Exhibition ‘Asmara - Africa’s Secret Modernist City’

By Annemieke de Kler, ArchiAfrika

From October 2 until December 3, the exhibition ‘Asmara – Africa’s Secret Modernist City’ was held at the Deutsches Architektur Zentrum in Berlin. For the first time the rich architectural heritage of Africa’s secret modernist city Asmara was on show in Europe. The exhibition in Berlin, based on the book Asmara - Africa's Secret Modernist City by Edward Denison, Guang Yu Ren and Naigzy Gebremedhin, was the initiative of the Asmara Project Group, in which Eritrean and German architects worked closely together.

Having survived the troubles of the Second World War, forty years of Ethiopian occupation and thirty years of civil war, Asmara today is home to the largest ensemble of modernist architecture anywhere in the world. Only Miami, Tel Aviv and Napier (New Zealand) have similar ensembles from that epoch.

Asmara, situated two kilometres above sea level in the Eritrean highlands, was the main town of an Italian colony from 1861 to 1945. It was during the period of rule by Benito Mussolini from the 1920’s that most of the historically significant modernist buildings (industrial buildings, private houses, cultural buildings and others) were constructed. Between 1935 and 1941 the city of Asmara exploded from a little provincial town into an African metropole with European style buildings of the Italian modernist movement.

Some of the most beautiful examples are the Fiat Tagliero service station (1938), with two 17 metres concrete airplane wings, built by Giuseppe Pettazzi, and the Cinema Impero (1937) by Mario Messina, with it’s Art Deco interior. Today 450.000 people are living in Asmara and around 400 buildings have survived. These buildings form the most important and largest collection of modernist architecture in Africa and probably in the world.

The exhibition highly contributes to the debate on Africa’s architecture and the awareness that architecture is an important part of the cultural heritage of a country. Furthermore the exhibition will support Eritrea’s endeavours to have Asmara classified as a World Heritage site by UNESCO and the maintenance of this unique architectural ensemble.

The Asmara exhibition has been very successful in Berlin and will tour through Germany in 2007: Frankfurt (6.2-15.4), Kassel (24.4-13.5), Stuttgart (21.9-19.10), and in Italy during the UIA World Congress in Turin (July 2008). Other venues are being discussed with museums and organisations in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo and London as well as in several African cities. The exhibition is accompanied by the film City of Dreams, a documentary with interviews in which Naigzy Gebremedhin proudly introduces his beloved city Asmara (see also the review on the film by ArchiAfrika and www.eyelevelproductions.com).

If there will be enough interest the Asmara Project Group will organise an architectural excursion to Asmara in collaboration with Solomon Abraha, Travel House International from Asmara during the period of February 14 to March 11, 2007. For further information on these issues please contact:
asmara-exhibition@yahoo.com or cristophmelchers@gmx.de

Publications:
Asmara, Africa’s Secret Modernist City, Edward Denison, Guang Yu Ren, Naigzy Gebremedhin, Merell Publishers.

Asmara – The frozen City, Jochen Visscher and Stefan Boness, Jovis Verlag.

The Dvd City of Dreams (Eye Level Productions) by Edward Scott (USA) and Ruby Ofori (Ghana) can be seen on line at www.customflix.com.