Royal and ritual architecture
In the history of the Kingdom of Dahomey, the dynasty of the Kings of Abomey occupies a special place. From 1625 to 1900, 12 kings succeeded one another at the head of the kingdom, each building a fortified palace. Now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, there are 10 of these palaces, some superimposed on others. The 47-hectare site is a veritable ode to the power and solidity of earthen architecture in beautiful ochre hues. Within this fortified site, each palace, built on a single level and embellished with bas-reliefs, is itself surrounded by walls and organized around 3 courtyards (exterior, interior, private). The passage from one to the other is via astonishing portals built astride the main perimeter walls, in an interlocking interplay illustrating the precept laid down by the great Houegbadja, founder of the royal city: "May the Kingdom always be made greater". In addition to the palaces, the site is home to sacred buildings: the djexo, the hut housing the king's spirit, and the adoxo, the king's tomb. Dakodonou, the second king of the Abomey dynasty, is also famous for having built astonishing cellars with varied geometric shapes dug 10 m underground. Discovered in 1998, the site is officially called the "underground village of Agongointo Zoungoudo", but the Beninese commonly call it ahouando, literally "war holes".
Porto-Novo is home to the remains of the palaces of another dynasty, the Kings of Hogbonou, including the Palais des Initiations. The city also boasts a truly unique heritage, that of Vodoun culture. Vodoun squares are important ceremonial and identity sites. At the center is always a fetish tree, while around it are the convent (training ground for initiates) and the huts housing the divinities, all made of ochre-colored earth and decorated with geometric or figurative motifs, including on the surrounding walls. The whole is protected by a legba, a human-shaped mound of earth to which offerings are made. Of the nearly 40 squares in the city, only 8 have been restored since 2015... But the most astonishing Vodoun site in Benin is in Ouidah. It is the Temple des Pythons. A Vodoun temple generally consists of a courtyard or peristyle accessible to the public, where ceremonies and sacrifices take place, and a convent in the form of a small pointed hut containing the altar and housing the spirit of the divinity, to which only the initiated are invited. Here, the first courtyard contains a truncated cone-shaped building housing the pythons, as well as a round thatched hut and an earthen building with a corrugated iron roof housing the protective deities, while the second courtyard is enclosed by a pink-painted cement enclosure. The tradition of brightly-coloured frescoes and murals with astonishing pictograms is widespread in Vodoun culture. It's a culture that gives housing an almost spiritual dimension, transforming individual homes into veritable sanctuaries. It is here, at the heart of the intimacy of the home, that the full diversity of this culture unfolds, from modest little altars made of odds and ends, to astonishing multi-storey buildings extending into large courtyards and tiled burial rooms for the wealthiest families.
Colonial period
Benin's history is inextricably linked with that of slavery. The country has therefore decided to highlight "the key sites along the slave route in Benin", particularly in the Zou, Collines, Plateau and Atlantic departments, including forts (such as Fort Saint-Jean-Baptiste-d'Ajuda, a Portuguese fort with slave warehouses), places where slaves were gathered and sorted (such as Place Singbodji in Abomey), or places of refuge and resistance against the raids led by the Kings of Dahomey (such as the Yaka site in Dassa-Zoumé, with the Grottes du Roi et de la Reine, the plant ramparts, the watchtowers, and the temple erected in honor of protective deities). A moving and necessary visit. This period was also marked by an interesting evolution in architectural styles. In Ouidah in particular, the first Portuguese merchants erected a number of buildings recognizable by their covered exterior galleries, whitewashed exterior and interior walls and stucco moldings framing the entrance. To build their structures, these merchants imported materials from their colonies in Brazil, notably stone and fired brick, which were then bound with mortar made from the firing of shellfish. To increase the size and strength of the frameworks, they also imported extremely resistant woods from Brazil.
Alongside these lavish homes, they also developed more modest earthen architecture, similar to local architecture. But in all cases, these merchants "owned" "hut slaves" who lived in earthen constructions with straw or dried palm-leaf roofs, separated from the rest of the dwelling by an enclosure.
Then, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, under the impetus of merchants and former slaves from the Brazilian colonies who returned to Benin, so-called Afro-Brazilian architecture developed. Warehouses to store goods, commercial houses with the first floor reserved for the store and the upper floor for living quarters, or purely residential houses set in the heart of a walled plot and inspired by the architecture of the great estates of Brazil... Afro-Brazilian achievements are many and varied. Among their key features: almost systematic use of terracotta bricks for walls, or a framework of pillars to which wooden panels are then attached; walls protected by rendering; brick or stone foundations; compact architecture offset by large openings and the presence of attics to create an air space and thus permanent ventilation; facade galleries; openwork blinds or shutters. But what makes this Afro-Brazilian architecture truly unique is the care given to the decoration, which many describe as the meeting of the effervescence of the Baroque and the richness of local craftsmanship. Emphatic plaster decorations, brightly colored whitewashes, horizontal and vertical lines, geometric or symbolic shapes, curves, volutes, colonnades, openings highlighted by white or colored stucco moldings, arches enlivening the facade, paintings, frescoes and bas-reliefs, and attention given to the portal with its colored pediments, lintels and pinnacles... everything is decorative profusion.
Among the most astonishing buildings in this style are the Villa Avajon in Ouidah (home to the Fondation Zinsou) and, above all, the Grande Mosquée in Porto-Novo, inspired by a Nigerian Afro-Brazilian mosque, itself inspired by the church of San Salvador in Bahia! See its molded, arched porches decorated with flowers, its cornices and pilasters, its towers and, inside, its sublime starry vault. Porto-Novo is also home to hundreds of Afro-Brazilian mansions... most of which are in a terrible state of disrepair. In 2008, the mayor's office rehabilitated the first house, followed by three more in 2020... But many residents are now appealing to the heirs of these homes to restore them. For their public buildings, the French colonists favored a resolutely European architecture, moving from neoclassicism to historicist eclecticism, before giving way to the more modern lines of Art Deco and Functionalism. Finally, this colonial period was also marked by the role played by Catholic missionaries who established missions, seminaries, churches and basilicas, transposing typically European religious architecture to Benin, as witnessed by the Basilique Notre-Dame de l'Immaculée Conception in Ouidah, a neo-Gothic edifice with large geminated bays illuminating an imposing central nave 58 m long and 14 m wide ; and the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-la Miséricorde in Cotonou, whose facade is covered with ceramic tiles in alternating white and red stripes.
Vernacular richness
On September 17, 2023, Benin's request for an extension of the Koutammakou inscription on the Unesco World Heritage List was accepted! The rich heritage of the Batammariba, already listed in Togo, extends across the border into north-west Benin... The country has thus succeeded in turning it into a cultural asset! The very name of this great people means "those who shape the earth", "the good masons". The spiritual pantheon of the Batammariba is ruled by Kuiye, the great solar figure and supreme architect, who is known to have built himself a Tata Somba or fortified house in his solar village to the west of Heaven. On Earth, his people reproduce all the characteristics of the Tata Somba (the houses are always west-facing) in an architecture blending know-how, technicality and spirituality. The materials used to build these authentic castles are raw earth (banco), clay, sand, wood, stone, millet straw and water to shape the earth. These houses, rounded two-storey turrets with flat or conical thatched roofs, are organized into a village that also includes ceremonial spaces, sacred springs and rocks, and sites reserved for initiation rites. From the outside, these fortified houses are virtually blind, with only a few small openings to allow you to see without being seen, and to shoot arrows at potential attackers. The Zarma people also built villages protected by fortified enclosures featuring round or rectangular mud-brick dwellings with thatched roofs. Fulani herders, on the other hand, imagine dome-shaped mobile homes made of millet stalks or reed mats, depending on the season... even if many of them are now forced to become sedentary.
But the most famous vernacular habitat in Benin is undoubtedly the lakeside villages that have developed over the past four centuries on Lake Nokoué. These places of refuge for slaves fleeing the raids gradually developed into authentic little towns on the water. Three types of huts can be seen here: the Kiho, with a raffia palm leaf roof; the Sansanho, a straw-covered hut (the most common); and the Ganho, with a corrugated iron roof. In the first two types, floors and vertical walls are filled with stems and branches called Hoba and Hounkpa. These constructions have an average lifespan of 15 years. In Ganvié, fishermen even create fish pens out of bamboo poles and branches, whose gradual rotting attracts the fish that come to feed and reproduce! In Lowe, a semi-lacustrine hamlet in the Ouémé Valley, the inhabitants are gradually replacing wood and bamboo with concrete. While the use of concrete is still rational in this village, this is not the case in the suburbs of Cotonou, for example, where concrete constructions are multiplying in flood-prone areas... Cinder blocks and corrugated iron are also commonplace in urban concessions, these enclosed plots of land grouping around a courtyard a series of dwellings occupied by the same family.
Contemporary architecture
Like many other African countries, Benin has experienced very strong urban growth, which has been difficult to curb. Colonial "European-style" neighborhoods have been grafted onto precarious housing zones, often without water or electricity, creating strong spatial segregation. At the same time, numerous apartment blocks and the first skyscrapers were being built, notably in Cotonou, where the BCEAO Building, at 57 meters, is the tallest. But in the face of this westernization of architecture, some have chosen to combine tradition and modernity, as with the Palais des Congrès in Cotonou, whose structure is inspired by the Tata Somba of the Batammariba people. The Palais was the subject of an extensive renovation program, which was completed in 2020.
In 2021, the government has also launched a vast investment campaign to finance new roads, the renovation of the international airport, the construction of new buildings for ministries, and the creation of major maritime and industrial centers. With the "Benin Revealed" plan, the country has also embarked on vast cultural projects, such as the revitalization of the town of Ouidah with the restoration of the Portuguese Fort, and above all the construction of the Musée International de la Mémoire de l'Esclavage, which will include a garden of remembrance and a replica of a slave ship. The museum is scheduled to open in late 2024, and the ship in 2025. Other highly-anticipated flagship museums include the Musée International des Arts et Civilisations vodoun in Porto-Novo and the Musée des Amazones et des Rois du Dahomey, due to open in 2026 in the heart of the Royal Palaces of Abomey. This is a project led by Franco-Cameroonian architect Françoise N'Thépé, who wanted to work with local craftsmen to sublimate the raw earth architecture. Another eagerly-awaited project is Benin's National Assembly, designed by Burkinabe architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize 2022 (the Nobel Prize for architecture), who was inspired by the palaver tree under which, in African tradition, decisions concerning the community are taken. The architect's biggest project to date, the building will showcase architecture that is deeply rooted in the spirit of the place and sustainable, underlined by elegant, slender lines and volumes. Some architects, meanwhile, imagine more modest projects, but always with a link to the community, like Habib Mémé, founder of the NGO "L'Atelier des Griots", which brings together architects, urban planners, designers and residents, all ardent advocates of local, practical and ecological architecture. Drawing on vernacular know-how, favoring the recycling of materials, and imagining creative and participatory workshops, the NGO designs projects thought out by and for everyone, such as the Maison des Jeunes in the Akpakpa-Dodomey district of Cotonou.
