Porto-Novo-Novo, the new Mars city

The architecture of Porto-Novo, West Africa.

2179 years before that historically overseen event of my birth, my city had a different name, it was called Portus Cale. Put these words together; give it some years, and voilá, Portugal. Today, the second largest city of this European country is called Porto and this name has spread into entertaining variations around the world during the colonial era: the happy Porto, “Porto Alegre”, or safe harbor, “Porto Seguro”, both in Brazil; the holy Porto, “Porto Santo” in Madeira, or “Porto-Novo” in Benin.

Porto means harbor in Portuguese, (not to confuse with the German word Porto, meaning postal charges) so it is quite pragmatic to call a city Porto if it has a great or a charismatic harbor, or in this case, a new one. So is today’s capital of Benin, Porto-Novo, named after Porto? Many say it was. Or was it just lack of imagination of a somehow atheist inclined sailors who named it for what it was, a new (Novo) harbor? My almost non-existent patriotism likes to think it was a deserved homage to the original Porto of Portucale, former Lusitania. If York has a New York, Caledonia as a New too, Porto, with its long history, deserves it as well. Some defenders of this claim write that this name was given due to the similarities of both cities, but that is taking the romance too far: Porto is a city laid out beside a river flanked by steep escarpments either side. A zem (Porto-Novo’s main transportation method) would not survive in the hilly downtown of Porto for very long. Porto is a city which, in the 18th century, had a rich Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque architecture. Granite stone was in spread use for construction. Now in Africa, the renamed Porto-Novo of 1730, its geography, climate, local construction materials and architecture were and are completely different. It is flat, hot and the main available resource for housing is mud and palm trees. I guess the Portuguese sailors back then were just overwhelmed with “saudades” (Portuguese for home-sick) and made a drunken effort to find similarities.

Nomenclatures aside, the architecture of a city mirrors its culture and history and in return shapes up the people coming of age within these walls and alleys. A city shapes our everyday lives, from how long we need to walk or drive to work, how we meet people, the amount of light, the noise and music, the air, the smells, the corners... Your character is certainly shaped by the city you grow up in (and from some DNA too!). Porto-Novo is no exception.

It is a challenging task to both trained and untrained eye to analyze a city. You can do it to. Think first for whom and for what is this process aimed at? In this case, it’s for me. After having lived in 14 different countries over the past 16 years, spending now 5 weeks living in Benin touched me deep into some dusted assumptions, among these, the assumption that the western model of a city should and can work worldwide[1]. The cultural hegemony (famously described by Gramsci) we are all subjected into since childhood, meaning, the view of the world which we are pumped in by our history books at school, is still very much alive. The, what to think, is still stronger than the, how to think. But such does not affect only the 1st world with its colonial braveries and shames. It affects also the colonized. It also affects how we see architecture. Just describing it with “post-modernist” or alike jargon brings no food into the table; it just increases the gap and mistrust of the want to be pundits and lay people.

If you walk around Porto-Novo, besides the crowd, noise, dirt and sweat, you will see an improvised urban landscape shaped by its citizens trying to survive in a city being turned by force, by the political elite, into the western way of urban planning. Roads, signs, rules, concrete… You will also notice the wide-spread religious signs and the dense presence of mosques and churches, most notable around the main market area. The main mosque, one of the biggest in West Africa, resembles a catholic church; this is because it was one, built by returned slaves from Africa on the 19th century, taking as base the design of the colonial architecture of Salvador da Bahia (one of the 1st cities in Brazil built by the Portuguese). For us Portuguese, Salvador reminds us of the city of Aveiro, in Portugal, but with more colors and hills. Hotter of course too!

Porto-Novo is a candidate for UNESCO’s world heritage list, but then again, which city today isn’t? Surely the city of Rovaniemi of Finland isn’t. This Lapland city is likely the epitome of what Finns have done to their architecture in the last 50 years: tabula rasa. Not just the wars and fires are to blame but most dramatic is that there has been a massive demolition process still ongoing. Finland is the Nr 1 of Europe in the demolition of buildings. Today’s cold facades of grey and white, simple orthogonal streets, sparse use of materials and design might have contributed to shape up the character of its people. And so, not even the hottest of saunas nor the best of their innumerous folk music sessions, can rectify their, so often self-damaging, reserved character.

The cold weather in Finland influenced its people and its architecture, everyone can understand that. The heat of West Africa too. The mud walls, with their high thermic properties, allied to a double roofing structure ventilating the heat and high positioned openings or windows just beneath the doubled roof, ensures the cooling of houses. Concrete brought many advantages in building bridges for example, but it highly degraded the housing construction quality now relying on AC for cooling.

Humans like to impose their small habits and thus culture to others, it’s our human nature. We like to spread out as much as we can and we bring our sofa along. African cities such as Porto-Novo, have been struggling with this western imposition since the colonial era. We still do it, not so much with a sword but with a pen. The rigidity of western urban planning strategies into a culture which lives from flexibility isn’t working. West Africa needs to embrace the traditional modes of construction and their own way of living and reinvent and experiment new ways of building, mixed with modern materials and with modern city organizational models. A great Architecture is one where it’s “dynamic composition encourages the eye to explore”[2], and Porto-Novo is only a delight to the camera and sketchbook because it still defies our western model of living.

I do not know how, likely by investing in education, but I do hope to see one day a new city being named Porto-Novo-Novo, in Mars or the Moon, the deserved homage to the city where such new space settlers came from Porto-Novo!

Pedro Aibéo

2020, Benin, West Africa

Pedro Aibéo is a trained Design Architect and Civil Engineer. He is at present a Kone Säätiö Research Fellow, a Visiting Associate Professor at UNAM University, Mexico and at Wuhan University of Technology, China, and a Lecturer and Doctoral Candidate at Aalto University, Finland on "Architectural Democracy". He is the founder and Artistic Director of “Cidadania” theatre+games group, a professional Musician at Homebound, the founder and Chairman of the World Music School Helsinki, a drawing teacher at the croquis nights and at Kiasma and a comic novelist.

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[1] The other assumption is that Portuguese brought in slavery to the shores of Africa. Slave trade of war prisoners of rivalling tribes was common practice in pre-colonial times. See „The Growth of African Civilisation The making of Modern Africa” by Ayandele et al. An African based research.

[2] Page 40 of ”101 things I learned in Architecture School” by Matthew Frederick