Educational Media Reviews Online

Nearly fifty years after they had been shipped to and assembled in Brazzaville, Congo, and Niamey, Niger, three Jean Prouvé designed prefabricated houses were purchased, disassembled, and transported off the African continent to be shown and sold as art objects. Among those who noted this with interest was Portuguese artist Angela Ferreira, who made an installation based on the “maisons tropicales” for the 2007 Vienna Biennale. This documentary was commissioned to complement the Ferreira installation. In it, filmmaker Manthia Diawara and Ferreira visit the African sites of the houses, speaking with locals who had owned or taken shelter in the houses or had seen them taken away. These people were asked about their experiences with the houses and their feelings about their removal.

So the film both is and isn’t about the houses themselves. The history provided about them is sketchy, and not a lot is presented about the design details of these aluminum houses. Beyond telling the postcolonial story of the houses, the film is meant to speak to the relationship between Europe and Africa and to the “complicity of modernity, colonialism, and architecture.” The houses and other colonial era buildings shown are described as exemplars of European modernism, out of place in their African surroundings. The owner says that the houses were considered scary by passersby. Scary, perhaps, but the houses are part of the heritage of these cities. One person suggests that the Brazzaville houses should have become a museum. Instead, the reassembled houses have been on display at European museums.

The picture quality is good, and only in one short segment is there a slight problem with the sound. Some of the spoken English is heavily accented, and there are subtitles for the non-English speakers. The viewer doesn’t get a real sense of what these houses looked like until the end of the film when one them is shown assembled in Queens, New York. It sold at auction for nearly $5,000,000.

A lot of context should be provided before showing this to students. I found that reading some good articles on the documentary, including an interview with Diawara, increased my appreciation of the film on second viewing. This isn’t a “must add” to a collection; the audience for it on most campuses will be limited. It would be most useful in classes exploring colonialism in Africa and its aftermath. It would have somewhat less appeal for architecture students because there is only a short discussion of modernism, Prouvé, and the imposition of European forms on non-Western cultures. Despite these reservations, however, this film raises some important questions through the unusual story of these houses.