Haile Selassie’s Imperial Modernity:
Expatriate Architects and the Shaping of Addis Ababa
AYALA LEVIN
Princeton University
O
n 13 December 1960, a military coup d’état shook
Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Although order
was restored immediately upon Emperor Haile
Selassie’s (1892–1975) urgent return from a state visit to
Brazil, the specter of the coup continued to haunt the city and
had repercussions for its planning from that time until the regime’s eventual downfall in the 1974 revolution.1 The abortive coup against the ancien régime came as a blow to Haile
Selassie, who had returned to rule even stronger after the
brief Italian colonization from 1936 to 1941. In the context of
the Cold War race for development in decolonizing Africa,
Haile Selassie’s international prestige grew in tandem with
Ethiopia’s importance as an embodiment of African independence in the postwar years. Taking advantage of Ethiopia’s
strategic position near the Suez Canal, the emperor shrewdly
played major donors, including the United States, the Soviet
bloc, and nonaligned Yugoslavia, against each other. Addis
Ababa’s continental and international stature was consolidated
when the city was chosen as the seat of the United Nations
Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) headquarters in
1958 and of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in
1963, a development that stirred a construction boom that
reached its apogee in the mid-1960s.2
Taking place at a moment when construction in the capital
was increasing, the failed coup had lasting effects on the reorganization of the city. In its aftermath, Haile Selassie’s ideology of modernization took on a more cautious “gradualist”
turn. The emperor donated his Guenete Leul Palace, where
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 75, no. 4 (December 2016),
447–468, ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2016 by the Society
of Architectural Historians. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for
permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of
California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/
journals.php?p=reprints, or via email: [email protected]. DOI: 10.1525/
jsah.2016.75.4.447.
the coup’s instigators had entrenched themselves, for the construction of Haile Selassie I University (now Addis Ababa
University). In this highly symbolic gesture, intended to contain and sublimate the revolutionary forces of the young intellectual elite, the university, one of the country’s most modern
institutions, was born. As I argue in this essay, this act of monarchical benevolence—a doubled-edged gift—epitomized
Haile Selassie’s approach to the modernization of the capital.
Giving the palace to the students was not merely a symbolic
gesture; it also served as a pretext for the reorientation of the
city’s development southward (Figure 1). In addition to containing the social ferment expressed by the coup, the emperor’s action set in motion a series of institutional building
and infrastructural projects around the Jubilee Palace (completed in 1955), where the emperor established his permanent
residence following the coup. In addition to Africa Hall,
where the UNECA and OAU meetings took place, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mapping and Geography
Institute—both critical for maintaining Ethiopia’s imperial
holdings—were located next to the palace on Menelik II Avenue, a newly built boulevard (Figure 2). Together, these
buildings constituted a new power nexus south of the Old
Ghebi (old palace), thus symbolically cutting off the parliament in the north.
Foreign architects played a significant role in shaping
Haile Selassie’s Addis Ababa. Offering a lucrative building
market that was unencumbered by the legacy of colonial-era
monopolies, the city attracted an influx of architects, including the Italian Eritrean Arturo Mezzedimi; the French Henri
Chomette; the Israeli Zalman Enav, who partnered with
Ethiopian repatriate Michael Tedros, who was born and
raised in England; and the Yugoslavian Zdravko Kovačević
and Ivan Štraus. Also drawn to Addis Ababa were contractors
such as the Norwegian Norconsult and Israeli Solel Boneh.3
447
Figure 1 Street map of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with author’s notations (Ethiopian Mapping Authority).
Figure 2 Menelik II Avenue, Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, with a view of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and the Mapping and Geography Institute
under construction, 1964 (Ethiopia Mirror 3, no. 2
[Apr.–June 1964]).
Operating closely with the emperor, these actors were
given charge of projects that intersected with the many
contradictions embedded in Haile Selassie’s modernization program. While his government acted as a symbol
of African independence, it also acted as an imperial
force that sought modernization without social reform.
448
JSAH | 75.4 | DECEMBER 2016
By focusing in this essay on public buildings designed by
the firms of Mezzedimi, Chomette, and Enav and Tedros,
whose prolific work left an indelible mark on the city, I
critically explore how international architects confronted
these challenges in mediating Haile Selassie’s vision of an
imperial modernity.
Figure 3 Map of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, drawn
by a delegation of the Italian Military Geography
Institute, 1912; note the Ghebi at the center, and
northwest to it Ghiorghis (Saint George’s) Cathedral
and the adjacent market (Richard Pankhurst, “The
Foundations and Growth of Addis Ababa to 1935,”
Ethiopia Observer 6, no. 1 [1962], 45).
The dialectic between modernization as a technological
and economic project and modernity as a sociopolitical and
cultural program took form in the fragmented physical
restructuring of Addis Ababa, where the emperor sought to
shape the Ethiopian capital so that it embodied African
modernity while simultaneously representing an ostensibly
uninterrupted continuity with tradition. I examine the kinds
of borrowing from the past, recent or remote, at play in the
construction of a distinct Ethiopian modernity, both at the
scale of the single building—specifically, the relationships
between ornaments and structure—and at the scale of the city
plan and urban patterns of growth. Thanks to its brief colonial history, Addis Ababa offers a unique opportunity to link
postcolonial development with the modernization efforts of
the precolonial and colonial past. My argument follows the
provocative and complementary propositions made by philosopher Olúfémi Táíwò and historian J. F. Ade Ajayi. Táíwò
argues that Africa was already becoming modern before
European colonialism, and Ade Ajayi contends that colonialism should be treated as an episode rather than as the determining factor in African history.4 I demonstrate that rather
than making a clean break with the Italian colonial period,
Haile Selassie used Italian planning to further modernization
plans for the capital that he had cultivated since the 1920s.
Although Italian colonial planners introduced profound
changes to Addis Ababa, I believe their interventions should
be placed on a continuum with the city’s precolonial and
postcolonial history. In this account, I also examine how foreign expertise was employed after the colonial period in service of Haile Selassie’s vision of a modern imperial Ethiopia.5
From Camps to City
Founded in 1886 by King Menelik II, Haile Selassie’s predecessor, in its first decades Addis Ababa consisted of a cluster of
camps (safars) that spread over the hills surrounding Menelik’s
camp, positioned at the highest point. The Old Ghebi, as Menelik’s palace came to be known, Saint George’s Cathedral
(consecrated in 1897), and the adjacent Arada market were the
nodal points around which the city developed (Figure 3).6
Haile Selassie, then Crown Prince Taffari Mekonnen, had
greater ambitions for the new capital, kindled by his 1924
tours of Paris, Brussels, Rome, London, Cairo, and Jerusalem.7
According to historian Shimelis Bonsa Gulema, Haile Selassie’s coronation on 2 November 1930, to which many international dignitaries and reporters were invited, was the occasion
for a series of “feverish, and largely cosmetic, interventions.”8
The less cosmetic interventions included Ethiopia’s first tarmac roads, which linked the Old Ghebi with Saint George’s
Cathedral, and the installation of the country’s first electric
streetlights.9 Alongside these infrastructural changes, however,
other measures in the spirit of Potemkin village façadism were
hastily implemented; for example, canvas and plywood triumphal arches were erected, city police and soldiers were outfitted
HAILE SELASSIE’S IMPERIAL MODERNITY
449
Figure 4 Arturo Mezzedimi, Africa Hall, Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, aerial view, early 1960s
(courtesy Mezzedimi family collection).
with khaki uniforms, and the fronts of houses facing the
streets were whitewashed.10
In the postcolonial period, three major events reignited
the momentum for modernization of the city: the Silver Jubilee commemorating Haile Sellasie’s coronation in 1955, the
choice of Addis Ababa as the seat for the UNECA in 1958,
and the choice of the city as the seat of the OAU in 1963.
These occasions advanced growth of the city to the south,
resulting in far more than cosmetic changes (see Figure 1).
While the 1930 coronation had prompted the paving of roads
connecting the city’s three primary nodal points, for the 1955
celebrations the Jubilee Palace was erected as a new nodal
point to the south of the Old Ghebi.11 This extension to the
south, via the creation of a new nodal point, continued Italian
colonial methods of urban planning: identifying existing
nodal points of the market, the church, and the palace; clearing grounds for roads and piazzas between and around them;
and adding new buildings in relation to existing structures as
a basis for further urban development.12 Creating a new
nodal point to the south of the old palace followed a plan by
Italian colonial planners Ignazio Guidi and Cesare Valle that
designated the area as the new political center of Italy’s East
African capital.13
Other governmental buildings soon punctuated the
southern part of this imperial-governmental-educational axis,
which visibly expressed Haile Selassie’s efforts to transform
Addis Ababa into an international center. Facing the Jubilee
Palace, which became the emperor’s prime residence after the
450
JSAH | 75.4 | DECEMBER 2016
1960 coup, Africa Hall was constructed by Arturo Mezzedimi
immediately after the coup (Figure 4).14
The single most important building to mark Ethiopia’s
political stature on the continent, Africa Hall was the stage
for the performance of pan-African political and economic
alliances. During the 1960s, the new Menelik II Avenue
was completed with the 82 Apartment Building, designed
to house the personnel of the adjacent UNECA headquarters (Figure 5); the Mapping and Geography Institute opposite; and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (relocated
from its previous position next to the Guenete Leul Palace)
across Yohanis Street to the north of the Jubilee Palace. All
of these buildings were designed by the Israeli–Ethiopian
partnership Zalman Enav and Michael Tedros. The parliament house, built in the 1930s in conjunction with Haile
Selassie’s coronation and the introduction of a new Ethiopian constitution, was symbolically disconnected from this
new nexus of power. Located north of the Old Ghebi, it
was associated with prewar reforms rather than with Ethiopia’s new postcolonial continental leadership, encapsulated
in the triangulation of the Jubilee Palace, Africa Hall, and
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (see Figures 1 and 2).15
In parallel with the isolation of the parliament from this
power triangle, new buildings for ministries in charge of domestic affairs, such as the Ministry of Telecommunication
(designed by Kovačević and Štraus), were relegated to a separate north–south axis, already constructed by the Italians who
had named it Viale Mussolini (see Figure 1). Renamed
Figure 5 Zalman Enav and Michael Tedros,
82 Apartment Building, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
mid-1960s (courtesy Zalman Enav & Michael
Tedros, Architects).
Figure 6 Arturo Mezzedimi, City Hall, Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, aerial view, ca. 1964; note Saint
George’s Cathedral at upper right (courtesy
Mezzedimi family collection).
Churchill Avenue upon independence, it stretched from
Mezzedimi’s City Hall in the north to the Djibouti–Addis
Ababa train station (1917–37) in the south. Designed in conjunction with Africa Hall, City Hall (1961–64) was located in
the original site designated for it during Menelik’s reign, next
to Saint George’s Cathedral and the busy commercial area
that came to be known as the Piazza during the Italian occupation (Figures 6 and 7). Along the Churchill Avenue axis,
on Adwa Square, Haile Selassie I Theater (renamed the
National Theater after the revolution) was another civil
monument; construction of the theater began during Italian
colonial rule and was completed in the mid-1950s by Henri
Chomette.
In the early twentieth century, the railway line had stimulated the city’s development southward. Similarly, in the
postcolonial period, new transportation nodes assisted the
HAILE SELASSIE’S IMPERIAL MODERNITY
451
extension of the imperial-governmental-educational axis.
The reorientation that began in 1937 with the railway continued in 1946 with the inauguration of Ethiopian Airlines
and the launch of its international service from an airfield
inherited from the Italian occupation, located in Lideta in
the southwest of the city (see Figure 1). Refurbished from
1958 to 1960 by Mezzedimi, the Lideta airfield constituted
an important nodal point. During the 1950s the Princess
Tsahai Memorial Hospital and the Ethio-Swedish Building
College were located on Smuts Street, which led to the airfield.16 By 1963, however, a new international airport constructed to the southeast diminished the importance of
Lideta and became the main entry point into the city.
Named Haile Selassie I International Airport, it spurred
construction to the southeast alongside Africa Road
(known as Bole Road), which fed directly into Menelik II
Avenue through Masqal (Cross) Square (see Figure 1).17
The new airport was the most significant in a series of
airfields constructed around the country by American and
Israeli companies.18 Ethiopian Airlines flights were staffed
by Ethiopian crews, and the air hostesses dressed in festive
habeshema kemis, the traditional Ethiopian dress. Numerous
photographs from this period portray Haile Selassie at the
airport welcoming international guests, with the modern
control tower dominating the background.
An Italo-Ethiopian City
Italy’s brief occupation of Ethiopia and Haile Selassie’s return
to power after World War II present a complex case of an intercultural encounter whose reciprocal acts of translation and
appropriation demonstrate unstable dynamics of power. In
the case of Italian colonialism, however, this model of cultural
revivalism resonated more with the efforts Italian architects
invested in Italy’s North African colonies than with their efforts in East African colonies, including Ethiopia. In a compelling comparison, cultural anthropologist Mia Fuller
argues that in Ethiopia, Italy asserted a clear racial boundary.
Unlike in its North African colonies, where it presumed a
shared Roman past and cultural affinity, Italy based its legitimacy in Ethiopia on civilizational hierarchy rather than cultural continuity.19 Informed by Italy’s historical failure to
conquer Ethiopia in the 1896 Battle of Adwa, the dynamics
of intercultural encounters were more charged in Ethiopia
than they were in the Italian North African colonies. Like no
other colony, Ethiopia disturbed Italy’s pride, being the only
African country that had defeated a European army. This bitter memory fed into Italy’s insecurities about its own modernity and racial superiority in relation to other European
colonial powers. The stakes were particularly high in the
Ethiopian capital, since Mussolini could declare Italy an empire only after it had conquered Addis Ababa.
452
JSAH | 75.4 | DECEMBER 2016
Figure 7 Arturo Mezzedimi, City Hall, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, view of
Churchill Avenue (formerly Viale Mussolini) from the railway station,
ca. 1964 (courtesy Mezzedimi family collection).
Despite Ethiopia’s status outside Italy’s classical heritage, it
nonetheless had emblems of power the Italian occupiers
could easily recognize, such as the fort in Gondar, constructed by Portuguese builders in the thirteenth century, and
the nodal points of the palace, market, and church, which resembled those in Italian towns.20 The occupiers’ victory was
tainted by painful reminders of defeat, however, as many of
these structures had been built by Italian prisoners of war
captured during the Battle of Adwa, or by Italian builders
hired by Ethiopian patrons.21 Addis Ababa was both strange
and familiar because of its monumental structures. The Italians initially intended to raze the city completely and build it
anew. Lack of resources, however, led the planners to resort
Figure 8 Stairway topped with the Lion of Judah, garden of the Institute
of Ethiopian Studies (formerly Guenete Leul Palace), Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, 1936 (photo by Adam Jones, 2013; https://www.flickr.com/
photos/adam_jones/8667491071; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-sa/2.0/legalcode).
to urban practices based on both the Fascists’ reconstruction
of excavated and cleared monuments in Rome and the
Renaissance tradition of gaining legitimacy through the appropriation of the buildings of the preceding government.22
Preserving Ethiopians’ symbols of power, such as the palace,
was a way to subsume them to the Italian colonial regime and
return Italian achievements to their proper attribution.23
When Haile Selassie, in turn, incorporated Italian-built
piazzas, monuments, and grand avenues, he reasserted his
ability to employ Western expertise in the service of his empire. His regime did not hesitate to appropriate Italian development, such as the road network, airfield, and even civic
monuments such as the theater, just as it had incorporated foreign technical aid into Ethiopia’s modernization program earlier in the century.24 Whereas Italian troops’ arrival in Addis
Ababa in 1936 brought massive destruction, after the city was
liberated in 1941 few Italian colonial monuments were taken
down under Haile Selassie’s second regime.25 The government could not afford to reverse the development the Italians
had set in motion, so it sought instead to reclaim the
colonizer’s achievements; in this way, the imprint of the Italian
occupation could be incorporated seamlessly into the city’s
fabric and reduced to merely a passing episode in its history.
This challenge was even more pronounced in respect to
neighboring Eritrea, where a longer period of Italian colonization had effected considerable modernization of industry
and architecture.26 Annexed by Ethiopia in 1941, Eritrea
raised the stakes for the modernization of Ethiopia because
the latter had to prove to United Nations observers that it
could maintain control over Eritrea—or, in other words, that
it was “modern enough” to colonize a territory that was arguably more developed. As Gulema explains, modernization
served as a propaganda tool to exhibit to the UN observers
that Ethiopia “was civilized and capable enough to take over
and administer modern, albeit colonized, ex-territories like
Eritrea.”27 Rather than rejecting the colonizer’s achievements, Ethiopia appropriated Italian colonial symbols and
planning to assert its own modernity and imperial prowess.
From this perspective, the brief Italian occupation of
Ethiopia served Haile Selassie’s purposes, as he could use its
planning to jump-start his imperial ambitions for the capital
and the taste for monumentality he had developed after his
1924 tour.
The opportunity to take advantage of Italian planning presented a double challenge to postliberation Ethiopia, however,
since the planning was based on an Italian colonial land reform program that undercut the Ethiopian monarchy’s economic base of legitimacy.28 Haile Selassie’s appropriation of
Italian colonial governance through the physical ordering of
Addis Ababa at the same time that he was undoing Italian land
reform and reversing its modern economic base can be interpreted as “colonial mimicry” or, as some historians contended,
as “façade modernism.”29 In this case, however, the relationship between colonizer and colonized presents a complex dynamic that can be characterized as what literary theorist
Shaden Tageldin calls “translational seduction.”30 From the
perspective of the colonized, Tageldin argues, cultural imperialism’s workings are more an “attractive proposition” than a
“willful imposition”—a proposition that suggests the possibility of the reversibility of power between colonizer and colonized. She asks, “What happens when a ‘native’ signifier
binds to a ‘foreign’—especially a colonizing—signifier to
shore up the power of the native through the power of the foreign?”31 Although Tageldin refers to literature, the question
she raises is particularly pertinent in the field of architecture,
where the incorporation of vernacular motifs into Western
models has been a common feature of colonial design.
The short history of a sculpture erected in a formal garden
facing the former Guenete Leul Palace succinctly encapsulates this relationship (Figure 8). During the Italian occupation, the palace served as the residence and official seat
of the viceroy of Italian East Africa. During that time, the
HAILE SELASSIE’S IMPERIAL MODERNITY
453
Figure 9 Patrick Abercrombie, Plan for Addis
Ababa, 1956 (Francis J. C. Amos, “A Development
Plan for Addis Ababa,” Ethiopia Observer 6, no. 1
[1962], 6).
Italians erected a vertical staircase sculpture in the garden,
with the number of steps representing the years of Fascist
rule in Italy and its colonies. Upon Haile Selassie’s return to
the palace, he did not remove the sculpture. Instead, by the
simple gesture of topping it with the Lion of Judah, the emblem of Haile Selassie’s regime, he reclaimed it as an Ethiopian symbol.32 Both the Italian occupation and Haile
Selassie’s postoccupation regime appropriated monuments
rather than destroying them. This recalls Tageldin’s conceptualization of cultural imperialism “as a politics that lures the
colonized to seek power through empire rather than against it,
to translate their cultures into an empowered ‘equivalence’
with those of their dominators and thereby repress the inequalities between those dominators and themselves.”33 In
the Italian–Ethiopian case, city planning was a medium for
reversing power and producing a seemingly harmonious continuity from the precolonial to the colonial and the postcolonial regimes.
454
JSAH | 75.4 | DECEMBER 2016
The Emperor’s Benevolent Entrepreneurship
The colonial Italian plan for Addis Ababa served as the basic
guide for Haile Selassie’s pragmatic and strategic interventions within the city, but British and French planners also created a series of plans commissioned by the Ethiopian
government.34 In 1946, under the patronage of its British
“liberators,” the Ethiopian government approached the eminent Sir Leslie Patrick Abercrombie, author of the recently
completed Greater London Plan, to draft a plan for the capital.35 Characteristically unmonumental, Abercrombie’s plan
consisted of neighborhood units (supposed to correspond to
the existing safar system), green parkways, a greenbelt, satellite towns, a hierarchical street system that retained the existing governmental sector, and a network of radial and ring
roads (Figure 9).36
Despite the fact that this plan did not conform to Haile
Selassie’s tastes and ambitions, Abercrombie’s commission
was renewed in 1954 in preparation for a town planning
Figure 10 Zalman Enav and Michael Tedros,
Classroom Building, Haile Selassie I University,
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1965 (courtesy Zalman
Enav & Michael Tedros, Architects).
exhibition and the publication of the country’s First Five Year
Development Plan in 1957.37
Abercrombie’s plan was eventually rejected, partly because
of the massive resources required for such a comprehensive
urban transformation.38 However, the landed aristocracy’s
opposition, which led to the abandonment of this plan, shows
that availability of public funds was only a small part of the
problem.39 Even had there been a genuine desire on the part
of the government and the city to implement this and other
plans, the existing land tenure system, in which around 90
percent of urban land was controlled by less than 10 percent
of the population (the aristocracy and the monarchy), precluded such attempts. The emerging middle class, consisting
of bureaucrats, military personnel, and merchants, did not
present an alternative patron, since it was absorbed into the
imperial system through land grants allocated from 1942
through the 1960s.40 As the existing system supported the
monarchy’s legitimacy and its elected parliament, any land reform would have threatened to undermine the imperial regime.41 Haile Selassie’s strategy of maintaining political
stability by keeping the landed aristocracy pacified was complemented by the fact that the government and the municipality did not have the statutory power to implement
Abercrombie’s plan. When combined with financial shortages, technical deficiencies, and a crippled bureaucracy, this
lack of power meant that the chances of implementing any of
the plans drafted in the following decade were close to nil.
Acting as the city’s planning consultant and chief architect
in the 1950s, Henri Chomette grew wary of the applicability
of master plans and zoning in African cities. Rather than serving as a prohibiting force, he argued, planners should take
initiative and promote construction. Similarly, he argued
against contemporary dismissal of construction in African cities as the mere expression of their leaders’ personal prestige.
As in Europe, he explained, monuments and the spaces
around them are essential for the formation of national and
civic consciousness.42 Spurring construction through monuments also had financial objectives, as the city tried to increase revenue through taxation and private investment.43
Agreeing with Chomette regarding the need for proactive intervention, the emperor pursued these political and economic
objectives through scattered projects built around the city.44
Governmental and commercial-cultural centers developed ad
hoc with little or no regard for the city’s master plans. For example, Enav and Tedros designed the Classroom Building
(1965) at the Haile Selassie I University campus as a temporary solution while the American firm McLeod and Ferrara
drafted the university’s master plan (Figure 10).
In a context in which there was no statutory power to implement projects, the government accelerated modernization
through fragmented interventions within the cityscape. Setting precedents for the private sector, government projects
encouraged investment to counter the tendency of owners to
exploit their plots passively by subdividing them to maximize
rent profit.45
Addressing both domestic and international audiences,
Haile Selassie’s construction works attempted to eradicate
generations of economic stagnation and spur the landowning
class into more dynamic and risk-taking economic behavior.
Haile Selassie preached to his nation the principles of
Anglo-American economics: “Use your savings where it will
pay you the most. The hoarding of money does not yield dividends!”46 With his actions, he demonstrated how entrepreneurship could turn into development. In a conversation
HAILE SELASSIE’S IMPERIAL MODERNITY
455
with architect Mezzedimi in 1959, the emperor laid out his
urban economic agenda:
It is necessary to show people that it is possible to construct
grand buildings here too, by erecting a couple of high-profile
structures. It is not their complexity or size that matter, but the
maximum possible use of home-produced materials, in order to
shake our wealthy middle class (which keeps its money under
the mattress) from the inactivity that also binds it in the field of
construction, and stimulate it to invest its assets also in building
to make this “great village” a city and a true great capital.47
A few of these capitalist-minded people would be trained at
the American-run College of Business Administration at
Haile Selassie I University. The rest would be exposed to new
patterns of consumption in department stores such as Mosvold’s New Department Store on Haile Selassie I Avenue,
where 80 percent of the luxury furniture sold was produced
locally.48 Significantly, in touting the “maximum possible use
of home-produced materials,” the emperor was referring not
to local craft products but to industrialized production. Modern buildings could be constructed with cement made in factories set up in Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa, and Massawa, which
produced 180,000 tons of cement a year, and with cement
pipe and tile made in seven factories around the country.49
By taking the lead with governmental projects, pedagogical speeches, and private endeavors, Haile Selassie perpetuated the monarch’s traditional role of providing the people
with guidance, even in matters of modernization.50 As art historian Elizabeth Wolde Giorgis explains, by the 1920s Ethiopian modernity had already been conflated with imperial
ideology and the idea of the sacred nation: “Modernity was
hence part of a transcendent kingly moral insight that
shaped the vision of the ideal society that had to be realized.”51 To cultivate his image as an enlightened visionary
of Ethiopian modernity while precluding any political reform, the emperor dissociated himself from the ineffectual
government, which then took the blame for the country’s
political stagnation.52
In an emphatic defense of Haile Selassie against Polish
journalist Ryszard Kapuściński’s documentary novel The
Emperor, architect Arturo Mezzedimi revealed how the emperor conveyed this power hierarchy to his foreign confidants, who were often participants like Mezzedimi who
benefited from the emperor’s direct patronage.53 Reporting
on a meeting between the emperor and the ministers of
finance and public works, Mezzedimi described the emperor’s frustration with his subordinates, whose pettiness and
lack of vision, according to the emperor, stood in the way
of his forward-thinking modernization schemes.54 From the
architect’s perspective, the emperor managed to implement
his vision despite the government rather than because of it.
As historian Bahru Zewde has succinctly put it, Haile Selassie
456
JSAH | 75.4 | DECEMBER 2016
positioned himself above class and politics: “The good was
invariably attributed to him, whereas the bad was blamed
on his subordinates.”55 Upon the completion of successful
projects the emperor often dismissed the contributions of
others. When marble plaques were placed in Africa Hall,
for example, the emperor ordered the removal of “the
names of the minister and chief officials of the Ministry of
Public Works responsible for the bureaucratic aspects of
the project, with the phrase ‘Qu’est-ce qu’ils ont fait?’
[What have they done?].”56 He left Mezzedimi’s name as
the sole creator alongside his, as Ethiopia’s benevolent patron. Such plaques adorned many of the public institutions
constructed during that time as well as a number of the
structures named after the emperor, such as the stadium
constructed by the Israeli contractor Solel Boneh to host
the Africa Cup (1962).57
An Ethiopian Modernity
Haile Selassie often took a keen interest in the design of new
buildings and, as in other spheres under his purview, had the
final say on them.58 Like Mezzedimi, Enav and Tedros gained
the emperor’s trust and used it to bypass senior bureaucrats.
This was the case with their design of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (Figures 11 and 12).
To the architects’ frustration, the minister of finance
insisted that the design follow the lines of the United Nations
building in New York.59 Although we can only speculate
what the minister visualized when he made this request, it
seems he was more attracted to the corporate monumentality
of the Secretariat Building of the New York headquarters
than to its low-rise horizontal General Assembly auditorium.
Expressing what was probably a popular view at that time, a
writer for the Addis Reporter stressed that the way to achieve
“a modern capital of a 3,000-year-old country” was by punctuating Addis Ababa’s skyline with “as many skyscrapers as
possible.”60 Perhaps the minister had in mind Chomette’s
contemporaneous National and Commercial Bank project,
which consisted of an eleven-story building—the tallest to be
erected in Addis Ababa up to that time—and an adjacent
domed circular structure, resembling the volumetric divide of
the United Nations complex between the Secretariat tower
and the horizontal General Assembly (Figure 13).
Enav and Tedros wanted to design an “Ethiopian building” for the most prestigious public commission they had so
far received, and they had envisioned a completely different
structure. After they presented to the emperor their idea for
a diamond-shaped courtyard building with a hexagonal lattice
façade, they received his blessing and no longer had to answer
to the disgruntled minister (see Figure 11).61
Enav and Tedros’s desire to design an “Ethiopian building”
that would also be modern aligned with the emperor’s
Figure 11 Zalman Enav and Michael Tedros,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
1964 (courtesy Zalman Enav & Michael Tedros,
Architects).
Figure 12 Zalman Enav and Michael Tedros,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
second-floor plan, 1962–64 (courtesy Zalman Enav
& Michael Tedros, Architects).
postcoup reformist doctrine of modernization. Earlier in his
career Haile Selassie had compared Ethiopia to a sleeping
beauty awaking from her deep slumber. “In order not to overwhelm her with changes, we should be full of care now,” he
warned.62 While accelerated modernization—backed by U.
S. president Harry Truman’s Point Four program, which sent
millions of dollars in American technical assistance to socalled developing nations—was his priority in the 1950s, the
1960 coup brought Haile Selassie back to his precolonial approach of gradual reform.63
A 1962 governmental review of the First Five Year
Development Plan (1957–61) stressed that although it had
aimed to accelerate the socioeconomic development process in Ethiopia, the plan was transitional and demanded patience—modernization could not be completed with the
establishment of a few factories and institutions. Since
Ethiopia “comprises its own traditional patterns of economic
and social life, as well as new ones,” the review explained, “the
path of development and the planning approach and techniques employed should reflect Ethiopian traits which link
together national traditions and scientific, cultural, and technological achievements of the modern world.”64 This linking
was the crux of Halie Selassie’s approach: modernization,
including social progress, could occur only with traditional
Ethiopian social and political structures as their basis. “We
believe in a progress that builds on a sound foundation and
not on shifting sands,” the emperor pronounced the same
year. “We believe in the adaptation of modern economic and
social theories to local conditions and customs rather than in
the imposition on Ethiopia’s social and economic structure of
HAILE SELASSIE’S IMPERIAL MODERNITY
457
Figure 13 Henri Chomette, National and Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, view from Haile Selassie I Theater, mid-1960s (the
presented document is the property of Archives des Pierre Chomette–Architectes/Paris).
systems which are largely alien to it and which [it] is not
equipped to absorb or cope with.”65
While calling for an adaptation of modernization to local
conditions and customs, Haile Selassie did not mean that the
latter were immutable. In a November 1964 address introducing television services, the emperor explained that the
purpose of these services was to “move the Ethiopian people
progressively on their road to their maximum cultural development.”66 His objective of “maximum cultural development”
implied comprehensive growth, not the passive following of
the scripts of Westernization. In addition to changing the
economic habits of the people, the emperor called for a fundamental psychological and mental change. He sought to
constitute a dynamic culture with a sound enough traditional
basis to absorb technological shock. With such a basis,
technology would not only serve the traditional system but
also be the means of its sustained development. In the prewar years both Menelik and Haile Selassie drew inspiration
from Japanese modernization as a model for keeping culture
intact while utilizing Western technology.67 After the abortive coup, however, it became clear to Haile Selassie that such
a separation was no longer viable.
In order to secure his regime, he had to address conflicting
temporalities, the clash between the desire to accelerate history and the desire to maintain Ethiopian traditions and culture. In this respect, high-rises conveyed modernity, but
they had little to offer in terms of tradition. Moreover, they
could endanger the delicate balance between the two by presenting a too-radical discrepancy between technology and the
traditional institutions that undergirded the monarchy. Enav,
458
JSAH | 75.4 | DECEMBER 2016
too, perceived this conflict as a dilemma for architecture in
Ethiopia. In an essay in the first issue of Zede, the journal of
the Ethiopian Association of Architects and Engineers, Enav
criticized what he perceived as false modernity in Addis
Ababa’s contemporary architecture:
Aesthetically many of the commercial buildings one sees
around suffer from a basic fault. They are what is supposed to
be modern without being so in the true sense. The true sense
of modern buildings I have in mind are buildings which convey,
with contemporary methods and materials, a country’s cultural
heritage. They should be designed to be at the service of the
people and to conform with the country’s economic and social
progress and capacity.68
By defining modern architecture in Ethiopia as a dialectic between contemporary methods and materials and the country’s
cultural heritage, Enav sought to create a language that would
bring the two into a harmonized whole, where technology
and culture would be synchronized and the tensions between
them at least sublimated, if not solved.
Enav and other architects working in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa did not simply reject modernist abstraction in
favor of more sculptural-expressive forms. They adapted
models for reconciling technology and cultural identity.69 In
their work, the modernist separation of function gave way to
the articulation of differentiated ornamental programs. In
Addis Ababa, Chomette’s National and Commercial Bank
juxtaposed an eleven-story rectangular block and a lower
round hall that evoked traditional Ethiopian structures such
as the mud tukul and the round monastic churches found in
Figure 14 Henri Chomette, Ethiopian Pavilion, Expo 67, Montreal, 1967
(official publication; the presented document is the property of Archives
des Pierre Chomette–Architectes/Paris).
the islands of Lake Tana (see Figure 13). While the taller
wing was a standard corporate modern concrete block, the
circular hall bore a symbolic function, with its concrete blind
arcade covering a glass curtain wall and its cutout dome. As in
the case of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the circular hall’s
reference to traditional Ethiopian structures had to be negotiated with the authorities. The director of the bank was convinced only after the architect referred to the domed
structure of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.70
In a similar manner, Chomette’s design for the Ethiopian
Pavilion at the 1967 International and Universal Exposition
(Expo 67) in Montreal extended the symbolism of the bank’s
circular structure (Figure 14).
Separate from Africa Place, a pavilion that housed all of
the other fifteen African countries represented at the fair, the
Ethiopian Pavilion was the first to represent the country as a
sovereign nation in an international exhibition.71 Chomette’s
Ethiopian Pavilion consisted of a red cone tent reminiscent of
Ethiopian royal camp structures; the tent, 30 meters in
height, stretched from a crown-like base similar to the
National and Commercial Bank’s circular hall. This spectacular structure used the royal crown as a literal base for the
vertical structure, symbolizing progress.
Mezzedimi’s Africa Hall represents another attempt to
link symbolic form and structure. Its symmetrical axial plan
consisted of two interconnected volumes: an assembly hall
and a secretariat (Figure 15).
The design followed a study of buildings housing international organizations, including the Palace of Nations in
Geneva (designed originally as the headquarters of the League
of Nations, 1929–38), UNESCO in Paris, and the UN’s Food
and Agriculture Organization building in Rome, which—
fitting with the reversal of power described earlier—was
originally designed in 1937 to house the Ministry of Italian
Africa following the conquest of Addis Ababa.72 Considerably
less daring than Chomette’s National and Commercial Bank
and Expo 67 pavilion, Africa Hall’s ornamental program was
reserved mainly for the interiors of the assembly hall, which
welcomed visitors with a figurative stained glass triptych
designed by prominent Ethiopian artist Afewerk Tekle
(1932–2012). On the exterior, occasional cladding of colored
tiles, an importation of Italian craftsmanship traditions, served
as the only element of distinctly local character. In contrast
with the National and Commercial Bank, the secretariat building’s main ornamental feature was reserved for the façade. Two
vertical strips covered with a geometric pattern adorned the
center of the façade symmetrically, marking the central axis
where the two volumes met (Figure 16).73 Reminiscent of
the epitrachelion (a liturgical vestment) worn by priests in
the Ethiopian church, the pattern was based on a style of
embroidery ubiquitous in traditional Ethiopian dress. At
the National and Commercial Bank the symbolic function of the institution was expressed structurally as well as
ornamentally in the domed structure, while the office
tower maintained an anonymous corporate identity. In
Africa Hall the two functions were conflated in the secretariat building, but rather than expressing any structural
logic, the geometric pattern was simply attached to the
building almost as an afterthought.74
In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, structure and ornament
were effortlessly fused into one representational building.
Given its elongated gridded homogeneous façade, the building seems at first glance like a modernist horizontal rectangular block. Yet a closer look reveals that its symmetrical wings
recede slightly from the entrance plaza to form an elongated
diamond shape (see Figures 11 and 12). While the façade’s
pentagonal concrete lattice is suggestive of the building’s plan,
its full symbolic function is revealed only when the building is
lit at night, when the pentagonal pattern transforms into an
HAILE SELASSIE’S IMPERIAL MODERNITY
459
Figure 15 Arturo Mezzedimi, Africa Hall, Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, plan, 1959–61 (courtesy
Mezzedimi family collection).
emblem within the badge of the Order of the Queen of Sheba
(Figure 17).75
Images of public buildings lit at night were a favorite photographic trope in media representations of Addis Ababa during the 1960s. They highlighted the spectacle of electric light
through the dematerialization of modern construction.
Photos of Africa Hall, for example, gave precedence to its
concrete-and-glass structure, making the ornamental pattern
hardly discernible (Figure 18).
Enav and Tedros, the designers of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, on the other hand, took electric lighting into account
in their conception of the ornamental grid. Similarly, photos
of Chomette’s Commercial Bank employed the effect of
dematerialization to dramatize the symbolic form of the
bank, so that the arcade seemed to hover over the ground majestically like a crown (Figure 19). Chomette also utilized
daylight to create ornamental effects by fracturing the bank’s
dome with petallike cutouts that reflected shimmering flakes
of light on the floor (Figure 20).76
The designs for both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
the National and Commercial Bank abstracted symbolic
forms into geometric patterns, but the metaphoric fields from
which these forms were drawn differed. Chomette’s bank referred to Addis Ababa’s name, which means “new flower.”
This secular yet local reference drew attention to Addis Ababa’s modern origins as the site chosen for the capital at the
end of the nineteenth century. Enav and Tedros’s choice of
a pentagonal motif in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
460
JSAH | 75.4 | DECEMBER 2016
Figure 16 Arturo Mezzedimi, Africa Hall, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, detail of
geometric-patterned mosaic, early 1960s (courtesy Mezzedimi family
collection).
signified the ancient origins of the monarchy and its ties to
Israel.77 Compared to Chomette’s and Mezzedimi’s more literal and immediate references to the city, the monarchy, and
the Ethiopian church, the allusion to the ancient Queen of
Sheba recalled an Ethiopian heritage that extended beyond
Figure 17 Zalman Enav and Michael Tedros,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
view at night, 1964 (courtesy Zalman Enav &
Michael Tedros, Architects).
Figure 18 Arturo Mezzedimi, Africa Hall, Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, view at night, early 1960s
(courtesy Mezzedimi family collection).
Figure 19 Henri Chomette, National and
Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, view at night, 1965 (Ethiopia Mirror 4,
no. 4 [1965]; the presented document is the
property of Archives des Pierre Chomette–
Architectes/Paris).
HAILE SELASSIE’S IMPERIAL MODERNITY
461
territorial and religious boundaries. This reference must have
appealed to both the emperor’s ambition that Ethiopia be an
international symbol of African sovereignty and his imperial
claims to the territories of Eritrea and Somalia.
Patterning Addis Ababa
Enav placed prime significance on the structural qualities of
the pentagonal form he and Tedros employed to represent
Ethiopian identity.78 Its structural and spatial qualities served
to differentiate it from two-dimensional or literal references
to Ethiopia’s ancient tradition, such as those found on Africa
Hall or the Hilton hotel built across the avenue from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1968–71. The Hilton, designed
by the American firm Warner, Burns, Toan, and Lunde, incorporated massive ornament inspired by the ancient obelisks
of Axum (a town in northern Ethiopia dating to the fourth
century BC) into the façade and the interior design. With a
pool shaped like the plan of the Church of Saint George in
Lalibela, the Hilton’s ornamental program simulated Ethiopia’s built heritage and provided a touristic spectacle that did
not necessitate travel outside the capital.79
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in contrast, referred to an
ancient origin, but the abstract pentagonal pattern on its façade was neither distinctly modern nor traditional. The combination of its formal qualities, ostensibly deriving from a
local grammar, and its structural viability rendered it both
timeless and mutable. Enav’s use of a form derived from the
badge of the Order of the Queen of Sheba relates to what anthropologist Ruth Benedict called “unconscious canons of
choice that develop within the culture,” in her 1934 seminal
work Patterns of Culture.80 There is no direct evidence that
Enav knew Benedict’s work, but he may have been exposed to
her theories during his studies at the Architectural Association in London, through Team 10 member Aldo van Eyck’s
writings and his Amsterdam Orphanage project.81 According
to Benedict, “A culture, like an individual, is a more or less
consistent pattern of thought and action. . . . The form that
these acts take we can understand only by understanding first
the emotional and intellectual mainsprings of that society.”
Drawing from nineteenth-century art history theories of the
development of style, Benedict explained: “If we are interested in cultural processes, the only way in which we can
know the significance of the selected detail of behaviour is
against the background of the motives and emotions and values that are institutionalized in that culture.”82 Employing
similar terminology, Enav argued that for architecture to be
expressive of society, the architect should study man’s “intellectual, emotional and physical pattern of behavior” as “an essential background for design.”83 Benedict’s emphasis on
“cultural processes” rather than fixed cultural traits enabled
a dynamic approach to cultural expression and, by extension,
462
JSAH | 75.4 | DECEMBER 2016
Figure 20 Henri Chomette, National and Commercial Bank of
Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, interior detail of dome, 1965 (the
presented document is the property of Archives des Pierre
Chomette–Architectes/Paris).
to architectural intervention. If cultural expression is part of
cultural formation, Enav asserted, then physical patterns, as
they were affected by needs and scale, constituted a visual vocabulary whose interplay changed over time.84 Intricately
linked to deep structures of society while also expressive of
historical processes, these patterns offered Enav a rich repository to draw from, while their historicity legitimated his intervention in their becoming.
Enav and Tedros developed a pattern-based approach at
the Filwoha Thermal Baths (1959–64), a mineral springs
bathing facility that Haile Selassie dedicated to the urban
population of Addis Ababa. Conceived as a series of domed
hexagonal pavilions connected by covered walkways, the
Filwoha Baths complex formed a semienclosed compound
similar to those of the indigenous settlements Enav found in
Ethiopia (Figures 21 and 22).85
The truly public nature of the baths—giving access to the
urbanite poor to enjoy the city’s mineral springs—may have
motivated Enav and Tedros to experiment with what they
perceived as vernacular Ethiopian forms, and with laborintensive construction techniques (Figure 23). Yet these
domed hexagonal pavilions with their pierced skylights resembled Turkish baths more than they did any Ethiopian
vernacular reference (Figure 24).
In addition to Van Eyck’s Amsterdam Orphanage, the
domes might have been inspired by Louis Kahn’s Trenton
Bath House (1954–55), on which he was working around
Figure 21 Zalman Enav and Michael Tedros,
Filwoha Baths, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, site plan,
1959–64 (courtesy Zalman Enav & Michael Tedros,
Architects).
Figure 22 Zalman Enav and Michael Tedros,
Filwoha Baths, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, aerial view,
ca. 1964 (courtesy Zalman Enav & Michael Tedros,
Architects).
Figure 23 Zalman Enav and Michael Tedros,
Filwoha Baths, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, under
construction, ca. 1963 (courtesy Zalman Enav &
Michael Tedros, Architects).
HAILE SELASSIE’S IMPERIAL MODERNITY
463
the time Tedros studied under him at the University of Pennsylvania.86 Such cross-cultural borrowing allowed Enav and
Tedros to introduce changes within the pattern of their works
as an evolutionary progression from ornament to structure,
which can be seen in the change from the pentagonal lattice
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the structural hexagon in
the Filwoha Baths.
The progress from ornament to structure suggests continuity between different scales, from the single module
through the building structure to the city at large. Enav developed sensitivity to scale in his student work at the Architectural Association’s Department of Tropical Architecture,
where he designed a project for Basra employing his concept
of modular-holistic continuity “from the mud brick to the
city.”87 In Addis Ababa, the use of modular scale and cellular
composition allowed Enav and Tedros to create structures
that defied the predominant tendency to design buildings as
“isolated statements” in the cityscape, as Enav characterized
them critically in his Zede article.88 Citing “close-knit groups”
and “cellular or cluster development” as counterstrategies,
Enav and Tedros used their commissions to suggest potential
connectivity outside the isolated site through patterning. The
horizontal continuity of many of Enav and Tedros’s projects
give them the potential for expansion at an urban scale. At the
Filwoha Baths, the links between the hexagonal units suggest
the possibility of adding further units, following a beehive
structure (see Figure 21). The unraveled edges of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in plan evoke this open-endedness, if
only suggestively (see Figure 12). Patterning also appears at
the level of details, such as railings and tiles repeated in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the 82 Apartment Building, and
the Mapping and Geography Institute.
The strategy of patterning enabled the architects to subvert Haile Selassie’s emphasis on individual monuments and
gave a sense of continuity to their buildings as an ensemble in
the city. Since the Filwoha Baths were tucked away from any
representational avenue, the relationship between the
complex and the street was not a prime consideration. Of
the buildings facing Menelik II Avenue, the slightly receding angle in the plan of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
repeated and fully articulated in the 82 Apartment Building
plan (Figure 25).
As the plan suggests, the constructed block was supposed
to be one of a series of blocks connected linearly in parallel to
the avenue. Enav and Tedros’s intervention in this avenue offered a break from the monumental approach taken in the
rest of Addis Ababa.
Enav and Tedros used traditional symbols of imperial
power in their individual buildings, but their site planning
suggests a new method of ordering based on pattern and
repetition. Growth and change could become the subject of
holistic patterning, rather than centralized planning, carving
464
JSAH | 75.4 | DECEMBER 2016
Figure 24 Zalman Enav and Michael Tedros, Filwoha Baths, Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, interior view, ca. 1964 (courtesy Zalman Enav & Michael
Tedros, Architects).
a symbolic order from disparate fragments within the city instead of superimposing a grand order on it. Based on strategic
extension of fragments, Enav and Tedros’s projects could
bypass the ineffectual bureaucracy of the regime and take
advantage of individual initiative and entrepreneurship under
the patronage of the emperor, the benevolent paternal figure
of Ethiopia’s modernization.
Conclusion
Addis Ababa’s modernization under Haile Selassie’s rule does
not fall easily into clear-cut dichotomies such as modern
versus traditional, foreign versus local, or progressive versus
oppressive. The bursts of intense construction in the history
of Addis Ababa, of which the brief colonial period was
only a fraction, created a dense urban palimpsest that was
shaped by shifting power dynamics and various transnational
forces.89
Even before the brief period of Italian occupation, Addis
Ababa’s construction had benefited from transnational exchange, mediated by foreign visitors, missions, and migration
of skilled labor and augmented by Ethiopian elites’ travels
abroad in search of appropriate models for emulation and
adaptation.90 For this reason, when the Italian colonial planners approached the planning of the capital, and despite
initial desire to raze the city and plan it anew, they could identify elements of urbanity that helped them orient their plan.
Similarly, when the Italian occupation was over, Haile
Figure 25 Zalman Enav and Michael Tedros, 82 Apartment Building, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, site plan, 1959 (courtesy Zalman Enav & Michael Tedros,
Architects).
Selassie could continue from where the Italians had left off,
using their construction to shore up his vision for an Ethiopian imperial capital that would lead the entire continent into
its postcolonial era.
The conflict between Ethiopia’s monarchical structure
and imperial objectives on the one hand and its ambition to
become a leader in African decolonization on the other has
led historians to criticize Haile Selassie’s modernization as
false modernity. The transformations of Addis Ababa, they
argue, were mainly a façade intended to impress foreign visitors, while the majority of the population lived in dire conditions. However, the fragmented nature of construction in the
city had concrete ramifications for Addis Ababa’s overall
structure and growth. Furthermore, I submit that this modernization process cannot be reduced to binary terms of true
versus false modernity. As Addis Ababa’s patterns of growth
suggest, Haile Selassie’s image of modernity was based on the
images projected by the European colonial powers. Like
Italy, which sought to boost its status among more modernized nations via its colonial holdings, Haile Selassie equated
modernity with colonialism, and he understood African independence in these geopolitical terms.91
Moreover, the works of the architects involved did not
serve as mere displays of power, or as empty vessels of false
modernity. As foreigners and professional experts, the architects occupied a privileged position in relation to the monarch. Acting under his direct patronage, they were largely
immune from the internal politics of his regime. As a matter
of professional survival in the local market, they had to be attuned to the emperor’s ambitions to modernize as well as to
his anxieties over growing social unrest. Perhaps unaware of
their differential treatment, the architects acted in good faith
while turning a blind eye to discrepancies between the
emperor’s statements and his practice, particularly in his approach to the modernization of the economy while maintaining the traditional land tenure. The design autonomy they
enjoyed, especially in the absence of an enforceable master
plan, allowed them to exercise relative agency in matters of
city planning, which resulted in a range of approaches, from
axial monumentality to Team 10–inspired patterning. Similarly, the negotiation between modernity and tradition took
on multiple forms, as the references the architects employed
to signify tradition and cultural identity varied from Addis
Ababa’s modern history to the Ethiopian church, ancient and
medieval monuments, and the nation’s mythological origins.
Despite the architects’ autonomy, their attempts cannot be
defined unequivocally as either complacent or subversive, as
they all conformed to the emperor’s gradualist agenda. If anything, their approach can be characterized as “constructive
opportunism,” as can be Haile Selassie’s and the Italian planners’ approach vis-à-vis each other’s urban inheritance.
Addis Ababa under Haile Selassie presented foreign architects, still early in their careers, with an experimental ground
unparalleled in their countries of origin. The clashing temporalities of modernity and tradition opened a space for ahistorical cross-cultural borrowings and experimentation with
forms. For this reason, even if the architectural profession
was only beginning to be developed locally, these cases cannot be defined as unidirectional exportation of professional
expertise. The historical patterns of Addis Ababa’s development, as well as Haile Selassie’s gradualist approach, not only
enabled but also affected the architects’ design decisions.
Haile Selassie’s meld of capitalist entrepreneurship and
monarchical benevolence, however, was short-lived. Enav
HAILE SELASSIE’S IMPERIAL MODERNITY
465
may have sensed its impending end when he decided to leave
in 1966, the same year that student protests against the regime took a decisive turn.92 Chomette too had by then departed, having launched a career in French West Africa.93
Mezzedimi, whose ties to the country were deeper, owing to
the three decades he spent in Eritrea and Ethiopia, was the
last to leave in 1975, following the revolution. Although the
1974 revolution brought profound changes to Ethiopian society, particularly through land reform, the urban pattern set
by Haile Selassie’s regime has continued to inform the city’s
construction, which has intensified since the revolutionary
regime’s downfall in 1991. The buildings designed by Mezzedimi, Chomette, and Enav and Tedros continue to dominate
the cityscape and function in their original capacities, albeit
without the grandeur and ambition bestowed by their patron.
It is perhaps only through this lens, as the city has long divested its imperial aura, that one can recognize it as modern.
Ayala Levin researches architectural knowledge production as
part of North–South and South–South exchange. She is currently
completing a book manuscript on the export of Israeli architectural
and planning models to Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, and
Ethiopia in the 1960s and 1970s. http://arc-hum.princeton.edu/
people/ayala-levin
Notes
1. The research for this article was supported by the Institute for Religion,
Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University and the Social Science Research Council. I wish to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewer for
their helpful comments and suggestions, as well as Felicity Scott, Reinhold
Martin, Gwendolyn Wright, Mary McLeod, and Gabriella Szalay for generously reading and commenting on the article in various stages of its writing.
I am grateful to Zalman Enav, Martha and Marcello Mezzedimi, and Pierre
Chomette for kindly permitting the reproduction of images from their private
collections.
According to historian Bahru Zewde, the 1960 coup represented the
most serious challenge to Haile Selassie’s regime between 1941 and 1974.
Two brothers organized the coup, Brigadier General Mangestu Neway and
Garmame Neway. The latter, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and
Columbia University, was the moving spirit behind the coup. Comparing
Ethiopia’s backwardness with the social and economic development of newly
independent African states, the brothers presented a populist agenda, promising the building of schools and factories and an increase in agricultural production. The student population supported the rebels and continued the
resistance underground and, from the mid-1960s, openly with protests. See
Bahru Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991 (Oxford: James Curry;
Athens: Ohio University Press; Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University Press,
2001), 211–15.
2. For a history of the OAU, see P. Olisanwuche Esedebe, Pan-Africanism:
The Idea and Movement, 1776–1963, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Howard
University Press, 1994).
3. Dejene H. Mariam, “Architecture in Addis Ababa,” in Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Centenary of Addis Ababa, November 24–25, 1986,
ed. Ahmed Zekaria, Bahru Zewde, and Taddese Beyene (Addis Ababa: Addis
Ababa City Council, 1987), 199–215. For a short discussion of Enav and
Tedros’s partnership, see Ayala Levin, “Zalman Enav, Michael Tedros and
Addis Ababa’s Imperial Modernity,” in Africa: Big Change, Big Chance (Milan
466
JSAH | 75.4 | DECEMBER 2016
Triennale 2014), ed. Benno Albrecht (Bologna: Editrice Compositori, 2014),
168–69. In the same volume see a brief account of Mezzedimi’s work in
Ethiopia and Eritrea: Martha Mezzedimi and Marcello Mezzedimi, “Arturo
Mezzedimi: Imperial Architect,” 154–56. Chomette’s work in Africa is documented extensively in Diala Touré, Créations architecturales et artistiques en
Afrique sub-saharienne (1948–1995): Bureaux d’études Henri Chomette (Paris:
Harmattan), 2002. See also Léo Noyer-Duplaix, “Henri Chomette: Africa as
a Terrain of Architectural Freedom,” in African Modernism: The Architecture of
Independence: Ghana, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Zambia, ed. Manuel Herz
(Zurich: Park Books, 2015), 271–82.
4. See Olúfémi Táíwò, How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010); Jacob F. Ade Ajayi,
“Colonialism: An Episode in African History,” in Tradition and Change in
Africa: The Essays of J. F. Ade Ajayi, ed. Toyin Falola (Trenton, N.J.:
Africa World Press, 2000), 165–74.
5. Although his focus is on Italian planning, David Rifkind points in this
direction in a recent essay. See David Rifkind, “Colonial Cities at the
Crossroads: Italy and Ethiopia,” in Urban Planning in Sub-Saharan Africa:
Colonial and Post-colonial Planning Cultures, ed. Carlos Nunes Silva (New
York: Routledge, 2015), 145–46.
6. Bahru Zewde, “The City Centre: A Shifting Concept in the History of
Addis Ababa,” in Urban Africa: Changing Contours of Survival in the City, ed.
AbdouMaliq Simone and Abdelghani Abouhani (Dakar: Cedersia Books;
London: Zed Books; Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2005),
122–23.
7. Haggai Erlich, Brit Va-Shever: Ethiopia Ve-Yisrael Bi-Yemey Hayle Selassie
(Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel
Aviv University, 2013), 39. On the history of modern planning in Cairo, see
Mercedes Volait, “Making Cairo Modern (1870–1950): Multiple Models for
a ‘European-Style’ Urbanism,” in Urbanism: Imported or Exported? Native
Aspirations and Foreign Plans, ed. Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait (Chichester:
Wiley-Academy, 2003), 17–50.
8. Shimelis Bonsa Gulema, “Urbanizing a Nation: Addis Ababa and the Shaping of the Modern Ethiopian State 1941–1975” (PhD diss., University of
California, Los Angeles, 2011), 390n839. The list of distinguished guests at
the coronation included Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester and son of King
George V; Italy’s crown prince; and senior representatives of Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan, British Somaliland, Belgium, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Japan, the
Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States. In addition, dozens of international journalists arrived in Addis Ababa for the occasion.
9. Gulema bases his account in “Urbanizing a Nation” on the 1972 publication “Coronation Day 1930—Eyewitness Account,” Ethiopia Mirror 11,
no. 2 (Nov. 1972), 30–38. It should be pointed out that the author of this
piece does not have the critical voice Gulema attributes to him. Quite the
contrary, he praises the infrastructural transformations as paving the
ground for contemporary Addis Ababa. Admittedly, such criticism could
not have been expressed in the pages of a governmental publication in prerevolutionary Ethiopia.
10. Gulema, “Urbanizing a Nation,” 390.
11. Zewde, “City Centre,” 132.
12. Mia Fuller, Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities and Italian Imperialism
(2007; repr., London: Routledge, 2010), 197–213; David Rifkind, “Gondar:
Architecture and Urbanism for Italy’s Fascist Empire,” JSAH 70, no. 4 (Dec.
2011), 492–511.
13. Fuller, Moderns Abroad, 203; Zewde, “City Centre,” 135.
14. Arturo Mezzedimi, “Haile Selassie: A Testimony for Reappraisal (1992),”
Arturo Mezzedimi Architetto, http://www.arturomezzedimi.it/en/home.swf
(accessed 20 Nov. 2014).
15. See the Imperial Ethiopian Mapping and Geography Institute map dated
February 1960 in Sylvia Pankhurst, “Changing Face of Addis Ababa,” Ethiopia
Observer 4, no. 5 (1960), 156–67.
16. For a brief history of the Ethio-Swedish Building College, see Ikem
Stanley Okoye, “Architecture, History, and the Debate on Identity in
Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa,” JSAH 61, no. 3 (Sept. 2002),
389–90. On the Cold War politics that gave rise to the school and affected its
curriculum, see Ayala Levin, “Exporting Zionism: Architectural Modernism
in Israeli-African Technical Cooperation, 1958–1973” (PhD diss., Columbia
University, 2015), 352–74.
17. Zewde, “City Centre,” 131–32.
18. Three companies were in charge of the construction and equipping of
the international airport: Grove, Shepherd and Kruge created the main infrastructure; Page Communication Engineering equipped the airport with radio,
navigational gear, and a fire station; and Reynolds built the terminal building,
hangar, control tower, office buildings, food service, and stores. See Oscar
Rampone, “Ethiopia Enters the Jet Era,” Ethiopia Mirror 1, no. 4 (July–Sept.
1962), 6–14. In addition, the joint Israeli–American company Reynolds (of
Solel Boneh) constructed terminals outside the capital in Asmara, Jimma,
and Dire Dawa. Solel Boneh Overseas Company Bulletin, no. 18, 14 May 1962,
IV-204-4-536, Labour Movement Archives, Lavon Institute for Labour Research, Tel Aviv.
19. Fuller, Moderns Abroad, 151–70, 197–213.
20. Rifkind, “Gondar”; Rifkind, “Colonial Cities at the Crossroads.”
21. Fuller, Moderns Abroad, 200–201.
22. Ibid., 200. See also Diane Ghirardo, Building New Communities (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 107–8.
23. Similarly in Gondar, the Italians emphasized Portuguese craftsmanship in
the Fasil Ghebi, a castle complex built in the seventeenth century under the
rule of Fasilidas, the son of the city’s founder, Susenios. According to Rifkind,
Fasilidas employed Indian and possibly Turkish craftsmen, who worked under
Portuguese supervision. See Rifkind, “Gondar,” 494.
24. This included the source of the capital’s electric supply: the hydroelectric
plant the Italians set up south of Addis Ababa. Zewde, History of Modern Ethiopia, 198. As Zewde notes, the Qoqa Dam—Ethiopia’s most ambitious infrastructural project following independence—was funded by Italy as part of
war reparations.
25. Fuller, Moderns Abroad, 202.
26. See Edward Denison, Asmara: Africa’s Secret Modernist City (London:
Merrell, 2003).
27. Gulema, “Urbanizing a Nation,” 392–93.
28. Ibid., 385–86.
29. See, for example, Paulos Milkias, Haile Selassie, Western Education and Political Revolution in Ethiopia (Youngstown, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2006), 68–69;
Zewde, History of Modern Ethiopia, esp. 201–7; Amanda Kay McVety, Enlightened Aid: U.S. Development as Foreign Policy in Ethiopia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 121–94; Messay Kebeda, Survival and Modernization:
Ethiopia’s Enigmatic Present—A Philosophical Discourse (Lawrenceville, N.J.:
Red Sea Press), 299–345.
30. Shaden M. Tageldin, Disarming Words: Empire and the Seductions of
Translation in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 10.
31. Ibid., 4, 7.
32. Meskerem Assegued and Demeke Brehane, Public Monuments of Addis
Ababa 1930–2014 (Addis Ababa: Goethe-Institut, 2014), 24–25. I thank Sohl
Lee for this reference.
33. Tageldin, Disarming Words, 10.
34. Other plans commissioned during Haile Selassie’s regime include a
1959 plan by the British office Bolton Hennessy and Partners that revised Sir
Leslie Patrick Abercrombie’s plan of 1946 and a monumental plan by the
French Mission d’Urbanisme et d’Habitat under the leadership of Luis de
Mariene, which was drafted in 1965 and resulted in the construction of
high-rise buildings, apartment structures, and low-cost single-story houses in
several parts of the city. For a genealogy of the capital’s master plans, see
Gulema, “Urbanizing a Nation,” 400–443. See also Techeste Ahderom,
“Basic Principles and Objectives Taken in the Preparation of the Addis Ababa
Master Plan: Past and Present,” in Zekaria et al., Proceedings of the International
Symposium on the Centenary of Addis Ababa, 247–69.
35. Gulema, “Urbanizing a Nation,” 400.
36. Ibid., 431–32. See also Sylvia Pankhurst, “Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s Town
Plan,” Ethiopia Observer 1, no. 2 (1957), 34–44.
37. Gulema, “Urbanizing a Nation,” 393, 429.
38. Ibid., 436.
39. Ibid., 438.
40. Ibid., 394–99.
41. As a result of acute tenancy problems in the rural areas and external pressure to address those problems, the government was forced to consider land
reform. It first set up a committee on land reform in 1961, which in 1965 was
consolidated into the Land Reform and Development Authority, which was
in turn reconstituted as the Ministry of Land Reform and Administration in
1966. Zewde, History of Modern Ethiopia, 195.
42. Henri Chomette, “L’urbanism est une affair d’etat: Propos et notes,”
Europe France Outremer, no. 434 (Mar. 1966), Archives de Pierre Chomette–
Architectes/Paris.
43. Gulema, “Urbanizing a Nation,” 394.
44. The Classroom Building at Haile Selassie I University was the first, and,
until the J.F.K. Library opened in July 1970, the only new permanent building
built for the purposes of the university on what used to be the emperor’s palace grounds. When the Classroom Building opened in September 1965, the
first and second floors housed the Faculty of Arts, the third floor the Faculty
of Education, and the fourth floor the College of Business Administration.
Until the J.F.K. Library, designed by the U.S. firm McLeod, Ferrara and
Ensign, was completed, the Classroom Building also housed the university’s
central library in its basement. “Some Notes on the Colleges and Faculties of
the University,” HSIU Miscellanea 4, Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis
Ababa University.
45. Zewde, History of Modern Ethiopia, 192. See also Charles Schaefer,
“Rentier Capitalism: Cash, Credit and Urban Development in Addis Ababa,
1905–1936,” in “Urban History,” ed. Shimelis Bonsa, special issue, Journal of
Ethiopian Studies 45 (Dec. 2012), 53–72.
46. Quoted in McVety, Enlightened Aid, 147. In addition, the government
employed a highly attractive investment policy: a 1949 proclamation regarding income tax stated that no profit tax would be levied for a period of
five years on initial capital of $200,000 (in Ethiopian dollars) invested in
mining, industry and transport, and taxes on business enterprises were not
to exceed 15 percent of net profits. Additional inducements for foreign
capital investment were a general remittance policy, high tariffs on competitive imports, and cooperation in fixing high prices for commodities
produced locally. Zewde, History of Modern Ethiopia, 199.
47. Quoted in Mezzedimi, “Haile Selassie.”
48. “Progress in Production and Trade,” Ethiopia Mirror 3, no. 2 (Apr.–June
1964), 22–23; “Another Philips’ Stride in the Ethiopian Economy,” Ethiopia
Mirror 4, nos. 1–2 (Jan.–June 1965), 30–31.
49. Development in Ethiopia 1941–1964 (Addis Ababa: Imperial Ethiopian
Government, Ministry of Information, 1964), 179–80, Institute of Ethiopian
Studies, Addis Ababa University.
50. The royal family participated in these demonstration investments. For example, the empress owned a mixed-use rental apartment building designed by
Enav and Tedros. Zalman Enav, interview by author, 15 July 2009, Tel Aviv.
51. Elizabeth Wolde Giorgis, “Charting Out Ethiopian Modernity and Modernism,” Callaloo 22, no. 1 (Winter 2010), 90–91.
52. The absence of political parties and the property qualification for election
to parliament ensured that the elected members represented mainly their
individual interests rather than broad public ones. The emperor further weakened the parliament by retaining his power of veto on policy matters, appointment of ministers, and even the appointment of the prime minister, who “was
HAILE SELASSIE’S IMPERIAL MODERNITY
467
little more than a glorified conduit for the flow of appointments and decisions,” according to Bahru Zewde. Zewde, History of Modern Ethiopia, 206.
53. Mezzedimi, “Haile Selassie.” For an English translation of Kapuściński’s
book, see Ryszard Kapuściński, The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat, trans.
William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand (1978; repr., New
York: Vintage Books, 1989). Expatriates were often entrusted with discreet
royal affairs, since they did not have a stake in local affairs. See Richard
Pankhurst, “Melenik and the Utilisation of Foreign Skills in Ethiopia,”
Journal of Ethiopian Studies 5, no. 1 (Jan. 1967), 29–86.
54. Mezzedimi, “Haile Selassie.”
55. Zewde, History of Modern Ethiopia, 202.
56. Mezzedimi, “Haile Selassie.”
57. Certificate signed by Dr. Haile Giorgis Workneh, 10 Mar. 1962, attached
to S. Golan to Golda Meir, 4 Apr. 1962, MFA 1903/10 A, Israel State
Archives, Jerusalem.
58. Mezzedimi, “Haile Selassie.”
59. Enav, interview by author.
60. Quoted in Gulema, “Urbanizing a Nation,” 388–89n836.
61. Enav, interview by author. In a 2010 interview with Haim Yacobi, Enav
gave a slightly different version of the story: “The Prime Minister asked me
to design a building similar to the UN building in New York. . . . I told him
that it was out of the question, since I wanted to design an ‘Ethiopian’ building. But he insisted, telling me, ‘we want to be Modern.’ . . . I finally designed
a large model and I took it to the emperor who asked me: ‘why is it not built
with glass?’ I answered him: ‘don’t you see? The façade is made of units that
resemble the star of Solomon, the Ethiopian symbol. . . .’ Only then was he
convinced by my idea.” Zalman Enav, quoted in Haim Yacobi, “The Architecture of Foreign Policy,” in “L’Afrique, c’est chic: Architecture and Planning in
Africa, 1950–1970,” ed. Johan Lagae and Tom Avermaete, special issue,
OASE 82 (2010), 49.
62. Quoted in Milkias, Haile Selassie, Western Education, 26. Compare this
phrase to that of African American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois, who spoke
of Africa as a “sleeping giant.” See Elizabeth Harney, In Senghor’s Shadow: Art,
Politics, and the Avant-garde in Senegal, 1960–1995 (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 2004), 23.
63. Truman announced the establishment of Point Four on 20 January
1949. For an extensive account of the program in Ethiopia, see McVety,
Enlightened Aid.
64. Second Five Year Development Plan (Addis Ababa: Imperial Ethiopian
Government, October 1962), 33–34.
65. Quoted in McVety, Enlightened Aid, 176.
66. Quoted in Ethiopia Information Bulletin, no. 16 (Nov.–Dec. 1964), 24, emphasis added.
67. For an analysis of the debates on the relationship between culture and
technology in Ethiopian intellectual tradition see Giorgis, “Charting Out
Ethiopian Modernity.” On the analogy to Japan, see Massay Kebede, “Japan
and Ethiopia: An Appraisal of Similarities and Divergent Courses,” in Ethiopia
in Broader Perspective: Papers of the XIIIth International Conference of Ethiopian
Studies, Kyoto, 12–17 December 1997, ed. Katsuyoshi Fukui, Eisei Kurimoto,
and Masayoshi Shigeta (Kyoto: Shokado Book Sellers, 1997), 639–51.
68. Zalman Enav, “Architecture in Ethiopia Today,” Zede 1, no. 1 (Nov. 1965), 23.
69. See, for example, the work of the Italian architect Eugène Palumbo
in Kinshasa in the 1960s. Johan Lagae and Kim de Raedt, “Building for
‘l’Authenticité’: Eugène Palumbo and the Architecture of Mobutu’s Congo,”
in “Building Modern Africa,” ed. Itohan Osayimwese and David Rifkind, special issue, Journal of Architectural Education 68, no. 2 (2014), 178–89.
468
JSAH | 75.4 | DECEMBER 2016
70. Henri Chomette, “Le projet pour la Banque d’Etat d’Ethiopie,” Souvenirs,
1038, Annexe 15C, Archives de Pierre Chomette–Architectes/Paris.
71. See J. Benoit-Barnet, “Ethiopia at Expo 67: Ethiopian Pavilion,” Ethiopia
Mirror 6, no. 2 (July 1967), 21–31. For a critical overview of Africa Place, see
Ingrid Schröder, “African Universe: Africa Place at Expo 67,” in Herz, African
Modernism, 625–35.
72. Africa Hall, booklet, n.d., Mezzedimi family collection.
73. The pattern repeats also at the edges of a third building that Mezzedimi
added subsequently to the complex.
74. That the ornament was literally an afterthought may be inferred from a
photograph of an early model of the design, in which this pattern does not
appear.
75. Enav referred to it as the Star of Solomon, which is closer in shape to the
Jewish Star of David. Enav, interview by author.
76. “The New Building of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia,” Ethiopia Mirror 4, no. 4 (Oct.–Dec. 1965), 20–29.
77. Israeli–Ethiopian international relations emphasized Ethiopia’s ancient
ties to the Jewish nation. Enav was an avid supporter of these relations and
benefited from them indirectly. See Levin, “Exporting Zionism,” chap. 5.
78. Enav, interview by author.
79. “Hilton Hotels by Warner Burns Toan Lunde,” Contract Interiors 1232,
no. 3 (1972), 102–9. Following the Addis Ababa Hilton, the firm designed
also the Ramses Hilton in Cairo. On the role of Hilton hotels in the Cold
War ideological battle, see Annabel Jane Wharton, Building the Cold War:
Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2001).
80. Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (1934; repr., Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
2005), 48.
81. On Benedict’s influence on Team 10 member Aldo van Eyck, see Francis
Strauven, Aldo van Eyck: The Shape of Relativity (Amsterdam: Architectura and
Natura, 1998), 380, 449–52.
82. Benedict, Patterns of Culture, 46, 49.
83. Enav, “Architecture in Ethiopia Today,” 17–18.
84. Ibid.
85. In his article in Zede, Enav incorporated an aerial view of these settlements. Typical for this structuralist approach, he made no mention of the
names of the villages, their geographic region, or the date on which the photo
was taken. Ibid., 21.
86. As part of American educational aid to Ethiopia, Michael Tedros
completed his architectural training, which he started in evening classes
in England, at Ohio State College and the University of Pennsylvania
during the 1950s.
87. Enav, interview by author. Enav graduated from the Department of
Tropical Architecture at the Architectural Association in London in 1957.
88. Enav, “Architecture in Ethiopia,” 23.
89. Johan Lagae developed the concept of territorial palimpsest as a tool for
the analysis of African cities on a colonial–postcolonial continuum. See Johan
Lagae, “Kinshasa: Tales of the Tangible City,” ABE Journal, no. 3 (2013).
90. See Pankhurst, “Melenik and the Utilisation of Foreign Skills.”
91. On Italy’s attempt to gain status through its colonial holdings, see Fuller,
Moderns Abroad, 6–7, 15–16.
92. On the history of demonstrations and the escalation of student protests in
Ethiopia from 1965 to the 1974 revolution, see Milkias, Haile Selassie, Western
Education, 111–33. Although Enav left Ethiopia in 1966, his Addis Ababa office continued to operate until 1971.
93. See Touré, Créations architecturales et artistiques.