MAISON ÉDOUARD AKA (ADOUKO BLACKSON)

Built in the 1920s, this building classified as "remarkable heritage" in the heart of the UNESCO listed French quarter of Grand-Bassam constituted with the Treich-Laplène and Akil Borro houses a homogeneous urban ensemble forming a curved square open onto the lagoon: the commercial square. Their three facades, aligned and facing north, formed a continuous grid whose crescent-moon design gave the square a noble and imposing character. A central element of this architectural sub-assembly, the Édouard Aka house is very similar in style to the Varlet house, with its massive appearance, its portico with arcades on the ground floor and a gallery on the upper floor with narrower and more numerous openings running all around the building and adorned with the historical motif of colonial constructions of this period: the fleur-de-lys. The main building materials used were bricks and reinforced concrete, which allowed for easier maintenance and provided better protection against marine erosion and the humidity of the tropical climate (but not against human negligence, obviously). This house would have belonged to one of the first Ivorian executives of the colonial period, Edouard Aka, a logger who would have westernized his name, renaming himself Blackson in order to have easier access to credits from European commercial banks, especially the English bank.