A blue sheet to cover the suicide of the ” House of Wonders”
© arcomai I The “House of Wonders” after the collapse.
Two months have passed since the collapse of the “House of Wonders ” and work is still underway to remove the rubble. A similar incident had already occurred in 2012, when parts of the roof fell, taking with them several original cast iron pillars. That time the back of the building was affected, while the collapse of last December 25 involved the main entrance with the famous clock tower and the eastern wing of the building. In November 2015 heavy rains had caused the partial collapse of the roof. In 2016, work was carried out to consolidate the load-bearing walls and floors that showed signs of failure. Thus in 2018 the restructuring and restoration of the artifact was entrusted to the Costruzioni Generali Gilardi of Turin, which had won the $6 million tender, financed by the Sultanate of Oman.
Now it will be up to the contracting company, which was supposed to complete the work in 15 months, and the project managers to explain what happened; and if the accident could have been avoided. The local Superintendency (Town Conservation and Development Authority) will announce the total amount of the damage. In the meantime, a team of structural engineers and architects, sent last month by the WMF (World Monuments Fund) as part of a mission organized by UNESCO, is advising the Zanzibar government on how to save the remaining part of the building from a possible total collapse.
© arcomai I The “House of Wonders” wrapped with blue metal sweets.
The complex has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2000. It housed the Museum of History and Culture of Zanzibar and the Swahili Coast. A symbol of the city, it was a destination for 80% of tourists visiting Zanzibar. This is certainly a significant number considering that approximately 30,000 travelers visit the island’s capital each year. Overlooking the Indian Ocean, the “House of Wonders” (in Arabic, Beit-el-Ajaib) occupies a prominent position in front of the Forodhani Gardens on the old city’s seafront, on Mizingani Road. It is one of the six palaces built by Barghash bin Said, the second Sultan of Zanzibar. The building was constructed in 1883 as a ceremonial palace and reception hall. Its name derives from the fact that it was the first building in Zanzibar to be powered by electricity, as well as the first in East Africa to have an elevator.
do.co.mo.mo. I The “Palace of Wonders”. Evolution of the facade (source do.co.mo.mo. 48 — 2013/1):
A. The original facade ca. 1888; B. The facade ca. 1892 with the addition of columns; C. The facade ca. 1900 with modifications after the bombing: lowering of the verandas, addition of the roof terrace and clock tower;
D. The facade ca. 1920 after the last modifications by J. H. Sinclair.
The design of the palace is attributed to a British maritime engineer who introduced new constructional elements such as the use of prefabricated components and architectural features such as the large exterior verandas supported by cast-iron columns, which allowed for exceptionally high ceilings, as well as the covered passages above street level that connected the palace to the two adjacent buildings with administrative functions Beit al-Hukum and Beit al-Sahel (now the Palace Museum), allowing the royal ladies to move around without being seen. The building had a large covered central courtyard surrounded by loggias. The marble floors and most of the silver decorations inside were imported from Europe.
© arcomai I “House of Wonders”. Historical photos.
Opposite the original building stood a lighthouse that was destroyed during the Anglo-Zanzibar War of August 27, 1896. During this attack, the Beit al-Hukum palace was destroyed and the Beit al-Sahel palace was severely damaged, while the royal building suffered only minor damage. In my opinion, this was no coincidence as those who planned the shelling from the sea arbitrarily wanted to hit only the two administrative buildings attached to the central, valuable body and thus ensure a comfortable stay once they landed. During the reconstruction in 1897, a new clock tower was integrated into the facade of the building, which was unfortunately lost with the collapse two months ago. In 1911, the building was transformed into government offices of the British government authority.
© arcomai I “House of Wonders”. Historical photos.
After independence, on December 10, 1963, Beit-el-Ajaib was returned to its function as a ceremonial and administrative palace for the government of Sultan Seyyid Jamshid, a descendant of Sultan Seyyid Said. However, shortly after, on January 12, 1964, the Revolution broke out and the Sultan had to flee the island. The building was ransacked and soon after President Karume decided to transform the building into the headquarters of both the Afro Shirazi Party and the Afro Shirazi Party Ideological College and to establish there the Revolution Memorial Museum to the Revolution. In 1992, the complex was returned to the government of Zanzibar and much of what it contained within it was dismantled, destroyed or dispersed.
© arcomai I The “House of Wonders” wrapped with blue metal sweets.
This “biography of an architecture” of mine has been partly reconstructed through issue 48-2013/1 of the do.co.mo.mo. magazine entitled “Early Modern African Architecture. The House of Wonders Revisited” (edited by Antoni Folkers), of which we publish here a diagram showing the compositional evolution of the facade in the thirty-year period between the last decade of the 19th century and the first two of the 20th. This image shows the lightness, elegance, fragility of an architectural work desired and erected not to suffer and tolerate so much and systematic violence by man, but to celebrate the beauty of modernity. The battles, accidents, abandonment, neglect, ignorance in a century and a half of life have certainly weakened not only its structure and identity but also its soul.
At present, any form of restoration is nothing more than a useless therapeutic fury, a further violence perpetrated by the cynicism of civilizations. It almost seems that the “House of Wonders” has chosen by itself to end it. The ridiculous corrugated sheet metal covering – painted with blue paint – that wraps the ruins of something that was already gone, seems like the coroner’s sheet covering the corpse to hide the shame of a announced crime. According to what was reported by the local newspaper The Citizen, in the collapse, four workers were pulled alive from the rubble and taken to hospital. When the “wonderful thing” becomes a miracle.