East Legon Past Forward

Book Launch & Panel Discussion

East Legon Past Forward is a project investigating the spatial, socio-cultural, and migratory characteristics of Abotsiman, one of the few remaining grown neighborhoods of East Legon, Accra, and the implications of urban transformation on it. East Legon Past Forward is a joint project between [applied] Foreign Affairs, Institute of Architecture, University of Applied Arts Vienna and Orthner Orthner & Associates.
The publication presents narrative and artistic field research created in and around Abotsiman, Accra, in September 2018. The team consisted of four students of architecture from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, three students of architecture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and one student of international development from Lund University. Texts by invited authors engage with intrinsic topics at hand such as urban sprawl, gentrification, land speculation, planning and lack-of-planning, demographic inequalities and economic pressures, and the lack of agency of communities such as Abotsiman. The scenario is at once specific and at the same time representational of the processes and interrelationships occurring in Accra and other urban agglomerations on the African continent.

The panelists will discuss the potentials and futures of urban situations such as Abotisman in East Legon, and how existing spatial, socio-cultural and economic heterogeneities could be used and altered to create diverse and sustainable cities for all inhabitants.

Program

3:30PM        Welcome address: Rosemary Orthner, Honorary Consul of Austria in Ghana, partner at Orthner Orthner & Associates & representative of the Abotsiman community
3:45PM        Short presentations by panelists Baerbel Mueller, Dominique Petit-Frère, David Kojo Derban, Nii-Ashie Adjaye, Namata Serumaga-Musisi, Desmond Appiah
4:15PM – 5:15PM    Panel discussion moderated by Juergen Strohmayer, [a]FA


Panelists

Baerbel Mueller is an architect and researcher based in Vienna, Austria and Ghana. She is associate professor and head of the [applied] Foreign Affairs lab at the Institute of Architecture, University of Applied Arts Vienna, and founder of nav_s baerbel mueller - navigations in the field of architecture and urban research within diverse cultural contexts. Her work comprises architecture, urban research, installations, scenography, and curatorial projects, and has been widely exhibited and awarded.

David Kojo Derban studied at the school of Architecture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. He is a private researcher on subjects in settlement planning, rural and urban development, as well as the culture and arts of the African continent He is the CEO of Ethnik International, an architectural , research, and development firm based in Accra.

Desmond Appiah is Chief Resilience Advisor (CRO) to the Mayor of Accra with experience in the private and public sectors in West Africa, Europe, and North America, as well as the UNIDO and UNDP. As CRO, his responsibilities include the breaking down of existing barriers at the local level, accounting for pre-existing resilience plans, and creating partnerships, alliances and financing mechanisms that address the resilience of all city residents, with a particular focus on low-income and vulnerable populations.

Dominique Petit-Frère is a budding urbanist who lives in liminal spaces. She is a recent graduate of Lund University, Sweden, where she earned a masters degree in International Development and Management. In 2018, she founded Limbo Accra, a spatial art platform that connects new site- specific, socially-engaged art projects with the existing infrastructure of uncompleted property developments.

Juergen Strohmayer is a designer who works on research-based architecture and planning on all scales. He has taught at the Ethiopian Institute for Architecture (EiABC) and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Juergen applies contemporary design techniques and technologies within precise conceptual frameworks. He has been a member of the [applied] Foreign Affairs lab since 2009 and has been based in Accra, Ghana, since the beginning of 2018.

Namata Serumaga-Musisi (The Griot Introspect) is a decolonial spacemaker (background architecture) who is exploring the lived experience in the physical city - and questioning imported/imposed urbanism and the rejection of locally defined spaces in the name of modernization and development. She is attempting to return development narratives to the Living City - the lived reality.

Nii-Ashie Adjaye founded Walulel during his time at University of Oxford. Adjaye coordinates Walulel’s quantitative investigation, web engineering and geospatial analytics workstreams. A politics, law and economics graduate with six invaluable years of experience in London who specialises in real estate and urban development, Adjaye is always concerned with people, place, and perfect information.

Rosemary Orthner co-founded OOA with her husband Martin Orthner in 2003. OOA’s design approach stems from a passionate desire to integrate the multiple social, cultural, and environmental conditions in Ghana with internationally recognized standards of design and execution, creating a sustainable design for all types of architectural projects.

East Legon Past Forward - Book Launch & Panel Discussion
Book presentation