Located in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, ‘La Maison du Peuples’ (the House of the People) stands as an amalgamation of brutalist formidability and soft ornamentation. Its warm concrete facade blends into the surrounding rich-toned earth, while skylights integrated into the roof allow for natural light to illuminate the auditorium where political debate and democratic governance was exercised for decades following the nation’s independence from France in 1960. Devotion to Brutalism’s functionality takes the form of monolithic ramps leading citizens onto the first floor, exterior sculptural downspouts for drainage, and the pentagonal organization of seats for optimal viewing. The main auditorium, which has in recent years been used as a theater, transitioning the building’s purpose from a legislative assembly site to a cultural hub, incorporates a unique triangular waffle slab ceiling and local motifs that recall traditional Mossi architecture.
The civic center is one of the most famous examples of modernist architecture in the Global South, an architectural style which has long been associated with the physical development of post-colonial, newly sovereign states and their new national identities. However, the building has recently fallen into an “advanced state of decay” amidst Burkina Faso’s political instability and conflict.
The latest World Monuments Watch List, conducted by the World Monuments Fund, included La Maison du Peuples as one of the most under-threat buildings of 2022-2024 Burkina Faso’s current state of conflict. Multiple military coups and insurgencies have subverted democracy, caused bloodshed, and led to authoritarianism. ‘La Maison du Peuples’ is under threat, a development that is calling into question the role of modernism as the architecture of sustainable independence. Some architectural historians argue that the style does not represent anti-colonial resistance since modernism throughout Africa and the Middle East was largely built by colonizing regimes. Though described by the renowned Burkinabe architect Francis Kéré as “the finest example of modernist architecture in Burkina Faso and one of the most important examples of modernism in Africa,” the threat to “La Maison du Peuples” is symbolic of the legacy of French colonialism and the failure of nation building in the region. According to this analysis, the architectural style embodies, rather than subverts, the ramifications of imperial rule.
Modernism emerged in the 1920s in wake of World War I as a physical embodiment of European society’s disillusionment with the imperial systems and actors that had led to the war’s outbreak. Defined largely by its function over form principle, a signature of the post techno-industrialization period, the style’s universalism reflects the optimistic liberalism that emerged in the latter half of the 20th century. The architectural style is the physical embodiment of the ideological infrastructure that developed during this time, with its open floor plan and truth to materials tenet pointing to values of egalitarianism. Many associate a particular strain of mid-century modernism, brutalism––from the French “béton-brut” i.e. raw concrete––with the Soviet Union, drawing out a largely sensationalized backlash to what is seen as the architecture of Communism. However, recent work by historians has elucidated the long history and presence of both modernism and brutalism in the post-colonial architectural landscape, presenting a different ideological potential, one of colonial resistance and self-determination.
Between 1957 and 1966, 33 African nations, including Burkina Faso, threw off colonial rule and established themselves as sovereign autonomous entities. During the late 1960s, Middle Eastern nations including Kuwait, Yemen, and several of the Gulf States joined their ranks, followed by Bangladesh representing the late period of decolonization in South Asia. This new era of independent governments sparked the construction of new brutalist buildings to house them in, leading to the peak of brutalism as a building style. This phenomenon is reflected in the Kenyatta International Convention Centre in Nairobi as well as in the Bangladeshi national parliament house in Dhaka, which both utilize imposing geometric shapes and the concrete medium. This futuristic architecture mirrored the future-facing spirit of these newly sovereign nations, an optimism inspired in part by the industrial boom which allowed for the required advanced construction methods.
As a result, the movement of post-colonial independence and brutalism became conflated, with the latter representing and housing the former. In short, brutalism built the post-colonial national identity and the Maison du Peuples was viewed as doing just this in the new Burkina Faso. Lived environments concretely alter inhabitants’ social relationships––either fostering or inhibiting communal gatherings––and inherently interpellate their cultural and community identities. The Maison du Peuples can on the one hand support this argument given its inherent politicization as a political center and now civic center. Yet, one cannot ignore glaring inconsistencies in this interpretation of brutalism as an architecture of a newly liberated people considering the national origin of post-colonial brutalist architects and the inability to reconcile this narrative when postcolonial nation building projects fail.
La Maison du Peuples, while commissioned and built directly after Burkinabe independence, was designed by the French architect René Faublée. In places as diverse as Kenya and Bangladesh, architects designing these brutalist buildings embodying state liberation were not local but instead hailed from central Europe, Scandinavia, and oftentimes the former colonial power. The architect Manuel Herz goes so far as to argue that the anti-local nature of modernism was “one of the very motifs that the empires used to colonize Africa”. In the context of independence formation, then, modernism and more specifically brutalism can be viewed as a cultural Stockholm syndrome.
Burkina Faso’s national instability is at odds with the national optimism instilled in the corpus of the La Maison du Peuples, especially considering the direct threat it poses to the building. The multiple military coups in the span of a year in 2022, responding both to the government’s handling of the insurgencies as well as to the 2014 riots over President Blaise Compaoré’s attempt to extend his 27 year rule, has resulted in the instability of the political system. This turbulence and lack of democratic rule has led to failures in governmental programs and infrastructure upkeep, including of La Maison du Peuples. Renewed French intervention from 2014 to the present reinforces this irony. The launch of French soldiers under “Operation Barkhane” against Jihadist groups with the authorization of the Burkinabe government saw the return of France’s military presence to the region. Claiming to “become the French pillar of counterterrorism in the Sahel region” the operation involved not only French soldiers deployed to Burkina Faso but to several new nation states of the former empire, including Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. The French military bases set up in these four nations were a concrete physical infrastructure for the ensuing remnants of French colonialism. In a more figurative sense, the promise of a strong post-colonial Burkina Faso has been compromised by these recent neo-colonial French interventions.
The history of La Maison du Peuple in the context of Burkina Faso’s failure of nation building gives the building a complex symbolism, one that can be extended to the wider analysis of modernism and brutalist architecture in the post-colonial world. The architectural style, despite having long been associated with a variety of egalitarian ideologies, is in practice no longer—and arguably never has been—the infrastructure of anti-imperialism. The irony of the building’s decay points to colonialism’s legacy, a legacy which inhibits the construction of flourishing independent states.