The false archive : a space of re-collection, re-writing and re-imaging

Abstract: ‘Undergraduates, seduced, as always, by the changing breath of journalistic fashion, demand that they should be taught the history of black Africa. Perhaps, in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of the Europeans in Africa. The rest is largely darkness, like the history of pre-European, pre-Columbian America. And darkness is not a subject for history.’ Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper Astounding as it may seem, Trevor-Roper was right: much of Africa’s written history is either the history of Europeans in Africa or the history of Africa as told to Africans by Europeans. History, it was once famously said, ‘is told by the winners.’ In my Major Design Project, The False Archive, I will attempt to reverse a number of distorted myths about Africa, principally that there is no written history of Africa, by Africans. The project ultimately repudiates Trevor-Roper’s assumptions by providing a space, place and programme for alternative histories, forgotten stories, half-remembered myths and new futures to be inserted into an archive, located in the capital city of St Dénis, Reunion Island. What follows in the next few pages is a summary written expressly for the purposes of examination. It is intended to give the reader/examiner an overview of the project’s development, process, methodology and resolution. It opens with the Overview describing the project’s aims and objectives and the final statement, Reflections, summarises this year’s journey as I have grappled with difficult, deeply personal and cultural narratives in the shaping of an architectural response.M.Tech. (Architecture