 Hello and welcome to the Paul Mellon Center and yeah, just thank you for coming today despite the heat and We're really looking forward To the event today before I start actually reducing the speakers and so on I have some sort of housekeeping to do and actually the first one of which is I'm gonna wear my mask So can you hear me? All right? Okay, thank you So I have some sort of fire safety things that I will just quickly run through We have no fire drills scheduled for for the event today. So if if the fire alarm sounds leave your stuff behind and calmly evacuate the building the nearest fire exits are on the ground floor through either doors of the center that you would have seen and Just make sure that you have If you don't leave the area or attempt to return until advised by a member of PMC staff So that's all for fire safety things And to properly welcome you now to what is the sixth and final event of our summer evening research seminar series liquid crystal concrete the arts of post-war Britain 1945 to 1965 and Today's event is titled post-war colonialism and We will be hearing from two speakers Ian Jackson and Rick's Woodstraw and I Think I just wanted to say a few words about The series and I know some of you have attended either online or in person other events in the series and and you will have noticed that the The talks have been quite different and I think You know when we think of the post-war we do think in a sense of of it in relationship to the war and kind of thinking about Rebuilding Britain and Europe and we don't and we often think of the Empire something quite separate something that is more of a 19th century Phenomenon and don't really think of them As coexisting in time or space So one of the things I was really interested in doing when we were conceptualizing the series is really for us to think about What what colonialism or the Empire meant in in this period and how in a sense Discourses around art and design that were happening in the Empire Materials that were extracted in the Empire also fed back into art design On sort of architecture here We have heard some talks about artists migrating artists and designers migrating here. So We've already started the discussion. I'm really excited here to experts speaking about Modernist architecture in British West Africa and Ian Jackson will speak to us especially around attempts of Forming a Bauhaus art school in Accra and Rieks will talk about Modern interiors and the United Africa Company in post-war Britain with a particular focus on timber So to introduce our two speakers I'll introduce both speakers now and then we'll have the two talks and then I'll come back and we have a sort of Discussion and Q&A with the audience and reception afterwards Okay, so Ian Jackson is an architect and historian at the Liverpool School of Architecture His research is concerned with late colonial and tropical modern architecture in the global South and West Africa in particular He is currently working on a Luger Hume trust funded project to investigate The architecture of the United Africa Company in collaboration with Unilever This research stemmed from an exhibition and catalog on the mercantile architecture of Accra Co-curated with Arche Africa in 2019 and Rieks Woodstra is a historian of modern architecture and material culture With a specific focus on the effects of British colonialism on the built environment She's currently an assistant professor at New College of Humanities in London and a post-doctoral research associate at Liverpool University's Department of Architecture and Our two speakers know each other and know each other's works and I think that'll also come through today in Liverpool, she's a part of The project that I just mentioned And and actually she is joining the University of Amsterdam as a tenure track assistant professor in the summer of 2022 So basically now Welcome to Ian and Rieks. So Ian if you would start Okay, good evening everyone and thank you so much for coming out on this suitably hot evening and it's gonna fit with the topic in many ways as I suppose and so we were privileged to be here and I'm delighted to share some of my research with you Today Ideally would go now to West Africa would set off and would go on a trip and Explore it and I would encourage you to do so We haven't got time this evening. So in this paper I'm going to show you some of the slides from the archive and also some photographs that we've taken recently in This paper I want to investigate how modern architecture was used in post-war West Africa Both as a nationalist device through state-sponsored projects, but also as a mercantile neocolonial tool And I'd like to share some lesson known and also some quite well-known examples of modernist architecture Commissioned by large companies and also to look at how that architecture was presented Published and used as a means of building an image of a new Africa On the post-war period There's some extraordinary modern architecture built in the run-up to and immediately after Political independence and it was brought about by a fertile mix of nationalism economic expansion Education reform government and commercial investment and in particular a drive towards industrial production Our story starts in World War two and there was a decision to develop a new school focusing on African crafts artisans and techniques that could then inform manufacturing building components and products It was something of a radical proposal and received ample funding from the colonial office The West African colonies were previously envisaged as having only a complementary economic relationship with the UK But this was a position that became increasingly contrary to the ambition set out in the colonial development and welfare acts and post-war in this sense means in a way whilst the conflict was still happening during the war West Africa was not a theater of war and this saw a relatively stable condition for reimagining what might follow This new school was to be formed within the prestigious and elite achimotor school in Accra and this Department was named the West African Institute of Industries Arts and Social Sciences And it was led by Russian emigrate artist called Herbert Vladimir Mayer of its and the objective was a marriage of the old aesthetic skill and power to modern technique West African crafts and industry were surveyed and a new museum was established To prevent the extinction of interesting and often beautiful construction and designs The Institute received a major grant of a hundred and twenty seven thousand pounds in 1943 from the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund To further expand its activities and production and they created a four-year apprentice and master ship master system And it had an amazing enthusiastic subscription and the staff and students visited artisans across West Africa It was hoped that the Institute could produce building materials and products and household goods from the campus And whilst this fascination with craft was quite nostalgic in the face of oncoming technology It held a certain nationalist appeal and built confidence in West African skill and taste The colonial office sent Henry Morris The chief education officer for Cambridgeshire to report on the Institute and he visited Ghana in 1946 Although the Institute's progress was impacted by the war and loss of key personnel Morris saw its potential and suggested broadening its remit to become an Institute of architecture planning and design Morris had commissioned Walter Gropius and Maxwell Fry to design the impington village college near Cambridge And it was this model he had in mind for West Africa And in his report he stated it would be wise to adopt the same ideas of Gropius and try and establish a Bauhaus in West Africa Morris noted how architectural education was absent in the West African Education reports and didn't feature in either prospectus of the new University of Abaddon in Nigeria Or in the Gold Coast colleges, but despite his recommendations, it wasn't to be The colonies were destined to produce art and crafts But the act of building technology and construction was to remain absent despite this initial enthusiasm The colonial office also lost its enthusiasm for the Institute They were looking for a much larger scale production based around industrial manufacturing rather than artisan craft space design Whilst the Bauhaus model was not pursued impington village college design was and Maxwell Fry together with Jane Drew were commissioned to design over 20 schools in Ghana Arranged on a similar model to impington village college They produced Over 20 designs that were all different, but were really variations on a theme. They had what Fry called a family resemblance to each other But they were modified versions of impington. They were modified to adapt to the climate And eventually developed a kind of language of perforated screens Sometimes incorporating local motifs and references Such as the Ashanti stools that you can see at Apukowari and Prenpe colleges in Kumasi Beyond formal education other state-sponsored projects saw the development of libraries Such as this example in a crowd designed by Nixon and Boris in 1951 With artworks by Kofi Antimoban who were studied with mayor of it's at the Atchimota Institute Other libraries were built in all of the major towns Including at Secondi, Kumasi, Coferidua and Cape Coast following the new library act and these were nearly all designed by James Cupid Education and libraries in particular were treated as major central pieces and focal points in the townscape Including in the development of the new university campuses such as at Ibadun University in Nigeria The universities were seen as new utopian microcosms of an ideal society and a prerequisite for a political independence And the libraries were given special treatment within the campuses as repositories of knowledge and ideas It was a modernism that was heavily derived from a response to climate The brise-sillet Elevation of mean that the main accommodation on Piloti Window hoods offering solar protection and so on but more than this it was an expert It was expressive Incorporating patterns shadow decorative motifs color and heavily embellished with murals released and sculpture to further augment Decorate and provide didactic storytelling Beyond formal education and state-sponsored works large businesses such as the United Africa Company or the UAC as it was known Also sponsored and built various projects such as community centers and assembly halls Mining companies had previously built similar amenities in remote locations But in the 1950s there was a much more direct approach Occupying prominent sites and a much more deliberate attempt to be seen and aligned with changing politics and societal structure Such as the community center in Ibadun which also contained the large Mosaic mural by Kofi Antonovamp There was the assembly hall at Ibadun University which was again funded by the UAC And other companies were equally active such as the Manganese mining company who built this community center in Tarkwa And there are many others sponsored by the large businesses such as Cadbury's It was an architecture that was aligned with an urgency for new beginnings and the drive for political independence And responding to the increasing urbanization and shifts in society that the industrial drive was largely responsible for There was a neo-colonial elasticity that stretched into the post-colonial period And large businesses wanted to retain their power, prestige and to carry favor in this changing political landscape But equally there was also a contribution of modernist architecture to the nationalist agenda So modernism wasn't a politically neutral solution and no architecture is And whilst it enabled or masked the neo-colonial continuity that extended beyond political independence It was also desired and expected by African politicians for its ability to deliver a vision of progress, newness and sophisticated now It was a modernism that was not playing catch up with elsewhere nor do I see it as an imported pastiche For architects at that time they were responding to climate but not just in a meteorological sense They were responding to the cultural climate and developing a new lexicon of design innovation Accra, Kumasi, Lagos and Abaddon in particular formed a locus or a constellation of centers for progressive innovative design And this was stretched between a nationalist drive for change, industrialization, improved houses and new cities And the means by which this was possible through the old mercantile firms and traders which were headed by the UAC in its raft of subsidiary businesses The merchants also traded on this thirst for change They promoted new products and lifestyles that reinforced or became associated with notions of progress and success So although they seem like two opponents they had quite a common aim It was a name that was often different from that of the colonial office When newly elected Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah set about to deliver his ambition he put forward the Accra Improvement Drive A new Ghana required a new Accra and with architecture as a central device in presenting the image of a modern liberated capital And this was in the 1950s when Ghana was still part of the British Empire but it had an elected Prime Minister And here modernism could be deployed with many motives and tensions and desires There was a comprehensive remaking and rebuilding to express notions of progress, change, development and industrialization and ambition For example, guest houses and bungalows were to be replaced with international hotels Delapidated train stations were replaced with new highways and car showrooms Village housing was to be replaced with apartments Congested harbours were to be replaced with new ports and purpose-built factories And these were to make new goods that would be branded, new lines of food and beverages Retail moved from stalls and warehouses to boutiques And companies like the UAC were well positioned to help fulfil, encourage and manipulate these desires And the ideas of development, success and nation reimagining Shops such as AG Leventis, UTC and Kingsway Stores were able to capitalize on the ambition for a renewed nation And the idea of modernity and progress through material goods and consumption With many workers now in paid employment and with a disposable income having obtained work in the factories Model houses required furnishing, car production plants on new showrooms And a glamorous lifestyle was created and ambiguously shared and promoted through the department stores such as Kingsway Stores And their events such as The Good Life Which promoted and demonstrated everything from clothing, food, home furnishing, cosmetics and travel There was the ideal home show opened by Nkrumah's wife A design centre exhibition in 1959 and a mock-up of an entire home in one of the shops The affluent middle class lifestyle was being sold with increasing emphasis on the growing numbers of African managers Traders and civil servants As the Africanization of white collar work increased an outlet was required for this Africanization There needed to be a physical expression of this taking place Independence was not only to bring about political freedom It was also to bring about new forms of living And the UAC as you can see on the top left wanted to be at the core of this move Retail was also used as part of a strategy for replanning new districts and creating desirable neighbourhoods Appapur in Nigeria, initially a port extension, an industrial hub for Lagos Was now rebranded and developed as a fashionable suburb, complete with a Kingsway store of its own Kwame Nkrumah Avenue was formed in Accra as a new district removed from the old congested centre And it was complete with car showrooms, parks, precincts and vast retail emporiums Shops became a sign of status and the opening of new stores was a celebrated event and even demanded by local leaders and elites A town without a Kingsway was considered incomplete, lacking or a backwater And the forced perspective drawings suggest something far grander than the reality The marketing went beyond the company brochures and newsletters into popular culture Such as sophisticated and respectable colour journals and magazines One example is the Nigeria magazines, beautifully designed with its stunning front cover images It was positioned as a high-end cultural publication and was published by the federal government of Nigeria As a quarterly arts and culture journal from 1937 It contained articles on crafts, arts and historical accounts on the development of modern Nigeria Mixed with an intrigue for African art In a way it was pursuing much of the agenda of the early attempts at Hachimoto College in Ghana Nearly every advertisement in the post-war period was placed by the UAC in the magazine and its subsidiary companies And the magazine often contained articles on the businesses It spoke about the mythology of the river trade, it romanticised histories and suggested a polished benevolence Nigeria's creation, prosperity and future was intimately enveloped with that of the traders The culture and identity of West Africa, according to this magazine, was being presented as that of the company It was indistinguishable Industry and prosperity In ideas on modern living, including images of the new Kingsway stores were presented and discussed The magazine presented industrialisation and commerce as the only way to bring about newness and prosperity Whilst at the same time suggesting their legitimacy and authenticity of these businesses through their long association Cultural connections and ancestral lineage masked the fraught and often violent past The magazines also included extended articles written by leading architects running practices in the region As well as including articles on newly qualified and emerging Nigerian architects It became about positioning modern architecture within a much longer story And at the same time ensuring it was sufficiently new, presented a certain contradiction Other articles focused on cities such as Kaduna on Itcher and often with provocative titles such as Ibaden the Black Metropolis Most of the new buildings discussed in the magazine didn't feature in the UK architectural press But they were very much celebratory and they were used to promote new projects and ventures, cities and collaborations And to position West Africa as a place with a strong cultural identity with technical and artistic vision and ripe for future investments So my summary There was a close connection between the international mercantile activity and the post-colonial nationalist ambition The nationalist and nation building agenda was heavily reliant on the presence and continuation of international capital and trade in business The idea of simply starting again was not possible nor desirable And whilst the Africanization of business saw certain shifts in personnel This wasn't matched by changes in the share structure or ownership But it did result in major shifts in consumer spending patterns and the image or expression of success and modernization This in turn saw investment into new premises and city planning centered around retail and shopping environments and offices That reflected political aspirations for new beginnings and also to reflect a measure of success This close if often unacknowledged relationship, even partnership between the new African politics and international trade Created a fertile setting for architecture, responding to the technical demands of the climate But equally it utilized new materials, developed expressive forms, reflected on cultural references And included sculptural collaboration that resulted in a vast collection of major modernist works There's now an urgent need for these works, especially in terms of the mercantile architecture, to be documented, examined and researched They tell complex contradictory stories as well as being invented collaborations from an overlooked crucible of West African creativity and culture Thank you Good evening everyone Thank you to the Paul Mellon Center and in particular to Shria and also to Shana for making the seminar possible And also for Ian for giving such a wonderful paper So today I'm going to talk about new research that has come out of a collaborative Leverium Funded Project at the University of Liverpool Together with Ian Jackson, who you've just heard, but also with Ewan Harrison and Mikaela Tenzon And this is very much research in progress, but this is a very nice opportunity to share and think through some of these ideas with you tonight So for the past year what we've done is we've gone to the vast archive of the United Africa Company So the British trading company that ultimately became Unilever From West Africa, they extracted palm oil, cocoa and other raw goods while trading back a wide range of other finished goods Such as refrigerators, bicycles, textiles and they even had a suitcase factory, you name it But today, however, I would like to talk about one of those other precious raw commodities Tropical timber, heavy, dark logs of mahogany and other species exported from Ghana and Nigeria back to Britain Where they ended up as floors, paneling, chairs, tables, cabinets, etc So our project investigates how the modern West African city was the product of mercantile encounters Looking at trading posts, offices, company housing, harbours, factories, etc, all built by the United Africa Company And you've just seen some of those buildings, but what I'm also interested in is how the company and how these mercantile exchanges also left an impact on modern architecture and material culture in Britain itself And tonight I would like to explore one simple question with you How does focusing on a building material like tropical timber as opposed to a specific building or a specific architect and tracing where that building material came from, who was involved in its production and how it circulated Allow us to tell a different story or different stories about British post-war architecture and design Oops, too far So I'm going to argue that it allows us to do two things First, to see the extent to which the post-war modern and by that I specifically referred to architecture and design here was dependent on colonial and neocolonial networks of extraction and labour So looking at the provenance of materials and the labour involved in their making in other words allows us to read empire even when we don't think it's there Second, I also think it allows us to rethink the commonly accepted timeline associated with the post-war modern So we often think of 1945 and then perhaps also of decolonisation in the late 50s and early 60s as these moments of radical change of rupture And they really shape our thinking of this period But looking through the lens of materials and looking through the lens of this specific company What we see is a sense of continuity rather than rupture So perhaps and perhaps this is something we can discuss afterwards perhaps the post-war looking from the colonies started a little bit earlier And perhaps that moment of decolonisation wasn't as big of a change looking at it at least from the perspective of this specific company So let's start In 1960 the new modernist headquarters of the United Africa Company or UAC one of the leading British trading businesses extracting palm oil, cocoa, timber and other raw goods from West Africa since the late 19th century Opened near Black rice bridge in central London United Africa House, an imposing modernist high-rise was designed by the British partnership Kenneth Wakeford, Jeremy Harris and consisted of one main tall block which we see here, flanked by two lower five-story buildings, one of which you see here on the left While the structure is grey concrete and glass exterior appeared cold inside The architects used a strikingly large variety of gleaming dark timbers Radiating and here I quote a feeling of warmth unusual in a modern office block and quote Indeed the doors floors and panelling as well as most of the furniture were made of rich deep brown luxurious West African timbers And here I've added some of the specific species used and so on the left what we see here is the entry hall which used West African or African walnut panelling Okay, so African walnut panelling and on the right we see one of the or the chairman's office which had beautiful block gorilla floors, African walnut furniture, as well as these red, red yellow sapele doors The most expensive varieties such as deep brown figured African mahogany were reserved for the top floor boardrooms and the director's dining suite, which we see here on the left, while secretary's furniture was manufactured of cheaper veneers like we see here on the right so we see African mahogany plywood so just a very thin layer More than just a loose reference to West Africa, the timber in United Africa House served as an advertisement for one of the company's most lucrative subsidiaries, the African timber and plywood company So what were one stately tree standing tall and dense remote and human forests in the Niger Delta and Western Ghana had become smooth polished off his chairs parquet floors and cocktail cabinets, transformed through the cheap labor of thousands of local West African workers like we see here on the left and we see them floating some of the logs down the river. Although United Africa House, the building no longer exists is an exceptional example, it was certainly not the only structure containing exotic West African wood in post war Britain. As I will show tonight tropical timber from colonial and subsequently independent Ghana Nigeria was widely used in offices, private homes, but especially many building projects associated with Britain's emerging welfare state. post war Britain with its bond damage city scapes has often been described and depicted as a great nation, and the color grade definitely dominated the recent post war modern exhibition at the Barbican. Yet if post war Britain was a country clouded in a never disappearing gray fog, as art historian Linda needs so eloquently captured in her book the tiger and smoke, then tropical timbers, I would suggest added a warm glow, a polish shine and a hint of color to the new modern brick concrete and steel buildings that would come to dominate the post war city. So the timber used for United Africa House, and as we will see in many other British projects came from two locations, Sapele located in the Niger Delta, which is the white dot you see there on your right. And summer boy close to the Ivory Coast border in Western Ghana, which is the dot we see here on the left. And the other red dots are all locations throughout West Africa that the United Africa company business in so you can start to see how vast of a network. This actually was starting in the 1930s in British Nigeria, the company quickly managed to obtain a monopoly position by systematically buying out local African merchants and smaller British firms, while taking up cheap leases often under questionable circumstances on vast amounts of forest territory. When United Africa House opened in 1960, both locations Sapele and summer boy had grown into two of the largest industrial timber operations in West Africa, which shipped thousands of songplanks and sheets of plywood to Britain per year oriented around a substantial factory site. They both into proper company towns, which in turn were connected to vast infrastructure apparatus of roads and rivers that allowed for the timber to be logged process on and shipped back to Britain. So here on the right and photograph you see the factory site in Sapele Nigeria. We can also see that on the drawing here on the left. And then some of the little dots around that were British bungalows so for managers etc. Then when we go back to the photograph and you look further into distance you can actually see that it had grown into quite a town so that's all workers housing. And in both of these cities or towns together and about 15,000 people lived so it was really quite substantial. While shipping timber and plywood to be used in Britain's construction and furniture industry, the buildings in Sapele and summer boy themselves were made of materials brought over from Britain. The factory buildings and the song play with mill for example, which we see here were were large sheds that consisted of imported prefabricated steel systems. So, these were steel systems that were originally developed by an engineer named over Arab, still company Arab, who developed it for emergency housing after the war in Britain. Here it's obviously skilled up. But this was these were sheds that were very easy to construct and that's cheap. And you can see also in the right how vast of a complex this was. This is what it looks like today. The prefabricated steel structure is still there. We visited two weeks ago. It's still in use as a timber factory, different company. But yeah, you can still, you can also see how what a vast operation. This is the housing for British managers. Built away from the factory site, separated by golf course, which is also still there loosely situated in the tropical forest consisted of concrete again brought over from Britain, as well as metal window frames, also imported. And so when we visited, we actually had to stay in one of these fun loads of them there on the right, which was quite an adventure. So we did some proper embedded history. And you can see those important metal for window frames here on the right as well. Yeah, while the timber and plywood produced by the company contributed as we will see to the making of British post war, post war modernism. The houses of in summer boy also built in the 1940s and 50s seem to look backward in time instead of forward perpetuating the old fashioned traditional idea of the colonial bungalow. Although these bungalows factories and workers housing may not be considered remarkable or monumental architecture, and have therefore been left out of most actually all histories of colonial architecture. Taken together, they formed a physical and economic infrastructure that contributed to the making of British post war modernism. The success of the company was closely tied to British government policy, not just during the post war period but also in the decades before, and allow me here to go slightly back in time before returning to the post war period. This success dependent on the government's push for the use of empire timber or timber from imperial sources, as well as other colonial commodities in the 30s, during a period that public support for the empire was in demise to well known poster campaigns that by the marketing board, one of which we see on the left, and special timber exhibitions across the country on the right we see the catalogue of one of those timber exhibitions 1928 for the Imperial Institute here in London. The African species such as African kayak were introduced to British consumers, as well as architects builders and businesses. And I think what's interesting to note here is that what is marketed here as West African mahogany was technically not West African mahogany, but a different species called kayak. So it wasn't related to Caribbean mahogany, yet it was marketed as such, and quite successfully. However, the largest client of the African timber company at least initially was the British government itself, starting in the 1930s various government departments, railway port and Harvard authorities and public corporations in Britain were required, if possible, to exclusively use public colonies and dominions for building projects. As a result, the Office of Works but also local authorities such as the London County Council, and had a preference for materials wholly or in part obtained from sources within the empire for council housing projects for example. And here we see an example of that. The doors of the Lambert County Court, a building in South London built in 1929. And these were empire timber doors. They were made from Burmese teak, for example, where we see the most extensive use of empire timber, however, is in Britain's post offices, buildings that themselves were key nodes in within a global imperial communication network. In the 1930s, when the interiors of 120 post offices in London were remodeled, most of these contain counter screens and paneling made of tropical timber. And I've been able to detect that at least, at least 11 new branches in London had African mahogany, such as the one in Clapham Common upstairs up there and then also the one at Euston Road. So all the work you see is empire timber, African mahogany, and all of these no longer exist. And so in some of these post office, the timber was labeled. So that clients who would come in would see that this was actually empire timber. And I haven't been able to detect or find an example of that here in London, but we did find an example of that when we went to Ghana two weeks ago. So here, the post office in Secondi. It still had these little labels, the wood itself has been painted over so it's not blue. But before it was painted blue, that was once Macorra, and on the right, I think it's African walnut, and also detailing where for what it was used. In the decades after World War Two, even though the term empire timber was gradually replaced by the more detached and neutral phrase world woods, the use of West African timber flourished. In fact, it was what were to itself and more specifically, the severe timber shortages that brought tropical timber into lower and middle class British interiors. The main uses of West African timber in the 1940s was for the design of utility furniture, the simple functional and modern tables chairs that same cabinets distributed by the government or the state during World War Two, during a period of great scarcity, although often assumed to be manufactured out of homegrown oak, most designs were actually available in two versions oak and for slightly more money in mahogany, most of which came from Africa. For example, the designs here on the bottom were in mahogany and on top from oak. And this is one of these moments I think where perhaps the post war started slightly, or the timeline doesn't quite add up because it starts slightly earlier. In the years thereafter, if we look at some of Britain's most canonical architectural projects, we see tropical timber, although it's abundant use has been overshadowed in the literature by persistent focus on materials were commonly associated with the post war modern such as concrete steel and aluminum. But one only has to consider the iconic designs for the festival Britain held in 1951 on London South Bank, a festival that offered a tonic to the nation, an optimistic technologically infused vision of what the future had to offer. While some of the entry arches which we see here, entering the festival site from modern station were made of Douglas fir, a gift from the Dominion of Canada. The better known and still visible examples are in Royal Festival Hall. And so that's the building we see on the left photo by Nigel Henderson and the interior of Royal Festival Hall on the right. The timber paneled auditorium consisted of West African Gaboon plywood, while Queensland walnut from Australia was used for the doors with teak was likely from Burma, and Mahimby from either Kenya or Uganda for the flooring. Even though there was little space for, for Britain's colonies within the exhibition, and the exhibition poster seem to suggest that modern Britain was once again, an island separated from its vast yet rapidly crumbling empire. The materials tell a different story. Royal Festival halls in some ways was perhaps microcosm of British postwar modernity, a type of modernism that came into being in a world that was still defined by colonialism, financed by imperial extraction, and in a very literal sense, make possible by the extraction of imperial materials. And so the projects associated with the welfare state, such as university sport facilities and civic centers, also relied upon tropical timbers, one could think of, for example, Basil Spence is building for nothing from university senior on the left, containing African and we know that the mahogany for this came from Sapella and summer boy, or the yellow golden a rock with ceilings of the Royal Commonwealth pool in Edinburgh of the late 60s. In many of these instances, architects use tropical timber in juxtaposition with materials such as concrete glass or steel. If the creation of the welfare state helps soften the harsh realities of life in post war Britain, then perhaps tropical timber help temper the austere aesthetic qualities of modernism associated with the post war welfare state. Yet, ubiquity did not equal visibility. Rather, one could argue that the proliferation of tropical timber went hand in hand with its imperceptibility. Many other users of tropical timber, especially as import became more and more affordable, were less iconic and increasingly mundane tropical type plywood was, for example, widely used for purposes such as seating and football stadiums, such as here in whole city, or temporary office spaces, toilet units, camping reception rooms or even fences. Although increasingly invisible to as many users, West African timber also dotted Britain's coastlines as shuttering its landscapes as fences seen here and cities as scaffolding, and this image always makes me a little bit sad. While wrapping up, I'd like to come back to United Africa House in London for a brief moment. It opened, as I mentioned earlier in 1960, the beginning of Britain swinging 60s but also of course the year of Nigeria's independence, following Ghana's independence three years earlier. The abundant use of tropical timber in the United Africa House was not intended as the company's one song. Rather, what we see here is a company in full force, a company that have been planning for independence, plying the new post work post colonial governments with gifts, while participating actively in events that celebrated Ghana's and Nigeria's future. So here we see one of these advertisements, you know, showing what the United Africa company could do for post post colonial Nigeria. And Guam and a crew map of course famously called this the form of neo imperialism, all these British companies that stayed on after colonialism. So rather than being a moment of great change, it was a moment of continuity, even opportunity for many British businesses as historians like Sarah Stockwell has argued. And in doing so, they targeted a new different market and emerging middle class West African audience to put it more bluntly decolonization was a business opportunity. The product launched in the mid 60s exemplified this new focus, a modern prefabricated timber bungalow called the African timber and plywood system, seen here on the photograph on the right sold in this case to well dressed middle class Nigerian lady. Having abstractive materials for decades, the company now sold the British idea of architectural modernity, get made of my of local materials back to the former colonies. And Guam argued in her account of great post war Britain that color was never just color, but conveyed notions of power and even racism in a time of increased migration from the colonies. Then I would argue that materials were never just materials, logged song and process through cheap black labor. These were the materials used to help construct a country that strove toward offering free health care, education, and other services, both rooted at least in theory, in principles of equality. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. See you. Well, thank you so much fixed and Ian for your really, really wonderful papers. And I think what was particularly helpful for me is that I started with a bunch of questions that I had in and then I just watched them being systematically answered by, by your paper, which is fantastic, because it really goes to show the sort of the collaborative way that you're working together as well. So, I have a few questions but I wondered if, if anyone else in the audience has questions and then I'll come back I will I will save my spot for the questions. Okay, thank you so much for both of your talks. And one of the things I was struck by again and again is the prevalence kind of underneath when listing where your archival materials from this is the presence of port sunlight as a as a repository. So we're talking about the design of spaces for workers whether that was in Britain, you know, kind of the importing of, of West African materials or in West Africa for there was a leave an image of a lever brothers building. And if, if you could talk about whether you see a relationship, or if you don't see any relationship between that kind of building of a utopian workers space in port sunlight and then taking that or not taking that to the spaces in West Africa. Should I go first. Yeah. Thank you that's a really, I think that's a really interesting and good question. I mean, perhaps for those who don't know port sunlight or for the non British speakers port sunlight is a workers village outside of Liverpool built for the, what used to be the former headquarters of the, the Unilever or the lever brothers factory. Yeah, it's quite utopian lawns bowling lawns, lots of interesting architecture. And for me what's really striking is that is that contrast right between sort of the utopian quality of port sunlight I mean even though one could say that it was quite restricted in ways. Versus some of the workers housing that we've seen. So we've just visited summer boy was really interesting because so much of the original plan was still there and still preserved, including the factory, the bridge bungalows but also some of the workers housing. And what's also interesting about that is that we've been able to find in the archive of the United Africa company, lots of photographs of the factory of the bridge bungalows, but the workers housing itself has been completely left out. And I think that also says to say something about sort of the thinking that went into them or rather, but didn't go into it. It's quite basic. They're different typologies, which in and of itself is interesting also typologies that we haven't seen anywhere else in Ghana, but a lot of them were very simple barracks. So really rudimentary rudimentary housing. And I love that, which is quite interesting was actually built from timber later on. So one of the few few buildings that was actually built from the local building material rather than imported from Britain. Yeah, Lord leave a hume. He had this utopian vision and he saw himself as aggressive employee employer in some ways he was. He created a town in Congo called leverville, which we're going to go and visit and see it's not it's not a tropicalized ports online. It's very much workers town, very crude basic architecture that Rick's has just described. He did visit West Africa and he did design African houses. He did grew up some plans himself for for a town called Boruto, which was one of the UAC's major ports in Nigeria. So we do know the kind of housing you wanted. He designed a house for a single African worker and educated African worker and married worker. So he was still thinking about kind of categorization of the labor force. Yeah, it's fascinating to look at. Um, I've got a question really for Ian guys spent a bit of time at Akamoto school. I was going in footsteps of Michael Cardew. And they seem to sit tension. There was a kind of sense of guilt about the aesthetics that have been visited on Gold Coast Ghana, corrugated down roofs. And that this was going to be put right at the West African Institute that this bow house isation. What I was focused in was a sort of arts and crafts backwardness that that kind of confused the situation. Hugely, especially in the personality of Michael Cardew, who then relocated to carry these ideas forward in Nigeria, including ideas about particular architecture as opposed to modernist architecture in his pottery training center at Abuja. Whereas the trading companies, particularly Leventis seem to really answer the needs of everyday life in a much more, you know, for example, the whole music industry in Ghana, which was so rich was kind of made possible by Leventis There's a kind of gradualism or a sort of glamour of backwardness about about the more official interventions. So in my mind, the trading companies came to seem, you know, very productive and forward looking. I mean, the whole Acomota significant necruma, who rather disliked Acomota, whether he trained as a teacher there. So he kind of downgraded it. But yeah, that's really. Well, thanks. Thanks for that. I'd love to speak to you more about your experiences over there. And I think you've, that's very, that's how I'm seeing it as well from from the, from the vantage point of the UAC archive. I should stress as well, I think Rick's did that we're very much viewing West Africa through the UAC archive. And therefore we're getting a very particular vantage point. And we're aware of that. Yeah, thank you. I want to ask you a question exactly about that last point you made in about the problems as well as the advantage of being embedded in the way that you talk about being embedded in that archive. We famously embedded journalists become have a much they want to offer a kind of critical commentary on the battalion or the squadron that they're part of, they end up finding a certain kind of camaraderie with and bonding with narratives they find there. And whether how you both dealt with that issue of being embedded in the project and making sure that they can you give us not to celebratory or to bent to, it's not one that ultimately ventriloquizes kind of narratives of the company itself. Thank you for asking most of my question. I was also curious about whether Unilever now, because you're how open are they to critique and also leave a human. Is that a connection. What does that mean. All of these difficult questions. Rich do you want to start and your perspective or do you want me to. Yes, I can start. It's an, it's an issue that we've spent a lot of time thinking about and talking about and we just before we started we had a, we had a conversation about this again relating relating to the book and how to structure the book that's going to come out of it and making sure that it shows multiple perspectives and not just the perspective from the archive. So, first of all, I would say that, even though the project is in collaboration with Unilever and we're using their archive. They're not having any say about what we write or what we do so we, it is very much a critical history of of the United States as a company and I don't think by any means we're trying to glorify glorify what what they've done to rather the opposite. And really trying to shine some light on sort of the extent to which they really had an impact on on West Africa through through this project and also sort of trying to show the archive which is quite incredible also its photographic things in making that public, which would be really helpful and useful. Yeah, it's an amazing archive it's a kilometer in length in terms of the linear meter which is bigger than some of the national archives that you might find in parts of Africa. So it's there isn't a repository like that anywhere else. There's a particular view of the British Empire at that moment through the mercantile industries and USC is huge. So within the archive is the Royal Niger Company collection, which was a company that basically found in set out the boundaries of modern Nigeria that's within within there. And it ran as a little country almost included their own army they had their own wars and battles and all that's within the archive it doesn't feature in the same way. There aren't any photographs certain there are certain silences within the archive which are very apparent. But all these moments are documented and carefully preserved. So if you do a bit of work in the archive and then extract some information extrapolate some of the facts and dates, you can piece together a much richer narrative and that's what we're trying to do. It's not a celebratory piece of work, it's very critical piece of work, actually. And Unilever have been very good about that so Claire tons stores a collaborator in the project she's the global arts and archivist for Unilever. She works with us we have complete access to any part of the archive. We don't even have to ask for the archivist to retrieve the material. We can go into the storerooms and look at anything at any point, which I think is a credit to Unilever to be quite brave to do that and take that risk. And it's funded by leave a few to leave a huge money funded rick salary and the project and our fieldwork is very problematic. And the building which I work with Liverpool School of Architecture it's called the leave a human building Lord leave a human paid for the Liverpool School of Architecture and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and many other institutions in Liverpool. It's fairly problematic, but we've got to do this work now and I think it's really important. And just one final comment, we don't want to write about Africa without the African voice coming through we reject the about us without us approach. And because, because of that we're collaborating with scholars at Kumasi University of Lagos University of Ghana, and we're going to do an exhibition which will be based in West Africa, before it comes back to Europe. And it's actually to add to that also to counter part of the archive by doing interviews, for example, with former employees so hopefully being able to highlight some some other voices that, yeah, to let them come through. So I just asked a quick question around this kind of going back to to Africa. And I think it follows a little bit on what you were asking as well. I think I'm very curious about tensions because, and sort of the relationship between nationalism and the arts schools and the cooperation because I could see that there are quite a lot of things happening and there is, of course, the sort of imperial narrative but I'm very curious about what what is bubbling up at the surface or what is maybe not so much under the surface and that's actually, you know, moments where you really see sort of anti colonial resistance come through, especially around the arts within this kind of broader sphere. So these are the very tricky things to draw out and there's often a tendency to polarize or to reduce things down to simple interpretations and that's something I'm trying to counter to present a much more delicate and nuanced wandering through because even the UAC could respond in quite progressive ways sometimes, but most of the time it didn't care about politics it only cared about its shareholders and profits, and that comes through quite clearly. And then there's a colonial office so the when war broke out for example World War Two, the UAC approach the colonial, the British government said, all of our resources are at your disposal, you can use our ships you can use our stores you can use our ships, and the British government replied by saying, we don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth but really we do we don't, we don't trust them we don't trust them monopoly, we don't want to engage with them. And the UAC was funding projects like an actual motor or the University of Ibadan, or various community centers, which always trying to weave its way in as well to to culture and to present itself as a, as a kind of enlightened and at the same time there's riots so the UAC headquarters called Swan Mill was burned down just after the war when the West African soldiers returned having fought for the British army. And there's mass riots over access to goods and salaries and housing and the UAC was seen as equivalent to the government in that sense. And I think what you really see is that they're, or what was revealing for me going through the archive is that you really see that they're planning for independence. Right. So, they years before Ghana actually becomes independent in 57. They begin to hire more African ventures which is a policy called Africanization, which other British companies also had to follow they started training courses. So, which is not, which really was to enable to continue to be there after independence. I mean I'm just constantly drawing parallels in the air as well because where so much of the cultural nationalism is also embedded in very colonial institutions. So it's quite interesting that that they can just never be a very clean break between this is imperial and this is anti colonial sometimes but especially in the arts. So India was trying to harvest salt or spin their own cloth. And that's that wasn't the case in West Africa didn't tried in some ways but it wasn't a major political agenda in the same way it was in the Indian context. Where do you think architecture fits into like modern decolonial movements like when we think about efforts to like decolonize and address colonial life is use is it just like shedding light on histories of colonialism or like how can architecture be a part of the actual decolonial movement without say like tearing down buildings that may have like exploited African labor like what is architectures role. I think that's a really important question and obviously difficult one to answer. So, so something that we've been talking about and thinking about as well is obviously what to do with a lot of these structures now a lot of which are in this repair crumbling down. Should be preserved should not be preserved. One, one way in which I think architecture can play a really important role is sort of by adding, adding context to these buildings, which can be done in multiple ways right. Adding sort of text adding pattern, but also could be done online for example so we're trying to organize an exhibition as well, which will travel a short photo book with some of the photographs of from the archive but also from today, which can be distributed and it's very accessible and also making these stories more accessible. And I think that that's one one of the ways, one of the ways of doing that. I think it brings up ideas about meaning and symbolism and in things like integrity and authenticity and have higher values. So I think what becomes important is it who designed the building who owned the building or where it is. I think they're all important but I also think architectural meaning is very fluid and can often be changed and read adapted and you can symbolize something else. I mean New Delhi is a huge example of colonial project and it's still there it's viewed in a different way now. I think what the differences in West Africa and in Ghana in particular. There are many colonial buildings but no one knows the history no one knows who owned them. No one, there's a kind of certain amnesia to the buildings, they persist, they continue, they're there, they used in different ways or not, but no one has an architectural understanding of their history. I think it's really important that's got to be set out, because we can't possibly begin to understand and recognize value or not if we don't know anything about who owned it and made it and why. That's that's kind of my project really. Well that's what I want to do for the next 10 years. This question from Inga Fraser, so this is online which perhaps going to pick up on this a little bit. It's for both speakers. You've mentioned a handful of the artists engaged by the UAC for various projects such as Kofi and Dubin, Ian and some of the pre war structures which frequently engaged artists, such as Empire Marketing Board, I wonder whether you could say more about artists and their projects commissioned as part of architectural projects in Britain and Africa by the UAC post war. So it's a question about if you could say more about the visual artists who were engaged. That's a really important question. I mean, in some ways there was a, there was a move in post war Britain to allocate a percentage of a construction project costs to including art and sculpture so sometimes it was as much as 1% of the building costs will be spent on commissioning a piece of artwork. And the, the architects, or a lot of the British architects that were working in Ghana at the time like for Iron Drew were very much committed to that and they wanted to collaborate with with people like Kofi and some of them and many others. And as examples I showed in the Nigerian International Office, which was full of African sculpture and large murals and motifs and so on. And I think that became became in part about softening the modernism a little bit, trying to contextualize it, trying to add a certain sense of the local. But I think it was more than that, I think, I think they saw it as an integral to it. I don't think they could think about designing a building without there being a, an element of didactic storytelling in some way. And that's, I think that's why it was often quite figurative. I think the buildings were designed to be to be read almost. I think they were seen as large texts. The UAC was happy to be sponsoring and funding these artworks but they weren't the drivers, it was very much the architects, like Fry and Drew, Kubit, Kenneth Scott, Nixon and Boris that were really pushing for this. I think the other party that is what is now left in the UAC archive itself and also the Unilever collections, which still has a vast amount of artworks and also gifts given from people they worked with, they trade it with. There's an incredible piece of wood, gigantic, which is now in the Unilever archive, no one ever sees it, it doesn't come out, it's an incredible piece by, I think it's an Nigerian artist, which was given to the UAC. But hopefully, hopefully something will be done, will be done with that. So firstly, thank you. This is a really fascinating look and I think it sets some pointers also for art history and thinking about, you know, looking at histories in this wider network of commissioning and power beyond the aesthetic and its own sort of domain. So picking up that trend, I wanted to ask sort of two questions. One, this focus on the mercantile now and looking at China, and it's sort of mercantile imperialism, if we were to call it that within quote marks. What comparisons, differences do you see, or is that part and parcel or a part of what you're looking at? The second question was really just a response to something we just said in which was this idea that these are things to be read but people don't read them. These are things that are there in West Africa and struck by the parallel between public monuments and sculptures that also kind of appear and were quite often sort of subscribed and then are forgotten and we will pass them. And, you know, they're largely mute but carry meaning. And I wonder if that's some, if that's a comparison that is fruitful. So let me respond to your first question and then I'm going to let you respond to both of them. But that's actually really interesting point, which we haven't really thought about. But what I would say is that there is an architectural historian called Roskam, who has written quite extensively about China's increasing sort of breadth in different parts of Africa, and what has come out of that. So, if this is something that interests you that might perhaps be interesting. I think in terms of comparison, maybe this is something we can only establish in a couple of decades, sort of to see whether we can really just to see after some of these big Chinese projects that have come out, sort of, can see what the impact of them when they've been completed, what the workers housing built for these projects is etc. So perhaps perhaps it needs a bit more time to fully see the extent of China's investment in Africa to make to make a comparison like that. It's a great question because the Chinese presence in West Africa is growing all the time you can see you can now start to see the tangible impact. So in the fishing harbour in a craft for example. The beach has been cleared and it's been demolished in the building of Chinese sponsored fishing factory that is going to have a dramatic impact on the on the landscape and something I've been documenting over the over the years. You're driving through parts of quite remote parts of Ghana now where there's mining and mineral extraction. There are Chinese characters and signage on quite small shops. So, they're obviously selling to Chinese workers who are based on these forests and mining sensors. But it is starting to change and I think it is a kind of imperialism. I don't think it's an answer difficult word to use but I think it is. And I think it needs to be looked at and researched very carefully for obvious reasons. And then in terms of the monuments and the muteness I think that happens over time to all monuments they become less relevant and have containing less meaning sometimes. That's definitely happened both with the nationalist projects in Ghana, like Black Star Square for example. It's now a huge parade ground which is rarely used. Maybe the kind of triumphal arch with the black star on doesn't contain the same amount of meaning is now effectively around about. There are British monuments like an obelisk celebrating the shanty war from 1900 in a car and the markets been built around us and it's now in kind of some food and loss within the market, and only just recently excavated again, as this market is being refurbished as kind of an archeology taking place. So yeah, I think that's great to look and certainly lots more research that has to happen on that. Thank you. Thank you. I would, I would question your example of festival hall as as as I had the privilege of talking to the architect and essentially the, the wood is incidental to the building, the buildings essentially in often used in innovative ways. So I'm not sure that your example really stands as as an exemplar of the use of wood. And on the question of the continuities, which you you highlighted, well I agree with that, and your latest answer from Ian. I think is the fact that basically colonialism never went away. And independence was in many instances a sham. It was replaced by multinational colonialism and now Chinese colonialism. So, when you when you gave the example of steel being imported from Britain, the country without without a steel factory cannot really be independent. And the continuities as well are reflected in the fact that comparator bourgeoisie is just continued, and these patterns of trade just continue regardless of independence so I think your thesis is slightly uneven because trade continues regardless of the governance structure or colonialism where he's called colonialism independence, trade just continues. So I think you need to examine your conclusions a bit more carefully. If I may respond to your first remark about Royal Festival Hall. What I tried to show tonight is that even, even if architects like Leslie Martin or the others who worked on Royal Festival Hall, did not think carefully about the type of wood they used doesn't mean that it doesn't have any meaning. I think that's really sort of shows the points that the unintentional use of these types of materials, the fact that a lot of architects perhaps not even thought about the fact that they use West African timber or timber from anywhere else. So it really shows the ubiquity of that material. And in that sense what I tried to sort of what I said sort of the imperceptibility of it. So if it's total pervasiveness from its wood being used in Royal Festival Hall to sort of a fence in a village in the Midlands. There needs to be intentional wood for it to be an example of, of that, of the pervasiveness of the colonial system and that system of extraction. I would agree. I would agree with that I think they had a choice so Leslie Martin had a choice to me, you didn't have to use wood. You could have used rubber floors but he didn't he chose wood. And then where does that would come from and why did he want, why did he want to use it. And of course they could be shaped and molded and steamed and it's timbers was written out of the story of modern architecture in many ways. And what what Rick's is doing I think successfully is weaving it back in and saying actually, it's much more central to the story of modern architecture than you previously thought. And I think that's, and then that raises a question where do you get it from or what would, who's making it who's chopping it who's where the sawmills, and it creates a totally different architectural history, not one about that's not one about form of not even about aesthetics but about networks processes and the movement of materials and labor and capital. I don't think colonialism or I don't think I'm independence is a sham. I just think it's done. It's not done in perfect ways. And we've got to look at imperfection and how people try to do things that they often failed and they often succeeded in other ways. So you can't have a you can be independent without a steel factory. So the consumer tried to do it by having an aluminium factory, try to create a dam to produce electricity, and then to extract bauxite and then to smelt aluminium in Ghana to be self sustaining. They couldn't do that entirely with his own expertise and workforce or capital necessarily but he's still still achieved it. You don't have to trade every country has to trade of course but then what are the balances. Is it a fair trade is it sustainable trade. And it's easy to always look at the West African cities and or West African architecture or even governments and countries as failures. How to look at the problems of West African, what we're trying to do is to say well yeah there are problems we're not going to ignore them. And also we want to try and celebrate what is good. And there's some absolutely wonderful architecture in West Africa extraordinary works, which you often ignored. And for me I just think we've got to look at them a little bit more carefully and also to look for in a way what's beautiful in the West African city to. I really appreciate your question, and we do need to work on the conclusions. But we're midway through the project. Hi, great presentation. Just had a question about choice of materials that were used by the architects around the 50s and the post war. Most European in West Africa, designing buildings. Do you have the choice of materials is deliberate, or just, you know, it'd be interesting whether you have any comments on that because I think in Ghana. At the moment, there's a discussion going on around sustainability and climate change, and natural rights and third break and and timber. So we need to local architects they say we can't get anything but we can't we can't most of the timbers exported still. And so the story we use to start the 50s is still happening today in 2022. So I'm just wondering whether from a legacy perspective you can comment on how choice of materials which may have been deliberate or not is actually impacting the current potential scene in Ghana and West Africa in general today in light of the climate change issues that are all around. I think that's a really, really important question. I'll talk into the microphone. I think that's a really important question. I think as you point out, so that the question of materials today is political in in a country like Ghana. It was then as well. And it makes me think of Richard Wright, the African American journalist went to West Africa, right before independence and interviewed Kwame Krumah. And I sense they were tonight. Nice book about it. And in it he, they talk about, for example, concrete and a Krumah wanting to build in concrete but saying, we don't have a concrete factory here, we need to import it from Britain. And that only came later. So the modern architecture that you talked about was mostly concrete, which was mostly imported from Britain. The buildings I showed in summer boy, again, most of the materials were imported from Britain. However, that's not to say that there weren't experiments being done with other materials. There's another British architect who worked for the local office of works, public public Department of Works, who experimented for example with round earths. And she tried to promote for a while as swish crude, right, it wasn't actually concrete he was just round earth at it was a tiny amount of concrete to it, and then try to market it as such. And so there were, there were sort of interesting experiments being done at a smaller scale to sort of get around that problem of importing importing everything from Britain. Yeah, there was an edge as well to the use of adobe and mud. So a lot of communities when they tried to do village housing rejected that and said, we want cement, we want concrete blocks. There was even a pitched roof with a central ridge was desired over a sloping mono pitch roof, laid with corrugated iron because a ridge was seen as desirable an aspiration or it was a proper roof. So I think it depending on who you were designed for and example rick's juice this this person Alfred Alcock Alcock was trying to celebrate local materials to save the importation costs. I think the 400,000 bags of cement per month has been imported at one point into Ghana alone. And that was stopping the importation of other goods, because that was taking up room on the ships. And that contributed to inflation, which caused the economy to overheat which made construction more expensive. So even just that choice of using concrete had major ramifications on other goods that were available and accessible to people in terms of sustainability. This is a reason why I think we've got to understand some of these structures because it can be reused and it can be shouldn't be just demolished and replaced with a lot of the glass and steel structures that are now being built in Ghana. And there's some good work being done at the moment on how tropical modernism performs climatically, how comfortable people feel within a naturally ventilated structure, and whether it's necessary in fact to chill the interior of modern buildings to the extent that they currently are. So all the building regulations and design guides that are used in West Africa actually based on American and European design guides, and suggesting a comfort level of 21 degrees C. The research that we've been doing at Liverpool suggests that people are comfortable in buildings that are up to 28 or even 30 degrees C. And so to such low temperatures. So I think there's quite fascinating discussions to have around material choices and how buildings are cooled and the role of tropical modernist architecture as well. I have. Yeah, I have one very sort of practical question in a sense, but since we are talking about import, and I was just really quite curious about timber being brought so much timber as well being brought to Britain and there's a living sort of thing, which I assume also carried other non human species with it and I don't know now. There's quite a lot of sort of restrictions on importing wood from different parts of the country, different parts of the world. Yes, I think I'm just quite curious about what if that if there were any repercussions in terms of bringing bringing wood and insects or, and whether I mean this is wishful thinking on my part but whether it's a lead to some kind of you know, a small resistance in a way because it started something else but yeah just curious. Interesting. I have to think about that. When part of the wood, sort of a big change that happened in the 1940s was that they started. So, they started sawing logs in Ghana and Nigeria itself. So rather than exporting sort of entire locks to Britain, they started sort of shipping that the main keep on the captain shipping the son locks which obviously was more much cheaper. And, but that also meant that the log, many of much of the wood was very heavily treated with anti, anti termite spray etc. And so probably at that point sort of very little insect would have come would have come to Britain. Yeah, I'm just quite curious about like how things travel and stay on questions like that. It was a really extensive system so we looked at these two sites where the timber came from but they really were part of this very big infrastructural apparatus in order to ship and process the timber they had to build hundreds of kilometers bridges. It sometimes took weeks for those logs from the concessions to be even floated down to some summer boy in Sapele before it would be shipped to Britain. So it was enormous, really an enormous undertaking. Part of the story as well is that the United Africa Company had its own shipping line, palm line, which was another subsidiary company. And it was brought to Liverpool or the West India doctor in London. Yeah, last question from Mark, and then Thanks, sorry to have a second question but really it's to Riggs I'd say both those papers are just fantastic I think I've learned as much in a, in three quarters of an hour for a long time as I did tonight. So kind of falling on or bouncing back of what Hamad said about what our history might learn from the kind of work that you two are doing, but also how issues around aesthetics and form do seem to inform the kind of work you're doing with timber. And I'd write it'd be great for you to talk a bit more about the ways the aesthetics of the different kinds of wood, and how they operated within the British context of the buildings that you showcase and the ways in which they were understood to work. So if you're in a room with mahogany, how does that mahogany being experienced or read, if you're a participant in its, in its environment. And that's something that's really hard for us to understand now in part because all of the photographs of these projects, we have are in black and white, which really don't show richness, and so the variations in colors and textures of these projects, which is why I tried to add at some of the colors so you can start to see the different textures and shapes to it. But I think, I think a project like United Africa House really shows that architects were thinking carefully about the different types of different colors of timber they used. And also, thinking about them together and if you look, there's an incredible white range of variations of fine grain, sort of broader grains to be used. I'm just trying to think what what our history can learn from our methodology and I haven't thought about that before. And for me I'm trying, I'm not trying to write an architectural history that's about progression of form and styles. I'm not interested in, obviously the shape of buildings but for me I think it's more about land ownership function power, and also biography as well of how people and ideas travel. I'm not sure if I'm sure people in our history must be doing that, but I think architecture, I think because it's rooted in space and because it's responding to something bigger than the architects ambition perhaps. That's what draws me in draws me into it. I don't know I think that's, that's my approach I don't have answered your question. I may add to that I think I think there's something scalar about the approach we have that perhaps architectural history has to offer sort of being able, because we think about spaces at different skills, we think about the building, and then we go smaller sort of we look at the material, but also bigger because we look at it in its urban context, and territorial, I think that's quite useful, especially about thinking and doing these histories of colonial architecture and also our history to be able to sort of scale up and because in order to fully grasp sort of the extent to, for example, what the United Africa company what they were doing sort of, if you have to be able to sort of zoom out to massive skill in order to understand the vastness. And yet, also, I think to be able to zoom in to see to look at a cocktail cabinet in United Africa House. Okay, this is sort of through these different steps sort of can be traced back to a mahogany tree in Western Ghana. I think we even joined from geography more, more as well in terms of the approach of David Harvey, Dori, Massey, rather than our history, I would say. On that note. I really just want to say thanks to both Ian and Rick's for in some sense also closing the series with such a rich conversation. So thank you. Thanks to all of you both in person and online for for coming to this event but also other events in the series and we look forward to. Well at the moment look forward to a reception next door and then having you back in the center and online for future events. So thank you.