This contribution discusses seven of Colquhoun’s architectural projects, which he produced, successively, at the London County Council (LCC), at the practice of Lyons Israel Ellis, and at the firm he founded with John Miller: Colquhoun Miller & Partners. In the work, various formal and compositional architectural principles are tested within various idioms. The situating and grouping of buildings seem to incorporate a latent affinity with the romantic-classicist tradition, while the later work from the 1970s and 1980s attests to a gradual expansion of the formal references in favour of the picturesque, early-twentieth-century innovative architecture and, on occasion, Italian rationalism.

In this interview Colquhoun addresses the present-day (im-)possibility of a metaphysical framework for judging architecture, alluding to the theories of Niklas Luhmann and Jacques Derrida. Both philosophers reject metaphysics – in its place Luhmann posits the great story of science, while arguing that we find ourselves, by definition and irrevocably, in a metaphysical tradition that we simultaneously deconstruct. General theories must therefore be approached cautiously, and a judgement can be nothing more than conditional and relative, they argue. This does not mean they exclude an ethical judgement, in Colquhoun’s view. The idea of history and the concepts of the past play a crucial role in this. 

This issue devoted to Africa is a response to the current fascination with the African city among architects and planners, stimulated among other things by Rem Koolhaas’s research on Lagos. By opting for an explicitly historical perspective, this issue also aims to stand out from a debate often mired in wide-ranging meta-theoretical reflections on the informal city or a reductive view of a forgotten modernist heritage. Through several case studies on architecture and planning practices in Africa between 1950 and 1970, placed in context by two critical essays and a photo reportage on the urban landscape of Maputo, Mozambique, the issue presents a different and still little-known story.

In his article Tom Avermaete discusses the course followed by French architect and urban designer Michel Ecochard as an example of a new kind of design practice that took off in Africa between 1950 and 1970: the international consultant designer who develops models with broad applicability that can simultaneously respond to local logics and developments. In addition to outlining this new role for the designer, Avermaete also presents a picture of how the approach for the ‘city for the greatest number’, which Ecochard developed under a colonial regime in Morocco (via, among other things, the famous 8x8 grid), was able to be applied, ostensibly without problems, in other African countries like Guinea, Senegal and Cameroon following independence. 

The editorial of this issue of OASE opens up a reflection on architecture criticism, following the critical encounters (seminars, debates, lectures, round table discussions), the journal organised to mark its 25th anniversary. The discussions held with a series of stakeholders: architects, writers, academe, publishers, graphic designers, students, etc. have filtered into this issue, which simultaneously evaluates and explores the current state of architecture criticism, ranging from academic reflections on criticism, via the personal views of critics on its current state, to tentative explorations.