Le prochain patrimoine. L’architecture tropicale à Kinshasa

Abstract

Heritage is generally understood as the legacy from the ancestors to the descendants over time. But when this heritage is part of a colonial city, Kinshasa (Leopoldville), that is the result of the work of Western architects, the question of the story that would carry its heritage becomes crucial. The article first shows, through a few selected case studies - the BCB Bank (1949), the Sabena Towers (1952) and the Saint Antoine Church (1961)- that the modernism that characterizes downtown Kinshasa, carries the DNA of local identity cleverly expressed by the tropical architecture. The aim of this paper is to examine part of this African modern heritage that has to be studied, classified and protected, the sustaina- bility already embedded in that architectural language and its application in the design process analyzing quintessential artifacts in order to adequately tackle the further sustainable steps without losing the fundamental teachings of this next World Heritage.