In Situ (May 2018)

Le Palais présidentiel d’Abidjan : la logique de l’opulence

  • Hugo Massire

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4000/insitu.15837
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 34

Abstract

Read online

More than fifty years after decolonisation, palaces and official places of residence are often ignored by critics, on account of the dubious morality of their financing or the megalomania of their commissioning clients, aspects which seem to be more significant than the building's qualities and interest. Completed in 1961, Abidjan's presidential palace was built with French funding by the architect Pierre Dufau who was given carte blanche. At the crucial point of Côte d’Ivoire’s independence and its supposed tabula rasa, this luxurious complex demonstrates Prix de Rome science of composition with a syncretic research for French artistic excellence. Beyond the huge sums of money involved, the palace’s design expresses the links between language and power, and the complexity of the relationships between reals needs and imagined requirements. This present case study therefore does not seek to place this unique building in some formal or technical genealogy, nor does it ask whether it represents a lost opportunity. While architectural history still tends to admire the pursuit of rationality and economy, here, instead, we will be looking at the logics of opulence

Keywords