[A]FA East Legon Past Forward
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. Once surrounded by pastures and farmland, the shrinking settlement of Abotsiman is now bordered and the surrounding land overtaken by large single-family houses and gated communities, resulting in the type of urbanism that is now commonly associated with Accra’s upper-middle-class neighborhood of East Legon. Abotsiman is both the name of a place – a ‘rurban’ village – and of a community – a collection of families and boarders, a population of about 300 with a variety of migratory backgrounds. The mappings and texts collected here give a sense of narrative and detail to the urban discourse on Accra, from the vantage point of this community.
A city with multiple centers and peripheries, Accra has districts with distinct histories and urban characters. East Legon is one of these districts, located neither in the center nor in the periphery of the larger metropolitan area. As such, urban districts like East Legon have not yet received much attention in urban studies, although they make up significant parts of the city and its transformational impetus. The scenario of Abotsiman (the village) in East Legon (the upper-middle- class neighborhood) 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. It is one of many examples of how “[i]n recent years, even more than before, everyday urban life, with its shifting appropriations of public space, has taken on the dimension of an existential, but also deeply political, struggle for day to day survival.”
All content by [Applied] Foreign Affairs / Insitute of Architecture / University of Applied Arts Vienna
TIMEFRAME
Research 2018 05 – 2018 09 / Field research 2018 09 / Communication and publication 2018 09 - 2020 02
LOCATION
Abotsiman community in East Legon, Accra, Ghana
COMMISSION/COLLABORATION
orthner orthner associates (OOA)
[A]FA TEAM
Abdul-Rauf Issahaque, Dominique Petit-Frere, Ka Wai Godwin Cheung, Hakeem Mustapha, Juliette Valat, Konstantin Kim, Madeleine Malle, Nathaniel Kwesi Frempong
OOA TEAM
Akosua Obeng, Martin Orthner, Rosemary Orthner (lead)
[A]FA TEACHING
Baerbel Mueller, Juergen Benson-Strohmayer
INVITED GUESTS
David Kojo Derban, Ibai Rigby, Dr. Joe Annan, Namata Serumaga-Musisi, Nii-Ashie Adjaye, Rosemary Orthner
PRESENTATION
Public event 2018 09, Abotsiman, Accra, Ghana / Magazine launch 2019 12 Nubuke Foundation, Accra / Writers Project of Ghana on Citi FM 2020 02
[A]FA PUBLICATION
[A]FA East Legon Past Forward
SELECTED PRESS
Writers Project of Ghana Podcast