Eureka: Jeanne Autran-Edorh on architectural heritage and innovation in Togo

0:15You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio, brought to you by the team behind the entrepreneurs, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. I'm Tom Edwards. Jeanne Autran-Edou is a French Togolese architect and co-founder of Studio Nader, an interdisciplinary practice based in Berlin and Lome that combines architecture, design and research with a focus on local materials and regenerative craftsmanship. Jeanne's worked with award-winning studios and co-curated Togo's first pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, as well as its presentation at the Triennale in Milan.

0:53Jeanne was one of the stars at Monocle's recent Quality of Life conference in Barcelona, and while she was there, she also found the time to catch up with our Ed Stocker to discuss the future of architecture at home and how her work is making an impact internationally. Ed began by asking Jeanne about the shift from working in large studios to leading her own practice. Well, it must be nice after working for those big studios to then go alone and have your own decision-making power, as it were. You've done amazing things already. The Togo Pavilion, the Venice Biennale, you also were representing Togo at the Triennale in Milan.

1:36Do you feel, I don't know, like a burden? Because you are, it's not just a project, it's not like I'm building this, you are representing an entire nation. How does it feel? The exhibition in Venice is called Considering Togoli's Architectural Heritage. So it was about documenting post-colonial architecture, like the architecture of independence. There was really beautiful specimens of brutalist, modernist buildings that were built from the 70s to the late 80s. There is not much care value given to them in the country. like some are abandoned, others are still in functions because a lot of them are institutional or are banks, so the banks are still running on.

2:21But we really have seen the need of documenting this architecture. I've been to Ghana and some of their sort of post-independence architecture is well maintained like Black Star Square but there are a lot of buildings that are not sadly. Yeah it's the same in Togo. Exactly and there is a few like there is one prominent building with is this Hotel de la Pé, which was like a luxury hotel in the 70s, a state hotel. It's on the Lomé front water sea. It's beautiful, but it's abandoned since 20 years. Our research started with seeing the need of offering a reuse for this building. And to say that this is also heritage.

3:05And what's beautiful, it started with this research, and now we can tell that it already has impact. Yeah, you've seen an impact. Is there finance that's come off the back of that, people who want to step in and help restore those buildings? Not yet. But you're hopeful. Yeah, I think the value is already added. And what about quickly about the Triennale? The Triennale, so that's a project about waste. So we worked on the topic of textile waste. I remember seeing this. that's being done like... Or that Togo is a dumping ground for a lot of clothes, right? Exactly. Like clothes that are discarded in Europe or in the global north and there is the promise of them being recycled but actually most of it is just transport to the global south and Togo is one of the places where a small part of this billion tons of clothes is landing.

4:04some of it arrive on these like second hand markets but a lot of it is also not usable because the quality is so so poor so we worked with like we focused on denim on jeans maybe because it's also one of the only cotton fabric that can like has some rigidity or like can be reusable and brought like an installation that talks about this topic as awareness but also trying to like shift from wastefulness to resourcefulness and seeing like some design opportunity in this in this material i mean that that's bringing togo to the world stage in a way that's those are two projects obviously with their origins or being shown in italy obviously what about in togo itself i think you were working or finished working on a guest house like what do you want to do i don't know what the situation's like in togo but i know that in some neighboring countries or nearby countries there isn't a strong architectural tradition or like formally so are you looking to shift that as well get more young architects is that something you would like to help do get more people embracing architecture and wanting to build generally beautiful useful buildings in the country definitely big question no definitely and also simply um that young architects in africa in general are valuing um traditional materials and knowledge that exists and which is really rich and which is a wealth that we have to preserve actually and like i talked earlier on the panel about craft but craft is really huge value that can disappear quite fast or maybe we are in an age where a lot of craft are being replaced by other industrial imported materials.

6:04There is really the need to give value again to them and to work with this, so to work with local makers. And also a possibility to give these local makers a world stage as well, You know, make their artisanal expertise or their craft expertise be used in projects outside of Togo, outside of Africa, anywhere really. Is that something you'd like to do or are doing? No, exactly. And to show that material that can be seen as not modern or old like clay, for instance, like to shift the understanding of this material and that it can be really modern, really beautiful, really well finished, that it can bring incredible comforts into houses and yeah and I think it's like trying to not follow foreign models but try rather developing an architecture that belongs to its contexts.

7:11That was Jeanne Otranedo, the co-founder of Studio Nader, and you can find out more about Jeanne and the studio's work by heading to studionader.com And that is all for this episode of Eureka. We'll be back at the same time next week. The program was produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Steph Jingu. You can listen again and find out more at monocle.com or follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And if you'd like to get in touch with the team, do drop a line to Laura on lrk at monocle.com. I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye, and thanks for listening to Eureka.