Buildings old and new are chosen as prisms through which arguments and broader narratives are constructed. In that sense they are not so far removed from the profound social engineering embedded in the design of labour camps and workers’ houses, a key topic of architectural investigation in the postwar years. Ever since Adam Hochschild’s best-selling 1998 book The renovated Royal Museum for Central Africa, by architect Stéphane Beel, viewed from the new reception pavilion. Ironically, the building immediately became the symbol of the new independent state of Congo, later Zaire, and today is still known as the Palais de la Nation. We use cookies to personalize and improve your experience on our site. Belgium seems to have lacked such an idea’The story of the building of the new residence for the governor general similarly was one of failed ambitions. Soon the Congo became the richest economy in Africa.There was still much racism and discrimination in the Congo, however, and soon the people of Congo began searching for a path towards independence. Image: Luca Beel So the stakes at the re-opening of the museum are high, echoing international expectations in 2005, when the RMCA mounted a large-scale historical exhibition, entitled Paraphrasing Edward Said, one can contend that to successfully ‘possess an empire’, one needs, first, to ‘have an idea of possessing an empire’. Colonization of the Congo. Search this site. The architectural and urban colonial legacy of the Congo should not be seen through the prism of a Belgian-Congolese context, but from a global perspectiveEarly December 2018, the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren, built between 1904 and 1908 at the initiative of Leopold II, is going to re-open its doors after a long and intensive renovation process. In their fearless storytelling, independent critical voices explore the forces that shape the homes, cities and places we inhabit. The colonial city was a dual one, with a European part neatly divided from the African Lubumbashi urban plan showing, left, the European town and, right, the first The urban plan of the city of Lubumbashi, formerly known as Elisabethville, in the southern mining province of Katanga, provides one of the most telling examples of this principle. Masterplan for the Axe du Palais du Dominion, Léopoldville, architect Georges Ricquier, 1948Yet Belgium did build a lot in Congo, especially during the postwar years, when the government launched its first – and last – Drawing on information wilfully provided by official propaganda services, postwar international media like The competition entry for a cultural centre in Kinshasa by Takamasa Yoshizaka, 1958, in Udo Kultermann, Neues Bauen in Afrika, Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, 1963But we should not forget that modern architecture is not necessarily emancipatory in nature, especially not in a colonial context. The Belgian Congo is often cited as one of the most brutal and exploitative colonial regimes in modern history. Maps of the Belgian Congo; Europeans in Africa; ... King Leopold and the Belgian government officially took over direct control of the Congo in 1908. Imperialism in the Belgian Congo. Many European nations were already in control of a country and they choose other African countries over the Congo. There are striking parallels with Brussels. Since Britain declined interest in making the Congo a colony, Stanley agreed to work secretly and for a large paycheck for Leopold for five years to help him turn the Congo into a colony (Pakenham 60). During the wars, as Belgium was dealing with fighting at home, it played less and less of a role in governing the territory and economy in the Congo. Belgian exploration and administration took place from the 1870s until the 1920s. Quite the contrary, and between 1923 and 1960, a number of fascinating and sometimes overstretched designs were proposed to give Kinshasa, or Léopoldville as it then was called, a majestic cityscape. In the mid-’50s, the then Minister of Colonies, for instance, was still hoping to have his administration housed in an impressive new administrative complex along the Avenue Louise, one of the capital city’s most important boulevards. The RMCA is deeply entangled with the identity of Belgium. Stanley explained his motivation: “As yet the Congo basin is a blank, a fruitless waste, a desolate and unproductive area . As Herman Asselberghs and Dieter Lesage noted in their 1999 provocative plea for rethinking what they considered the ‘museum of the nation’, it is the Belgian place The interest of the RMCA, however, reaches far beyond the national borders.