The shape of things to come

Senegal cast-off western influences after gaining independence in 1960, but though its new African style is neglected, Dakar’s buildings still dazzle

- Oliver Wainwright

Visiting the International Fair of Dakar is like taking a stroll through the ruins of some ancient Toblerone- worshipping civilisation. A cluster of triangular pavilions rises from a podium , each clad in a rich pattern of seashells and pebbles. These are reached by triangular steps that lead past triangular plant pots to momentous triangular entrance ways. All around, great hangar-like sheds extend into the distance, ventilated by triangular windows and topped with serrated triangular roofs. All that’s missing is triangular honey from triangular bees.

Built on the outskirts of the Senegalese capital as a showcase for global trade in 1974 , t his astonishing city-sized hymn to the three-sided shape was designed by young French architects Jean Francois Lamoureux, Jean-Louis Marin and Fernand Bonamy. Their obsessive geometrical composition was an attempt to answer the call of Senegal’s first president, the poet Léopold Sédar Senghor , for a national style that he curiously termed “asymmetrical parallelism”.

Senegal had gained independence from France in 1960 , and Senghor was determined to use the arts to forge a national identity liberated from western tradition and drawing from African civilisation, particularly Sudano-Sahelian traditions, “without wavering from the requirements of modernity”. Senghor never defined this brave new style , but he spoke vaguely of “a diversified repetition of rhythm in time and space”. Forceful, faceted forms and strong, rhythmic geometries became the vogue.