Dele Adeyemo on highlife music and the rise of a modernist Ghanaian hotel: CCA x AR Bookshelf

In this episode, architect, artist and critical urban theorist Dele Adeyemo takes us to the modernist Meridian Hotel in Tema New Town in Ghana. The 1975 song Meridian by Ghanaian group Wulomei provides evidence of its former grandeur and the ambition of post-independence Ghana – evidence that cannot be found in traditional archives.   This AR Bookshelf episode is part of a collaboration between The Architectural Review and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) around the book Fugitive Archives: A Sourcebook for Centring Africa in Histories of Architecture, published following the CCA’s Centring Africa research project. In each episode of this short series, a researcher from the publication tells the story of a place based on sources traditionally overlooked by western archives. Forming a fugitive archive itself, the episodes study both the places themselves and the media – better suited to podcast than paper – that document and describe them.   Fugitive Archives is edited by Claire Lubell and Rafico Ruiz, and co-published with Jap Sam Books (October 2023).