Indigenous Perspectives: the Post-Conflict Landscapes of Rwanda

Authors

  • Killian Doherty Bartlett School of Architecture

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.10.2.1435

Abstract

Much of Rwanda’s conflict can be traced to the relation between human (culture) and non-human (nature) that defined territories and ethnic divisions in pre-colonial Rwanda. These human and non-human relations, exploited by European colonialism, have become increasingly estranged through the influence of Eurocentric forms of architecture, urban and rural planning. This practice-based research explores the relations between Rwanda’s human settlements and the landscape to provide insight into emergent spaces of conflict. The hope is that where a meeting of different perspectives is articulated a form of architecture as mediation may emerge.

Author Biography

Killian Doherty, Bartlett School of Architecture

Killian Doherty is an architect who has practiced in New Orleans, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Rwanda and runs a collaborative practice ‘Architectural Field Office’, that has a particular interest in sites of conflict, and the dissonance of modernity and development in Africa. He has written for the Architectural Review, Mascontext and VOLUME magazine on these themes. He currently is undertaking a PhD by Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture. For more see www.architecturalfieldoffice.org

References

Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad, Le déracinement. La crise de l'agriculture traditionnelle en Algérie (Paris : Les editions des minuit, 1964).

Killian Doherty, ‘Contemporary Architecture in East Africa: An Empire of Good Practice or Shadows of Neocolonialism?’, in Andres B. Lepik (ed.), Afritecture: building social change (Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2013), 248–253.

Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter, (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

Tess Lea and Paul Pholeros, ‘This Is Not a Pipe: The Treacheries of Indigenous Housing’, Public Culture, 22 no. 1 (2010): 187.

Jerome Lewis, The Twa Pygmies of the Great Lakes Region (London: Minority Rights Group International, 2000).

Ministry of Local Government, ‘MinaLoc Bye Bye Nyakatsi programme’, (Minaloc, 2011), http://www.minaloc.gov.rw/index.php?id=514.

Herman Musahara and Christopher Huggins, ‘Land Reform, Land Scarcity and Post Conflict Reconstruction. A Case Study of Rwanda’, Eco-Conflicts 3 no. 3 (2004): 269–346.

United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, ‘International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly CERD/C/RWA (June 2016): 1–7. http://docstore.ohchr.org/.

Peter Uvin, ‘Development Aid and Structural Violence: The Case of Rwanda’ Development 42, no. 3 (1999): 49–56. doi: 10.1057/palgrave.development.1110060.

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Published

2017-02-04

Issue

Issue # 19 | Autumn / Winter 2016 | Spaces of Conflict

Section

Case Study

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