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This paper addresses self-help manuals presenting planning, building and survival knowledge in the form of comic strips. They were designed by the Communication Centre of Scientific Knowledge for Self-Reliance (CCSK) and distributed globally, with a particular focus on India. The CCSK, founded in 1982-83 by architects Yona Friedman and Eda Schaur and funded by the United Nations University (UNU), imagined a multidirectional exchange of different forms of expertise, taking the knowledge and agency of non-professionals into account and aiming to question conventional concepts of the expert. This paper asks how different forms of expertise were acknowledged, constructed, and challenged in the CCSK manuals. It situates Schaur and Friedman’s work within the discourse on self-help in general and on “appropriate technology” and the role of communication media and visualization techniques in development aid in particular. Although the knowledge transfer from “developing countries” to industrialized ones remained largely imaginary, the CCSK contributed to establishing development as a global and mutual learning process, a concept especially advocated by the UNU.

My grandfather, Charles Eric Wilkinson, was a black architect-builder involved in major government-sponsored building and infrastructure projects in British Guiana from the 1930s to the 1970s. I place Wilkinson’s built work and its surviving archive of bookkeeping ledgers, letters, photographs, and architectural drawings in conversation with material from national archives in Guyana and England, adding oral histories from family members. White architects stationed in British Guiana and the Caribbean reported back to England about the “skilled craftsmen” (carpenters and building contractors) that they observed. Based on family lore and archives, I question the interactions between the supposed foreign “expert” architects and the local builders, seeking to document this period more accurately through architectural work that has remained in the shadows. The backdrop to my research is the rise of foreign-aided, self-help building schemes in British Guiana in 1954, the same year that Wilkinson endeavored to build a concrete house for his family. British and US architects were involved in British Guiana’s planning and housing development work. Howard Mackey, a Black American professor at Howard University, was on a team contributing to the self-help project. This period of Britain transitioning its so-called dependencies to self-sufficiencies provides an important context for understanding the role that black builders would play in shaping the built environment of the (independent) nation to come.

The year 1923 was a turning point for Turkey. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire after a long war brought in Republican ideology centered on economic self-sufficiency and modern, secular values. With the proclamation of the Republic, the reconstruction of war-torn historical cities became a priority, to spread the new ideology and meet the country’s industrial needs. The new authorities encouraged municipalities to consult with Western European architects, many of whom were invited in the first years of the Republic. Their knowledge of the latest technologies and modern urban planning principles in Europe were to be applied to reconstruct Anatolian towns and villages according to the modern ideology. To facilitate this cooperation, the Society of Studies for the Reconstruction of İzmir was established in Paris in 1922. It brought together French experts and Turkish authorities during the planning process of Western Anatolian cities. The most prominent French consultants were Paris-based Henri Prost and Rene Danger, working together in France after having gained long-term experience in French colonies. This paper, firstly, highlights the mobility of these French professionals in Western Anatolia by tracing the history of their planning studies. Secondly, framing the political tension between the two countries, it aims to investigate whether the perspectives of the Turkish authorities associated the guest French architects and planners with colonial France. Lastly, it focuses on the post-war reconstruction process of historical cities in Western Anatolia, discussing the results of the interaction of the decision-makers and focusing on İzmir, Manisa, and Uşak.

This paper discusses the trajectory and production of the French architecture firm Kalt—Pouradier-Duteil—Vignal. This firm was very prolific in Africa from the late colonial period right up to the 1980s, the author argues, because of its flexibility towards the constantly changing political, economic and socio-cultural context in which it operated. It was first active in the colonial context of mise-en-valeur du territoire, refashioned itself in the post-independence era to become a major consultant to the European Union’s development aid agency and ultimately realised various types of projects throughout West Africa for a wide range of clients, both African and foreign. While throughout this period, commissions for foreign architects in Africa were generally tied to a particular company, international (aid) organisation or (colonial) state agency—which meant that work opportunities ceased if the institutional framework disintegrated—KPDV managed to stay on the African scene for almost thirty years. By discussing a select number of projects designed by KPDV, the author will show that the office accomplished this by constantly reformulating its modes of design, research, building practices and project management in response to the quickly changing context in which it operated.