Exporting Prestressed Concrete to Africa. The Construction of the Bata 300 Shoe Factory in Kinshasa, DR CongSo, 1962–1965

Abstract

Ever since the conception of the “model factory” in an in 1917 published book by Moritz Kahn, and the construction of the first prototypes in 1906 by his brothers – the architect Albert Kahn and the concrete engineer Julius Kahn – for the Ford Motor Company, concrete became inextricably bound with the new typology of the mass-producing factory in the United States. When in 1908 Tomas Bata, a Czechoslovak shoemaker, travels to the United States to work in a shoe manufacturing company he is baffled by both the mode of production and its accompanying factories. Upon his return to his hometown of Zlìn, he introduces these ideas within his own factory, which quickly starts to grow to an international company. Bata’s own construction department dispersed the ideas on the ideal concrete factory throughout Europe and eventually towards Africa.

By looking closely at the case of a Bata shoe factory built in 1962 in Kinshasa, DR Congo, we want to address the alteration of this “model factory” during its translation both in time and space. Drawing on archival documents of the Belgian contracting firm Blaton-Aubert, which was active in Congo since 1949 with its subsidiary company Compagnie Congolaise de Construction (CCC), this paper focusses on a particular technique of prestressed concrete, developed in Belgium during the 40’s. The descriptions and calculations of the Belgian engineer Jacques Robin, combined with the construction drawings and reports from the construction site, shed light on the specific application in DR Congo of prestressed concrete, that was by then a well-established building technique in Belgium. By reconstructing the building process via a series of analytical drawings, I will highlight some of the conceptual choices made by the engineer and contractor, to deal with the challenges of creating an industrial hall with large spans, in a context largely defined by the availability of large groups of unskilled labour and the absence of heavy machinery.

“Considered as a totality though, the work involved in making a concrete building involves just as much skill as does a building built by any constructional method, and in that respect the question of skill or no skill is an irrelevance. The difference lies in the way that the skills are distributed between the various people employed in its construction.”

(Forty 2012 , p. 233).

This paper is based on research financed through a four-year FWO-project n° G053215 N (2015–2018), entitled “Tout le Congo est un chantier”. Re-assessing Congo’s architectural history from 1918 till 1975 through a construction history approach”, supervisors: prof. Johan Lagae (UGent), prof. Rika Devos (ULB), prof. Luc Taerwe (UGent) & prof. Jacob Sabakinu Kivilu (Université de Kinshasa).