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Too often, attempts to inject local flavour into contemporary architecture result in a kind of parody of identity. Good architecture responds to context, climate, culture, and so on, but that needn’t amount to a “look”. When architects try to invent regional or national design idioms, they seldom amount to anything more than sentimentality and kitsch.
Add to that the potential pitfalls of metaphor in architecture — for example, the vacuous idea that a transparent government building might somehow embody (or even enhance) the transparency of democracy — and the design for the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library (TMPL), unveiled by British-Ghanaian starchitect Sir David Adjaye at the end of last year, should be in hot water. It lands squarely in both danger zones.
The library, to be built in the suburb of Riviera in Johannesburg, is intended to be the embodiment — as well as a generator — of the former president’s idea of an African Renaissance. “My vision for the new presidential library aims to encompass both an African past and an African future,” says Mbeki’s statement. “It will be a place where Africans uncover their own history and identity. A place where we are empowered to script a brighter and more prosperous future.”
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