The A3 – Archnet Collaborative for Documentation of Africa’s built heritage invites the general public to her Public Lecture titled Endangered Heritage spotlighting the works of three invited speakers: Kuukuwa Manful Principal Investigator, Accra Archive. Raj Yudhishthir Isar , Education Director of Aga Khan Trust for Culture; and Shola Akintunde , Restorations Lead and a Past President of Legacy1995. This public lecture rounds off the month long Orientation Workshops for selected prize applicants.
Kuukuwa Manful is a trained architect and researcher who creates, studies and documents architecture in Africa. Through her Accra Archive project, she is working to digitise endangered historical architectural material and building an archive of Ghanaian architecture. She also curates andansisem, an architecture collective that documents and disseminates (hi)stories of Ghanaian architecture. Her current research – towards a PhD at SOAS, University of London – examines the sociopolitics of West African nation-building and citizenship through a study of the architecture of educational institutions. She holds Masters and BSc Architecture degrees from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford.
Raj Yudhishthir Isar is currently the Education Director of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and Emeritus Professor of Cultural Policy Studies at The American University of Paris. He was the founding co-editor of the Cultures and Globalization Series (SAGE London; lead writer for the United Nations Creative Economy Report 2013; team leader of the EU inquiry‘Culture in EU External Relations’ and editor of UNESCO’s 2015 and 2018 reports Re|Shaping Cultural Policies. At UNESCO from 1973 to 2003, Isar was notably Executive Secretary of the World Commission on Culture and Development. He is also a past President of Culture Action Europe.
Sola Akintunde is currently a Trustee & Restorations Committee Lead at LEGACY 1995, – the historical and environmental interest group of Nigeria [2017 – 2019], he led Facility Management & Destination Marketing for the restored 122-year old ‘Jaekel House’ railway mini-museum at Ebute-Metta. At Open House Lagos, in 2016 he helped establish the first African version of the 46-city Open House Worldwide network that gives the general public free access to at least 30 best buildings across the host city. He now primarily serves on the Executive Committee of the Nigeria Chapter of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), as the Public Relations Officer. Through his practice – ShawlArchiTunde.Africa, his life aim is to propagate heritage based design-thinking in West Africa.
This public lecture will hold via Zoom. Please click bit.ly/A3ArchnetPublicLecture to gain access. It is facilitated by A3-Archnet Collaborative on African Architecture.
All enquiries should be sent to: a3-archnet@mit.edu
About A3| Archives of African Architectures
A3 is a documentary organisation formed to document the built heritage of Africa for the present and future generations. It was founded in 2017 by the Nigerian architect, Baba Oladeji
About Archnet & AKDC @ MIT Libraries
Archnet.org is an open access, scholarly resource focused on the built environment of Muslim societies, broadly defined. It is a joint project of the Aga Khan Documentation Center of the MIT Libraries ( AKDC@MIT ) and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.