| dc.description.abstract | The written history of Sub-Saharan Africa is brief. Brief, not because nothing of note had occurred before the arrival of the European explorers into the African interior during the mid-nineteenth century; but brief because that which occurred before their arrival interested them little. As the writers of history in a land of oral tradition, Western historians have long been prone to sweeping generalisations and cultural indifference, setting the course for the development, or arguably lack thereof, of African history scholarship as it is exists today. However, as canonical narratives which privilege Western modes of thinking and aesthetics are challenged, a space is created to examine the works of the Sub-Sahara on the basis of its own narratives, allowing for “multiple modernities”. The immediate postcolonial period of Kenya corresponds in time with the establishment of the Nordic countries’ development aid programmes, and these countries were deemed to be the ideal working partners by the Kenyan government, since they were perceived as having played little part in the Scramble for Africa and subsequent colonial period. The Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi, is the work of a Norwegian architect, Karl Henrik Nøstvik (1925 – 1992), who moved to Kenya on a development aid programme, and this dissertation concerns itself with the discourse that arises in the attempt to assimilate the ideals of modernity into postcolonial spaces. The KICC serves as an interesting subject to question binary oppositions often met in historical discourse, such as modern and traditional, colonial and postcolonial. As historians actively seek to widen our understanding of the term “Modernity”, space is being made to include these “forgotten” works from further afield. Ultimately this work is a study of the KICC as a physical manifestation of a variety of historical factors during the complex period of post-independence in Kenya, with a particular focus on the context from which it arose and its subsequent reception. | eng |