Architecture's 'Human Resource': Kumasi, London, and the Consultancy for Independence

Brenchat Aguilar, Albert (2024) Architecture's 'Human Resource': Kumasi, London, and the Consultancy for Independence. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of functionalist social sciences in international networks of architecture and planning consultancy, redefining the relationship between the human and the environment in the wake of decolonisation struggles ending the British Empire. It suggests that through consultancy practices, humans were conceived as resources for the design and construction of the built environment in national developmentalist and neocolonial projects. This thesis focuses on the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s interactions between two sites of international intelligentsia which cultivated approaches to ‘human resources’: the Department of Tropical Studies at the Architectural Association of London and the Faculty of Architecture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. Chapter 1 explores manpower planning in architecture as a multidisciplinary field of study and practice that aims for the optimal use of ‘human resources’. Chapter 2 examines consultancy planning methodologies alienating planners from the land and its population. Chapter 3 turns to functionalist social-sciences epistemic traditions that conceived the nation as a whole where each of its elements, humans included, had a function. Chapter 4 explores a notion of progress and change that conceived ‘human resources’ becoming managers of other ‘human resources’ and the environment. The thesis concludes that at a time when strong leaderships shaped the postcolonial nation and international powers feared losing control, a structure of practices, methodologies, epistemes, and processes sprang up to exploit the working classes and migrants through the shaping of their lives, their knowledges, their aspirations, and their sense of selves. Meanwhile, this structure quashed alternative, empowering, and globally just proposals so that they ran out of economic possibilities and international validation. Attention to those counter-proposals provides new avenues of architectural practice that connect directly to contemporary artistic practices at KNUST.

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