LSA BA3 Students Reflect on Recent Ghana Architecture Trip
The architecture trip to Ghana was for the third year AHUWA studio to explore the cities of Accra and Kumasi and to visit the site that will form the basis of the semester 2 design project.
We began with a site visit on day one and explored the Jamestown area, stopping at the James Town Café for some authentic Ghanaian food. Day 2 we visited Architect Joe Addo’s tropical modernist house and took a trip to the university of Ghana to take a look around their campus. The day ended with a talk on architectural heritage and policy from our studio lead Prof. Iain Jackson at the British Council. For day 3 we flew from Accra to Kumasi and got a chance to explore the KNUST university campus and their school of architecture. Our forth day included various spots across Kumasi including a traditional Ashanti house (one of only around 10 left in Ghana), Kwame Akoto’s artist studio ‘Almighty God Art Studio’, the Ashanti Library, and finally the bustling city centre. For day 5 we travelled by coach back to Accra, stopping at the Cape Coast Castle along the way to learn of its colonial history and architectural heritage. Day 6 was a visit to the Aburi Botanical Gardens, who will be the client for the AHUWA Ghana semester 2 design project. We managed to see a wide range of native plants from huge cocoa trees to tropical flowers. For our final day we took another look at our site in Jamestown and visited dot.atelier’s artist residency – an incredible rammed earth and concrete building precedent. After some downtime and drinks at the sandbox beach club we headed to the airport for our flight home. The trip was an amazing experience that allowed us to immerse ourselves in the Ghanaian culture and set the groundwork for our upcoming design project in semester 2.
