Africa's leading architect, Pierre Goudiaby, known as Atepa, 'the builder', celebrated his 60th birthday in July this year but remains indefatigable in his efforts to ensure a brighter future for his children and all of Africa, as Jenny Cathcart discovers
Born in Baila on the Atlantic seaboard of Southern Senegal, Pierre Goudiaby grew up familiar with two- storey mud dwellings and houses on stilts erected by the Diola people to harvest rice. Today, he is using his skills as a builder of confidence and African unity, linking ancient values with modern technology. Educated in New York's Rensselaer Institute, he might have been an astronaut, for some of his classmates went on to work at NASA, but he remained faithful to the vocation he discovered when a priest at St Joseph's chapel in Medina, Dakar, where he was a choirboy, allowed him to choose the design for new church bell towers.
Born in Baila on the Atlantic seaboard of Southern Senegal, Pierre Goudiaby grew up familiar with two- storey mud dwellings and houses on stilts erected by the Diola people to harvest rice. Today, he is using his skills as a builder of confidence and African unity, linking ancient values with modern technology. Educated in New York's Rensselaer Institute, he might have been an astronaut, for some of his classmates went on to work at NASA, but he remained faithful to the vocation he discovered when a priest at St Joseph's chapel in Medina, Dakar, where he was a choirboy, allowed him to choose the design for new church bell towers.
Inspired by the pioneers of modern architecture - the Swiss-born Charles Edouard Jenneret, known as Le Corbusier, and the Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer, who planned his country's new capital at Brasilia - Goudiaby presented his plan for the ideal African town as his final university thesis.
"I was aware that not all Americans are rich, but that America has become the richest continent in the world because its people lived out their fantasies by building skyscrapers and Disneyland. People there know that if they work hard they can have anything they want and it should be the same for us in Africa," Goudiaby says, perhaps also explaining the source of his own ambition.
"I was aware that not all Americans are rich, but that America has become the richest continent in the world because its people lived out their fantasies by building skyscrapers and Disneyland. People there know that if they work hard they can have anything they want and it should be the same for us in Africa," Goudiaby says, perhaps also explaining the source of his own ambition.
Returning to Dakar in 1973, he acknowledged Zairian President Mobutu's post-independence quest for authenticity by adding Atepa, which in the Diola dialect means builder, to his Christian name. In 1975 he was the first African to win a competition for a new BCEAO bank headquarters in Dakar, with a modern design that echoed president Leopold Sedar Senghor's belief in "enracinement et ouverture". Tall and as solid as a baobab tree, rooted yet open to the sky, the building is decorated by Senegalese artists with African signs and patterns. Now, 30 years on, it continues to represent the enduring confidence and stability of West Africa's Central bank.
Having modelled his own head office in Dakar on an Egyptian pyramid, Atepa reached for the stars with innovative designs such as the ECOWAS building in Lomé, Togo, (still his favourite creation), where delegates from 16 countries in the West African Economic and Monetary Union now meet in a conference hall fashioned like a giant upside-down calabash. A fifth-floor bridge linking both halves of the main building symbolises the union of Anglophone and Francophone countries. In The Gambia, Atepa echoed the Corbusian concept of the ideal airport, whose beauty lies in its wide-open spaces, when he conceived the terminal at Banjul as a giant bird in flight. Always looking forward, his plans for a new Dakar skyline include a spectacular 60- storey African tower, red like the African soil, a soaring spire, a pyramidal landmark on the continent's westernmost peninsula, a beacon to match the world's tallest minaret designed by Michel Pinseau for the King Hassan II mosque, further north in Casablanca.
Atepa admires the audacity and ingenuity of post-modern architecture, in particular Jean Nouvel's new Opera House in Lyon, the sensationally luminous Torre Agbar in Barcelona, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, where the garden façade is decorated with light-sensitive metallic diaphragms creating a kaleidoscope of changing patterns from sunrise to sunset, and Norman Foster's iconic 'Gherkin' building at St Mary Axe in London, which has been described as a "sleek and sensational machine for making money".
Like his European counterparts, Atepa collaborates with partners on the other side of the globe, designing a City of Knowledge in India and a theme park in Qatar. But he is keenly aware that in the developing world in which he lives and works, practical considerations are paramount, and so has involved himself in noble business enterprises, linking up with mining interests in Moscow, petroleum suppliers in Singapore, technicians in Dubai and American financiers, in order to support projects in Africa. Some of these include a new conurbation around Senegal's Lac Rose, its mineral pink waters often visible to passengers flying down the coast to Dakar, l`Université du Futur Africain and a cultural park complete with state-of-the-art theatre, a school of architecture and a high-tech cyber village.
Goudiaby clearly believes a great deal in his home continent: "For the most part, Africa is a shocking spectacle of underdevelopment, poverty and dependency, yet our continent, the cradle of civilisation, is strategically placed for progress between America, Asia and Europe."
The Atepa group, whose logo portrays a bull thrusting forward, head down, determined to win against any obstacle, is instigating worldwide initiatives rather than waiting for Chinese or Arab, European or American entrepreneurs to exploit African resources and talent for their own gain yet again.
"Forty years after we won our independence from colonial rule we are still sleeping and we need to wake up," Goudiaby explains. "So far, we have allowed our politicians a free rein and we have suffered a huge brain-drain, but I believe that the new Africa will be built by our cadres, educated men and women of integrity and purpose using our natural resources, manpower and skills. Happily the IT revolution has given us our greatest tools for success in the future."
The Atepa group, whose logo portrays a bull thrusting forward, head down, determined to win against any obstacle, is instigating worldwide initiatives rather than waiting for Chinese or Arab, European or American entrepreneurs to exploit African resources and talent for their own gain yet again.
"Forty years after we won our independence from colonial rule we are still sleeping and we need to wake up," Goudiaby explains. "So far, we have allowed our politicians a free rein and we have suffered a huge brain-drain, but I believe that the new Africa will be built by our cadres, educated men and women of integrity and purpose using our natural resources, manpower and skills. Happily the IT revolution has given us our greatest tools for success in the future."
To this end Atepa conceived and launched the Club for Reflection called IDEE, representing Intellectual Development and Excellence in the form of a nominal, virtual government whose members will meet via the internet. IDEE Senegal, IDEE Burkina Faso or IDEE Congo will form clusters linking continental Africans with fellow countrymen and women the world over. Such a forum for debate is set to kindle the innovative ideas that will form not only a cultural but also an industrial hub promoting the regeneration of the entire continent of Africa.
