This project is the first to analyse dual processes of formalisation and ‘unformalisation’ of architecture by colonial and post-colonial state and institutional authorities to better understand how power has been exercised through the built environment. It charts the histories of the architecture profession in Ghana from before it was the Gold Coast to the present-day.

It explores how attempts by colonial (British) and post-colonial governments to enforce order through formalisation co-occurred with the diminishing and erasure of architectural and urban forms that actually constitute the cultures and realities of the vast majority of Africans – a process I term ‘unformalisation’.

Using a multidisciplinary methodology, a unique combination of historical and contemporary sources including an endangered archive digitized with a grant from the British Library, and with a critical approach that foregrounds African epistemologies, I assert that a significant proportion of African built environments has been misunderstood and overlooked as ‘informal’, distorting academic research and policies governing architecture and urbanism on the continent. By documenting processes and outcomes of unformalisation, this project radically reconfigures the study of architecture in Africa.