PROJECT DETAILS

Henri Chomette / Roland Depret / Thierry Melot: Hôtel Indépendance, 1973D–1978

  • Dakar, Senegal, Show on map
  • #TOU #Africa
  • The deep hooded lids that cover each window of the hotel articulate the façade like outsized scales. These quite clearly serve their function protecting the cool dark interior against the heat coming from the Sahel region and the winds from the Atlantic. However, the geometric confidence of such a volume speaks of something else. Here Chomette, Depret, and Melot were sculpting a surface that addressed the central ceremonial space of the city. … This building applies the lessons of the West African vernacular and purposeful ambiguities of Senghor’s asymmetric parallelism planning policy to a building type that had seemingly little sym- bolic significance. Excerpt from Manuel Herz’s article in: SOS Brutalism: A Global Survey. Catalog DAM + Wüstenrot Foundation, Zurich (Park Books) 2017

  • Vacant for years. Completely gutted and in the process of being thoroughly remodeled, removing all original design features (as of 2019)