The restitution of objects from Western museums and the establishment of “new relational ethics” (Sarr/Savoy 2018) are among the most pressing and key topics of our times. Equally important, however, is the need to pay more attention to the built environment, considering the roles, lives, and afterlives of buildings, urban contexts, landscapes, and infrastructure. By examining their perception and the local narratives connected to them, we can overcome the weight of colonial and Eurocentric discourses and envision possible futures for these sites and buildings.
While much scholarly attention has been devoted to European, particularly Italian architects in the Horn of Africa and the architecture under colonial regimes, the embeddedness of these structures in local contexts and their roles over time has not been adequately examined. Iconic buildings like the Fiat Tagliero building in Asmara have been often analyzed from Eurocentric perspectives, neglecting local perceptions and narratives. This workshop series addresses these gaps by focusing on selected case studies across various Horn of Africa countries. It challenges dominant scholarly discourses by introducing counter-narratives and approaches from local, regional, and transregional perspectives, examining the micro, meso, and macro dynamics at each location, as well as mobility within and beyond the region.
The series is a collaboration among historians of art and architecture, archaeologists, literary scholars, anthropologists, curators, experts in critical heritage studies and critical museology, contemporary artists, architects, writers, and cultural practitioners. This multidisciplinary group is aimed to uncover the various layers, superimpositions, and stratifications of the built environment, investigating the lives and afterlives of buildings and the people who inhabit(ed) them, and the construction of new structures. Through a novel approach to well-researched iconic buildings, the workshop series and project focus on their afterlives, local appropriations, and the role of local actors in maintaining and inhabiting these structures. It delves into the interrelation of these buildings with their surroundings and the narratives they inspire, from storytelling and topologies to toponyms and literary urban ecologies. Additionally, the series and project bring to light lesser-known buildings and elements of the built environment, fostering a collaborative and comprehensive study.
The workshop series addresses issues of labor and the role of local architects, highlighting their networks and collaborations across the Horn of Africa and beyond. It will shed light on the participation of Horn of Africa architects in conferences, joint events, and exhibitions, especially focusing on older generations. This research involves new archival studies, including private and family archives and oral histories, revealing transregional connections. The series and project aim to address issues of memorialization, counteract asymmetries of knowledge production, and integrate diverse findings and interpretations. By doing so, they contribute to a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of the built environment in the Horn of Africa, honoring local perspectives, histories and storytelling, and sounding out possible alliances between academic and artistic research. The workshop series thinks buildings together with people, objects, visual and material culture (e.g. photographs and postcards featuring architecture, the role of film, or that of (im-)mobile artifacts housed in built structures), their urban and environmental settings.

Decentering Italian Colonial Heritage, co-organized by Jermay Michael Gabriel and Vera-Simone Schulz, is part of the Epistemologies of Conviviality project at Leuphana University, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.