Dr. David Rifkind is a director of the School of Architecture at the University of Florida. As he shared in his brief introduction, he has been contributing extensively through his professional works, publications, and ongoing book and architectural projects. His training informs his professional work as an Architect, his concerns about sustainability, resilience, and climate justice, as well as his interest in exploring the built environment and the material and process history. One of his works, for instance, is a critical reevaluation of the housing project in Miami and its shortcomings in terms of legal and climate justice. Furthermore, as a historian of the built environment, he questions how political policies and cultural practices, especially in the US, contribute to inequality illustrated in the built environments. His several publications as a historian of Architecture include those that focus on Ethiopia, the USA, and Italy among others. His first book The Battle of Modernism examines the relationship between state politics and architectural culture in Fascist Italy and was based on his dissertation research. In addition to the book project on Ethiopia from which he is talking today, Dr. Rifkind is currently working on other book projects such as Architectural Graphic and African Diaspora in the United States.
The title of Dr. Rifkind’s Baraza talk was Addis Ababa, Architecture and Urbanism, taken from his new book project “Modern Ethiopia: Architecture, Urbanism and the Building of a Nation.” Using the history of Addis Ababa’s 140 years of urban and architectural development Dr. Rifkind addressed two important points. While the first is the importance of using buildings, cities, and landscapes as evidence to tell the cultural and political history of places, the second is how that evidence stands in contrast to some of the pertaining histories that are told as modern Ethiopian history.
Of the 140 years of Addis’s history Dr. Rifkind focused on the city’s development before and after the six-year Italian occupation (1935-1941). Addis Ababa’s foundation was in 1884 by Emperor Menelik II. Subsequently, it was developed as the permanent capital city of the modern Ethiopian empire when the emperor moved his imperial palace to Addis in 1887, after which followed by several foreign merchants, visitors, craftsmen and court members. Dr. Rifkind spoke about the change and continuity ever since in Addis’s transformation to be the cultural and political hub as well as an international diplomatic center, enduring occupation and regime changes.
Dr. Rifkind highlighted that Addis is a snapshot that illustrates the wealth of Ethiopian architectural invention and its complexity. He claimed that it also reflects Ethiopia’s status as an independent country, empire, and kingdom that modernizes itself in its own terms outside of the influence of European modernization. That could be detected on the royal courts complex (Gibi in local terms), viewed, as the country’s political and cultural power center. However, Dr. Rifkind argued that as the city was also designed to become an international diplomatic center, foreign craftsmen were involved in its construction influencing the architectural designs of the city’s buildings, churches, and courts. Armenian, South Asian (Gujurati), and European (neo-classic architectural designs brought by German architects) are the most significant ones.
In his discussion about the history of Addis’s construction during the six years of Italian occupation, Dr. Rifkind challenged the prevailing political narrative of modern Ethiopian history that assumes the Italian occupation as a rupture in the construction of the modern Ethiopian state. He rather claimed that the occupation should be understood as a continuation if not acceleration in terms of development and construction, especially in Addis. Italians continued and accelerated the construction and expansion of Addis based upon what Emperor Haile Sillasse was doing. Further, Dr. Rifkind claimed that the transformation of Addis could be the opportunity for the Italian Fascist regime to rethink the transformation of Rome and bring back urbanism techniques home. This was illustrated by Addis Ababa’s master plan prepared by the Italians and the one for Rome shared by Dr. Rifkind to show overlap. Emperor Haile Selassie, who was in exile during the six-year occupation, picked up the construction project from where the Italians left; he even adopted the master plan of the city designed by the Italians. After the imperial regime toppled down, the Socialist Derg that replaced it invited architects from Yugoslavia to work along with Ethiopian architects in constructions of workers housing projects. In the past 20 years, Dr. Rifkind noted, Ethiopia witnessed the influx of foreign aid and investment. China, being one of the emerging donors, placed its political monument by building the new African Union building in Addis, designed by Chinese architects, as a diplomatic gift. As a result several tall buildings and continental and international institutional monuments along with banks, hotels, commercial centers, railways, public parks and recreational spaces, have been constructed, transforming Addis into a cosmopolitan, political and developmental hub as its territory expands.
Recap written by Yekatit G. Tsehayu