Filip De Boeck

The Tower, A Concrete Utopia

Filip De Boeck, Sammy Baloji

One of the early landmarks of Belgian colonial urban architecture was the Forescom tower. Built in 1946, it was Leopoldville’s first skyscraper, and one of the first high rise buildings of Central Africa. Pointing towards the sky, it also pointed to the future. It embodied and made tangible new ideas of possible futures, and as such the tower materially translated and emblematically visualised colonialist ideologies of progress and modernity. The video The Tower: A Concrete Utopia offers a guided tour by ‘Docteur’, the owner of this remarkable tower situated in the municipality of Limete. Conceived and realized by ‘Docteur’ without the help of professional architects, the construction of this as-yet unfinished tower was started in 2003.