Tropical Zionism: Arieh Sharon’s Design for the University of Ife, Nigeria
Ayala Levin, Professor, Art History Department, Northwestern University
From the early 1960s to the late 1970s, prominent Israeli architect Arieh Sharon directed the design team of the University of Ife campus in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Established as part of a regional competition over the allocation of higher education in the postcolonial federal state, the university was to present an alternative to the British-sponsored University College Ibadan. Sharon’s challenge was to distinguish the University of Ife from its federal counterpart, while adhering to the modernist aesthetics and climatic considerations that dictated its form. A Bauhaus graduate closely affiliated with Hannes Meyer, Sharon was well familiar with the principles of both. Yet, as I will argue in this paper, his design was equally informed by his experience as a Jewish settler-colonial pioneer in Palestine. By conflating the professional and the biographical, I hope to shed new light on the cultural relativity of climate responsive design.