interaction with sun and shadow and monolithic silhouettes as well as the quality of natural interior illumination which is frequently modulated through narrow openings, creating stark contrasts between shadow and light.

Grassland and Tropical architectures

There are generalization we can make about the materiality of architecture of this climatic region along with some beautiful examples taken from various sources including the Harvard Hollis library of images which reveal the patterns of building materials and construction techniques:

Wood: A primary construction material. Because forested regions provide an abundance of timber. And there are various types of hardwood, such as mahogany and iroko, commonly used for structural elements. Bamboo: Bamboo is often used for walls, floors, and roofing due to its strength, flexibility, and availability in forested areas.

Thatch: Roofing materials are often made from palm leaves, grass, or straw. Thatch provides insulation and is readily available.

Mud and Clay: Adobe and mud bricks are used for walls, providing thermal mass and insulation. They are often coated with mud plaster.

Vines and Rattan: These flexible materials are used for binding and lashing structural

Top: Example of Architecture in Tropical West African Tradition: House at Foumban (fumban) Cameroon , Unattributed Postcard.

Bottom: Example of Architecture in Tropical West African Tradition: Ashanti Campaign: The Entry into Kumasi, Orlando Norie, 1874.

components together.

Stones: In some forested areas, stones are used for foundations and as structural components. In Southern Africa stone is used for walls such as in Zimbabwe most famously, and we saw stone used for walls in Northern West Africa during the Ghana empire.

Similar to other regions many forest communities employed communal construction practices, where community assemble to build homes and other structures collectively. As well as photographs from the early 20th century there are also beautiful depictions in paintings and engravings by European travelers of African communities and architectures from the 17th to the 19th Centuries such as engraving by Heinrich Barth and drawings by Thomas Astley.

Notable centers of architectural production included the Benin, Ife, Yoruba, Ashanti and Musgoum kingdoms, of Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon respectively.

Guest Speakers:

Restitution: Emerging West African Cultural & Museum Infrastructures- the case of MOWAA and Ladekoju Arts and Culture Foundation

In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the need for the African continent to develop its own cultural institutions and display preserved works of art and craftsmanship, many of which are still ensconced in museums outside of Africa and some of which are in the process of being restored to their home countries. The work of this studio is intended, among other things, to contribute, in a unique way, to the wider movement for restitution of African heritage and human histories as well as the renewal and rebirth of post-colonial cultures, and in particular architectural culture.

By interpreting restitution to mean the restoration of what has been lost or stolen, an expansive understanding which would also include those knowledge systems and valuable

Bottom:

Top: Example of Architecture in Tropical West African Tradition: Depiction of A royal progress in Benin, Edo Kingdom, Nigeria.

Example of Architecture in Sahelian West African Tradition: Great Mosque of Djenne in Mali, Unattributed Photograph.

cultural and material practices which were once part of African communities but have declined since the colonial period. This study will seek to reinvigorate and restore architectural technologies and attitudes by updating them for application and relevance in our contemporary condition.

The museum program within this project is especially connected to the global restitution agenda which often calls upon African countries to determine, define and articulate for themselves what a contemporary African museum can and should be, in order to hold and display restored artefacts and histories.

To discuss the topic of new museum spaces in West Africa and the movement towards preservation and restitution, the studio invited representatives of two organizations to speak about their ongoing projects. We were joined virtually by Papa Omotayo and Ore Disu of MOWAA (Museum of West African Art), in Benin, Edo State, Nigeria and Kwayera Archer, of the LAAF (Ladekoju Arts and Culture Foundation) in Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria. Both organizations seek to be at the forefront of presenting to the public, pre-modern sculptural and archaeological artefacts that have not been seen in many people now alive and living in these contexts. In the case of MOWAA, the works of ancient Edo culture such as the Benin bronzes, and in the case of LAAF, timber carvings used in ritual ceremonies as part of the sacred heritage of Osogbo which have been in storage and private collections for decades.

Bottom: Example of Architecture in Sahelian West African Tradition: Community Building a Mud Dwelling

Top: Example of Architecture in Tropical West African Tradition: Unattributed.

© James Morris.

Reading List:

Appiah, Anthony, Whose Culture Is It, Anyway? (Cosmopolitanism : ethics in a world of strangers, 2006)

Denyer, Susan, African Traditional Architecture: An Historical and Geographical Perspective (1978)

Dmochowski, Z.R, An Introduction to Nigerian Traditional Architecture - Vol 1-3 (1990)

Morton, Patricia, A Study in Hybridity: Madagascar and Morocco at the 1931 Colonial Exposition (Journal ofArcbitectura1 Education, pp. 76-86, 1998)

Morton, Patricia, National and Colonial: The Musée des Colonies at the Colonial Exposition, Paris, 1931 (The Art Bulletin, 80:2, 357-377, 1998)

Singh, Kavita, The Universal Museum: View from Below (Witnesses to history : a compendium of documents and writings on the return of cultural objects, 2009)

Rotinwa, Ayodeji, Restitution is Important but it is not Essential: the African Museums Building a Homegrown Cultural Revival (in The Art Newspaper, November 2020)

Wood, Paul, Display, Restitution and World Art History: The Case of the ‘Benin Bronzes’ (Visual Culture in Britain, 13:1, 115-137, 2012)

Guest Speakers:

Papa Omotayo & Ore Disu Museum of West African Art MOWAA

Jeffrey Adjei & Kwayera Archer Studio Contra + Ladekoju Arts & Culture Foundation

Seeking ‘Productive Syntheses’ in Architectural Language

Exercise One: Productive Synthesis

Exercise One Brief

“The courtyard house is one of the most enduring architectural forms, transcending regional, historical and cultural boundaries. Its balance of simple appropriate construction, environmental control and social and familial structures continues to engage architects and architectural historians.” - Nasser O. Rabbat

Students were given two weeks to design and build a physical model of a site-less 15m x 30m enclosed courtyard and displaying a transition

from a classical European model to a premodern West African architecture relating to any of the traditions which had been introduced.

This exercise was an opportunity to consider, some of the paradigmatic similarities and differences in composition, proportion and form between traditional West African and Western European architectures and to propose strategies for how through a productive synthesis, these languages might be combined in unexpected ways.

Top: Ashanti Courtyard Architecture Thomas Bowdich c.1820.

Bottom: Reconstruction of the garden of the House of the Vettii in Pompeii (exhibition at the Boboli Gardens, 2007). Unattributed Photograph.

Aaron Smithson

Mariama Kah

Catherine Chen

Assembled physical models of Exercise 1 in Gund Hall Photo taken by Junko Yamamoto

Village dwellings of Ada Foah along Volta River Photograph taken by Maggie Janik.

Re-framing Colonial Heritage: Ada Cultural Centre

33 This project finds its inception through a consideration of the large stock of spaces, both within Ghana and West Africa at large, that are deployed as intermediary conditions for cultural assembly. Cultural spaces are often not built-for-purpose, and rather emerge as reconstitutions of abandoned buildings, vacant colonial residencies, or simply annexed to existing program such as hotel or restaurant. The infrastructural need for cultural production is evident, and the Forgotten Fort at Ada Foah offers us an opportunity to reconstitute the region’s complicated cultural and colonial heritage.

Conceived as a ‘cultural complex’ made up of an aggregation of program that fuses Exhibition, Learning, Production & Residency, the project contrasts the past and the present in both material and spatial quality. At the heart of the original fort structure is a central drum that “occupies” and exposes what was once a structure of enclosure and containment. A circular ramp runs through the drum, filtering visitors as perspectives of the original structure change around the drum, rising to a new vantage point from which one can view the wider coastal landscape. The northern aggregates on the site “frame a new” courtyard that focuses less on history and more on present and future concern, where communal production and residency are held. The red brick of the additions maintains the site’s material heritage from red Danish bricks that were once used to build a Captain’s quarters, now transformed to serve the community of Ada.

Top: Aerial Axon showing the new combination of old and new building mass.

Bottom: Plan. A direct path connects the Ada Cultural Center to the local church which looms in the background of the project, offering a connection to ideas on spirituality and community, characteristics found at the heart of the proposed Ada Cultural Center.

Rendering of Cultural Complex from South.

Rendering of Cultural Complex from North.

Rendering of Cultural Complex from main courtyard.

Top: Section through the drum.

Bottom: Rendering showing upper level drum enclosing walkway. Across: New brick layered on old masonry walls.

Re-framing Colonial Heritage: Ada Cultural Centre

43

The site lies between the Volta river and the Atlantic Ocean along a narrow strip of land which is highly susceptible to coastal flooding. Over the years, forces of erosion have washed away the original Fort Kongestein along with much of the prior town settlement. What are the histories of those who were living in these homes and how might their stories be recorded and passed on along with those still alive in the town today?

The project began with an investigation of West Africa’s rich traditions of oral history, often the primary means of recording and passing on local histories. This practice often involved a storyteller who would memorize and recite local histories at festivals and special occasions, a practice which continues today.

Community radio stations play an especially important role in Ghana today as they broadcast in local dialects and report on news specific to each community. Radio Ada is a great example as it covers Ada Foah and provides an important platform for local journalism, advocacy, and cultural engagement.

This project is therefore about the timeless, communicable power of oral history and it’s modern correlate, contemporary radio. I have sought to use the fort as a site in which to architecturalize these programs and create an audio archive and community radio station.

Top: Aerial axon of project with radio tower in north east corner of the building.

Bottom: Ground floor plan of the new scheme. Three courtyards have been created out of two to form a new series of outdoor spaces.

Rendering of building from South West coastal side.

Rendering of upper level learning spaces.

Rendering of community courtyard.

Rendering of indoor performance space.

Top: Learning and work spaces occupy the upper floor of the building.

Bottom: Elevation of West side of the building.

Chandler Caserta

Top: Listening stations allow visitors to hear pre-recorded narratives and histories.

Bottom: Elevation of North side,

Top, Middle, Bottom: fragment physical model showing intersection of materials and volumes.

Across: Community radio booths are spaces where live and pre-recorded audio can be made.

Export / Import: A

Recycling Depot & Community Centre

Catherine Chen

Located on the southeastern coast of Ghana, in the village of Ada Foah, the remains of 18th-century Fort Kongestein lay almost entirely in ruins alongside an invasive sea of singleuse plastic waste. A place that was once forced into mass exportation is now one of mass importation, but it lacks the infrastructure developed countries have to properly metabolize the waste of mass market consumption. In favor of cheaper, mass-produced alternatives, handmade, local products have been largely displaced. Without a domestic waste management system, the village is left to community efforts which are insufficient to control the waste flowing from the cities and accumulating along the beach.

This project explores how an infrastructure of extraction and colonialism can be reused and re-purposed as a infrastructure of support and regeneration addressing a contemporary need of this community.

Using the fort ruins, the project proposes a community collection and fabrication center for recycling local waste material with spaces for making, exhibitions, events, and community learning and gatherings. The project gives dignity back to making and creates a repeatable, community-scale infrastructure that becomes part of the life of communities—in opposition to western models of recycling infrastructure, which are hidden away and focused on economies of scale.

Bottom:

Top: Aerial axon showing massing. Heavy compressed earth bricks on bottom blend with the existing fabric and contrasts with the light wooden structure above.

Plan. The building, particularly the northern half replicates a small-scale urban quarter. Rather than attempting to replicate western recycling centers, with their emphasis on economies of scale and large, industrial space this project takes on a human scale, one that can fit easily into communities.

Rendering of community access from east side

Sorting of waste takes place on the lower floor and occupies the old fort structure

Rendering of community learning space

In Ghana, over 12,000 tons of solid waste is generated daily, with between 5-10 percent, collected and disposed of properly

Top: Fabrication spaces occupy the upper half of the building and sorting of waste takes place below.

Bottom: longitudinal section showing both halves of the building.

Community Centre, Studios & Gallery

Olivia Harden

This project proposes a community center with studio and gallery space by introducing three new structures that reorient the dominant axes of the existing structure to change the reading and experience of the site.

Given the site’s impending obsolescence in the next 40 years due to coastal erosion, the new structures could be reassembled further inland to extend their service as community infrastructure and marker of environmental change.

During our visit to the site, we talked with leaders from a community group and a member of local government and all expressed interest in using the site to serve the residents of the town and draw attention to site as evidence of coastal erosion. Recently, the community group has made use of the spaces in the past for ad hoc events and exhibitions. This project therefore proposes new structures and circulation along with restoration of the secondary building and minimal demolition of the trading house to facilitate the expansion of formal and informal community use.

In relation to the vulnerability of the site the new additions have their own structure around and independent of the old which makes this an architecture which could be redeployed elsewhere. In contrast to traditional notions of the museum as a permanent location, perhaps this museum is better served by the idea of circulation rather than collection—to bring objects, ideas, and people in proximity to each other for short periods of time to learn and generate new possibilities.

Bottom: Plan. The intervention seeks to de-emphasize the single longitudinal axis by emphasizing multiple lateral axes of movement through which people can more easily filter into the site.

Top: Aerial axon showing massing. Heavy compressed earth bricks on bottom blend with the existing fabric and contrasts with the light wooden structure above.

View from South side ocean frontage.

View looking South towards ocean.

View of courtyard from between two bars.

Upper level view looking South.

Typical gallery space within a bar.

The intervention seeks to de-emphasize the single longitudinal axis by emphasizing multiple lateral axes of movement

Top: Model of proposed architectural bars shown in timber, layered horizontally over existing fort, shown in white.

Bottom: Before and After. The fort has a vertical line of access through a single door. By intersecting it with three bars, new lines of circulation are created. Across: Circulation space shaded by brise soleil screen.

Ruins on Display

Upon research of early museum origins, the relationship between the act of “display” and the colonial gaze was engaged. Easily mistaken as a “passive” action, the rigorous act of display possesses a complex history, especially when seen through the lens of the colonial tours that occurred throughout Europe to promote the further investment and expansion of colonialism within Africa and the West Indies. What decisions are communicated through the display techniques found within a museum? Who holds the power in position to the art? What space is held for the art of artisans, existing within a local context? With the unique site in mind, the architecture attempts to answer these questions.

This project focuses on the program of a regional Museum and a Community and Visitor’s Center via three goals:

1. the material integration of the old fort and the new, re-imagined fort;

2. the implementation of a novel means to display artifacts, addressing their colonial past while introducing a post-colonial attitude; and

3. the integration of the new site into local practices and culture.

Key to the project concept is the utilization of the motif of the circle “an irregular organization of space and community” derived from multiple precedents in West African domestic and village spatial planning, to disrupt and re-frame the regular organization of the colonial ruin of the fort and create a new way of enclosing space for exhibitions and moving through space.

Top: Aerial axon showing massing.

Bottom: Plan of scheme showing new circular volumes occupying the fort with minimal disruption of the existing structure.

View from upper viewing deck looking towards ocean.

Top: View showing cavernous interstitial spaces between ruined fort and new domes.

Bottom: Longitudinal section showing relationship between new domes and existing fort structure Across: Artwork on displayed within the domes. Original Artwork by Eugene Ofori Agyei.

The Ada Aperture: A Visual Cultural Centre For The Reconstitution of Lost Memory

Mariama Kah

The project will aim to address both the ecological reality and the ambitions for the community’s future with the synthesis of a museum and community center program to derive a Visual Culture Center and a Public Commons.

Punctuated by the proposal of a Visual Culture Center, the aim of this architecture will be to become the launchpad to set up the frameworks of recovery for the lost cultural memory in Ada Foah that is as adaptable as it is didactic.

This architecture aims to be conceived with the understanding that its lifetime is limited through its functioning as a site for institutional engagement between contemporary practices in Accra. Its temporality is meant to be exemplified through its material logic selected in accordance with its purpose as a predecessor for permanence.

Adopting the views of Okwui Enwezor and his notions of the “critical instruments of archival modernity” as a guide to bridging the gap between a forgotten history and its remnant monuments, the choice to embrace photography and film allows us to complicate our understanding of a museum as a repository for objects that “represent” a history and rather turn it into a container of living memory by hybridizing the archive and the museum/gallery through a program centered around these mediums.

Top: Aerial axon showing massing. Inspired by the Ashanti layered thatch roof, the upper volume is framed by timber posts and sits above the masonry base.

Bottom: Plan of ground floor showing protective wall around site in connection in wider sea defenses along the coastline.

View from coast showing anticipated sea defenses in connection with protective wall.

The Ada Aperture: A Visual Cultural Centre For The Reconstitution of Lost Memory

Top: Upper level exhibition space looks down into cinema room below. Bottom: Conceptual plans showing transformations to arrive at massing.

Mariama Kah

Top: Archive room overlooks outdoor cinema space occupying existing courtyard.

Bottom: Conceptual axons showing transformations to arrive at massing.

Indoor cinema within old fort structure.

Top: Physical model of project.

Bottom: Cross section through indoor cinema with exhibition space above within timber and thatch structure.

Across: View of portal window overlooking ocean views.

Ada Community Arts Centre and Well

This project de-centers the primary courtyard of the Fort with its troublesome histories. Beginning with the symbolic gesture of excavating this ground down to the level of a deep pit, and creating with the earth, a new, community oriented centre at an elevated level, the project establishes a new datum and high point from which water can flow.

A connection to water pervades the project through framed views of the ocean, a reflective pool (the result of the pit), a community well, flowing water channels and water-collecting roof-scape.

Top: Plan showing composition of volumes on site with the centrality of the courtyard in the fort negated by a new hierarchy of spaces.

Middle and Bottom: Longitudinal sections through building describing changing angles of roof.

Exercise 1 model of impluvium roof (cement, earth and timber).

Homecoming Memorial

Built by Danes in 1783 and acquired by the British in 1850, Fort Kongestein is a tangible fragment of a historical tapestry, embodying the intricacies of bygone eras — a testament to the interplay of contact, commerce, and colonial governance along Ghana’s coastal landscape.

The counter to the fort’s architecture of containment with an embrace of nature and access through weaving adobe brick walls through the structure. As this was a site was used to extract from Africa, the build’s reclaimed purpose would be to invite Black peoples from across the diaspora to add adobe bricks – that they learn to bake on site – into the architecture of the monument.

We ask visitors to bring ashes or a piece of a treasured object to be baked into this ceremonial bricks: memorializing the lost lineages of the 12.5 million displace Africans during the TransAtlantic Slave Trade and the tens of millions lost at sea.

It is my opinion that a museum is inherently a western-born typology and that if it were to thrive in an African locality then the site must mutate the normative conceptions of this contentious program. A museum of forgotten artifacts evolved into a Homecoming Memorial.

Top: Aerial axon showing massing with modular, participatory brick monument woven through the fort.

Bottom: Plan of Ground Floor. The shapes which disrupt the rigid fort geometry were informed by fluid dynamics of coastal elements, wind and water.

Brick baking location overlooking ocean frontage.

Entrance lobby

Top: Rendering of gallery passage.

Bottom: Longitudinal section of brick monument reaching to the ocean. Across: Example of brick laying. Symbolic act of commemoration.

Vocational Training School: An Architecture of Assembly & Disassembly

Given the rapid erosion of the site, I have proposed an architecture designed for disassembly and reassembly, so that it can continue to enrich the community following the erasure of the site. In simple terms, this means no glue, no mortar, no nails, limited cutting. This architecture takes seriously the economic constraints of the local material economy, and think hard about how a transient architecture might be built largely from creative reinterpretations of these objects.

This also invites the possibility for the architecture to adapt/ grow overtime, as well as potentially influence building techniques deployed elsewhere in Ada Foah. In terms of program, I think a “community center” is most appropriate.

The project maintains a very active stance: centering more on the celebration of the present and the enrichment of the future. I imagine this community center to be a learning hub for craft skills and art production, building upon the sophistication of longstanding traditions, while leaving them adaptable for contemporary discourses and markets. A place like this could both help strengthen local identity and make it available for export. The history of Fort Kongestein is a history of globalization; this project ask whether globalization is something that necessarily happens to the community, or something that could happen with the community.

Top: Aerial axon of new learning and skill-sharing community.

Bottom: Plan of ground floor.

Approach view towards the school.

Workspaces for fabrication.

Top, Middle & Bottom : Diagrams showing elements of construction system.

Ada Foah Library & Community Centre

Aaron Smithson

Evident in many West African precedents is the compelling way in which an assembly of many small parts can create intimate interstitial spaces and help define a whole through aggregation rather than subtraction. For this project, I was interested in how to break open the rigid geometry of the fort’s Western courtyard building using a formal approach that is more akin to West African compound architecture, creating something that porous and variable, but still negotiated by a single roof system.

Moreover, compounds largely reflect how urbanism works in Ada and most other West African towns today, such that we now see many properties defined by compositions of multiple smaller structures or dwellings, often arranged at angles around small courtyards.

In creating a community center and library space for the people of Ada Foah, the question then becomes: How might Asante roofs and West African compound precedents inform a reconstitution of the fort as an open and porous community landmark?

Top: Aerial axon.

Bottom: Plan of ground floor.

Ruination & Resilience: Community Centre & Archive at Fort Kongestein

This project is an archive of recorded histories and artefacts designed to endure the worst outcome of erosion along this coastline. In a speculative but, likely, inevitable, future, what is left of the fort site is completely submerged, what remains is a superstructure supported by deep marine piers. Before this point, the archive spaces appear to hover lightly over the fort site which becomes a garden, allowing it to continue its process of ruination.

Top: Aerial axon.

Bottom: Plan of ground floor.

In 50 years the waters may have enveloped the fort.

Elevated platforms connect the upper volumes.

Existing ground is only lightly designed. It remains a site of ruination and decay for contemplation and preservation.

Top: Physical model showing massing covered in fish-net screen.

Bottom : Section through the building showing new piers down to bedrock.

Heritage in Ruins: Ghana’s Forts & Castles

Photographs by Maggie Janik

The GSD Senior Multimedia Producer, Maggie Janik, accompanied the studio to Ghana, during which she captured most of the images of Ada Foah which are shown in this report.

She also traveled further afield to photograph conditions and communities in and around a number of the accessible and extant forts and castles along the coast of Ghana.

Cape Coast Castle

Fort Batenstein

Fort Saint Anthony

Fort Saint Sebastian

St. George’s Castle, Elmina

Olayinka Dosekun-Adjei

Olayinka Dosekun-Adjei is the Creative Director of Studio Contra, an architectural, urban and interior design practice based in Lagos, Nigeria. She holds a BA in Classics from the University of Oxford (New College) and an M.Arch from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where she studied as a Kennedy Scholar.

Olayinka has been a visiting faculty member at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and has been a guest critic for final reviews at the GSA Johannesburg and Cornell University.

Junko Yamamoto

Junko Yamamoto, an architect and founding principal of iVY based in Pawtucket, RI. She holds an architecture diploma with honorary standing from Kyoto Architectural College, a BArch degree with distinction from the Boston Architectural College and an MArch II degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design.

In parallel with her professional design practice, Yamamoto works as an artist.

Forgotten Fort Kongestein Instructors

Olayinka Dosekun-Adjei

Junko Yamamoto (Teaching Associate) Report Design & Editor Studio Contra

Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture

Sarah Whiting Chair of the Department of Architecture Grace La

Copyright © 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Text and images © 2023 by their authors.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the mayor and chiefs of Ada Foah for graciously inviting us to their town, sharing their histories with us and granting access to the site.

Olayinka Doskeun-Adjei was a John Portman Design Critic in Architecture (Fall, 2023); we would therefore like to thank the John Portman family. In addition we acknowledge the Open Society Foundation its generous financial contribution to the studio, enabling the students to visit Ghana in October, 2023.

For the wonderful photography in this report, we are grateful to Maggie Janik and Alfred Quartey.

Finally, we extend our thanks to Tore Bredtoft and the Danish National Archives for providing historical information and assistance from the Danish side which was relevant to the studio’s design explorations of Fort Kongestein.

Image Credits

Cover Image by Alfred Quartey. Individual image credits are listed with their captions on the spread on which they appear. The editors have attempted to acknowledge all other sources of images used and apologize for any errors or omissions.

Harvard University Graduate School of Design

48 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA 02138

gsd.harvard.edu

Fall 2023

Harvard GSD

Department of Architecture

Students

Jimi Adeseun, Chandler Caserta, Catherine Chen, Olivia Harden, Aria Hill, Mariama Kah, Ava Violich Kennedy, Khan Muhammad, Zachary Slonsky, Aaron Smithson, Courtney Sohn, Gabriel Soomar