Le Corbusier’s Proposal for the Capital of Ethiopia: Fascism and Coercive Design of Imperial Identities

• Elisa Dainese ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Pennsylvania

     University of Pennsylvania

     City of Philadelphia, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Le Corbusier: 50 años después / Jorge Torres Cueco (aut.), 2016, ISBN 978-84-9048-373-2, págs. 502-516
• Idioma: español
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • In 1936, immediately after the Italian conquest of the Ethiopian territories, the Fascist government initiated acompetition to prepare the plan of Addis Ababa. Shortly, the new capital of the Italian empire in East Africa became thecenter of the Fascist debate on colonial planning and the core of the architectural discussion on the design for the control ofAfrican people. Taking into consideration the proposal for Addis Ababa designed by Le Corbusier, this paper reveals hisperception of Europe’s role of supremacy in the colonial history of the 1930s. Le Corbusier admired the achievements ofEuropean colonialism in North Africa, especially the work of Prost and Lyautey, and appreciated the results of Frenchdomination in the continent. As architect and planner, he shared the Eurocentric assumption that considered overseascolonies as natural extension of European countries, and believed that the separation of indigenous and European quartersled to a more efficient control of the colonial city. In Addis Ababa he worked within the limit of the Italian colonialframework and, in the urgencies of the construction of the Fascist colonial empire, he participated in the coerciveconstruction of imperial identities.