Architecture
Tales of the Invisible City
As the capital of the then Belgian Congo, Kinshasa occupies an important place in the history of Belgian architecture and urban planning. The development of the capital was an outstanding project of Belgian Modernity; but nowadays that modernist quality is only one of the many realities of Kinshasa. Kinshasa. Tales of the Invisible City deals with the complex reality of Kinshasa as a post-colonial Central African city.
The motivation behind the book's publication is
worth exploring. Anthropologist Filip de Boeck and photographer Marie-Françoise Plissart, together with architect/curator Koen van Synghel, put together an exhibition on this theme for the Belgian pavilion at the International Architecture Biennale in Venice (2004). Held in the beautiful surroundings of the Giardini, the Biennale sometimes resembles an interesting, but rather respectable world exhibition, where countries can display the best of their architectural ability. Contributions such as the one about Kinshasa, on the other hand, call the nationalistic understanding of architecture into question. With its examination of the unique urban nature of the modern-day Central African metropolis, it even calls into question the organisational capacity of architecture and urban planning. For those reasons the exhibition attracted a considerable amount of criticism. There was also the fact that Flanders alternates with the French-speaking Community of Belgium and only gets a chance in Venice every four years, so an important opportunity for the international promotion of Flemish architecture was lost. However, the whole controversy suddenly died down when it was announced that the Golden Lion, the first prize in the Biennale competition, had been awarded to the Belgian pavilion. A stroke of luck for the Flemish Architecture Institute, which had organised the exhibition, but on the other hand this success meant that the debate over the statements made by the exhibition was nipped in the bud.
‘It is not, or not primarily, the material infrastructure or the built form that makes the city a city,’ argues Filip de Boeck, ‘The city, in a way, exists beyond its architecture.’ According to the traditional western philosophy of town planning, it is possible to use physical additions to the environment, such as buildings or public infrastructure, not only to give shape to a city, but also to determine its identity. In large Central African cities like Kinshasa, however, that no longer holds true. In order to describe the real identity of Kinshasa, De Boeck begins with three mirrors that reflect the city. First there's the mirror of the colonial origins. Whilst colonisation has been over and done with since 1960, the foundation and development of the modern Kinshasa naturally still has an impact on urban life. The integration of this inheritance is a laborious process, as can be seen from the new names that are given to the city, the streets and the neighbourhoods with each new regime. A second mirror is that of the village, the hinterland, the bush. Kinshasa defines itself on the basis of contrast with the village, which is depicted as primitive. However, the urban identity of Kinshasa is in fact continually infiltrated