Mixed building, architectural feature vector of transformation of the urban landscape in African cities. : Case study in Benin

Abstract

The regular practice of cities in sub-Saharan Africa reveals rapidly changing landscapes marked by the evolution of architectural and urban forms, the emergence of new urban aesthetics and the mutation of urban lifestyles. The research focuses on the transformation of the street, in its aesthetics, its spatiality and its uses under the effect of new popular construction practices. Our study field is the coastal conurbation in southern Benin structured by the cities of Cotonou and Porto-Novo, metropolitan area marked by rapid urban expansion, gradual densification of urban forms and intense daily mobility. An architectural device appears central in these transformations: the mixed-use building. This private building produced in self-promotion, generally financed, built and then gradually occupied, and produced without the intervention of an architect, combines commercial space on the street and residential space on the upper floors. According to our hypothesis, it is a vector of architectural renewal and urban transformations, and is a revealer of cultural, technical and economic evolutions. Our research explores the relationships between the built object and the urban landscape. These two scales and registers of analysis allow us to question the nature of the architectural and urban transformations of which it is the agent, the ruptures and continuities with the architectural and urban heritages that it expresses, and the new referents that it borrows. We also question the part of choice and chance in the materiality and aesthetic produced, and the way in which commercial and residential uses are renewed by these architectural and urban transformations.Our observations and analysis show that the mixed-use building is the support of new architectural and stylistic expressions that are at the origin of new forms of architectural eclecticism, and, through its urban. Our observations and analysis show that the mixed-use building is the support of new archi