Toward a (post)apartheid architecture? A view from Namibia: Fid-Bau Portal

Toward a (post)apartheid architecture? A view from Namibia

Müller‐Friedman, Fatima

Scholars have documented widely the architectural and town planning practices of the apartheid era, as well as their impacts on the South African and Namibian urban landscapes. Now, one and a half decades on, it is worth considering how these spatial legacies are being addressed. Specifically, this paper seeks to scrutinize the visions that go into the creation of contemporary built forms in Namibia, paying special attention to the views of architects. As is shown, important historical continuities exist in the ways Namibian architects approach the urban built form. Most particularly, architects continue to assert the need for differential design solutions for predominantly white, wealthy urbanites and the black and coloured urban poor. Here, urban professionals declare modern built forms ‘Namibian’ based on their climatic and environmental adaptations, while simultaneously viewing informal settlements as a culturally and socio‐economically appropriate solution to the housing problem. The article suggests that these views contribute to the (unintended) perpetuation of the apartheid built form, partly because architects assume that the urban form is, in its essence, politically and culturally neutral.