Architects from Socialist Countries in Ghana (1957–67): Modern Architecture and Mondialisation discusses the architectural production of the Ghana National Construction Corporation (GNCC), a state agency responsible for building and infrastructure programs during Ghana’s first decade of independence. Łukasz Stanek reviews the work of GNCC architects within the networks that intersected in 1960s Accra, including competing networks of global cooperation: U.S.-based economic institutions, the British Commonwealth, technical assistance from socialist countries, support programs from the United Nations, and collaboration within the Non-Aligned Movement. His analysis of labor conditions within the GNCC reveals a negotiation between Cold War antagonisms and a shared culture of modern architecture that was instrumental in the reorganization of the everyday within categories of postindependence modernization. Drawing on previously unexplored materials from archives in Ghana, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the article reveals the role of architects from European socialist countries in the urbanization of West Africa and their contribution to modern architecture’s becoming a worldwide phenomenon.
University of California Press