The Orowa House:A Typology of Traditional Yoruba Architecture in Ile-Ife,Nigeria

Adeokun , C. O. (2013) The Orowa House:A Typology of Traditional Yoruba Architecture in Ile-Ife,Nigeria. In: WABER 2013 Conference, Accra, Ghana.

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Abstract

Beyond generic descriptions of Nigerian traditional architecture as ‘adobe walls, domes, courtyards and overhanging hipped roofs’, or in response to the oft-posed question: What exactly is Indigenous Nigerian Architecture? This paper presents a spatial typology from Ile-Ife town core area. The study identified the distinctive features of the traditional Ile-Ife Orowa House; key function spaces e.g. the Orowa (central hall), a comprehensive pattern of space use in the dwelling, the organizational (spatial) criteria, and morphological characteristics using Hillier and Hanson (1984) Space Syntax methods. Key spatial relationships between the core functional spaces in the Orowa house that define its morphology were identified, which extend beyond the descriptive studies of Yoruba traditional domestic architecture more regularly found in existing literature. The use of space syntax allowed for measurable analyses of the twenty-four houses surveyed, and contributes to the documentation of traditional dwellings in Nigeria. While differences in space use pattern exist between the Orowa house and contemporary houses found in the larger sample from which this paper is derived, some space use patterns persist in both; indicative of a ‘Nigerian’ or at least a Yoruba way of living that survives in newer architectural forms

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > NA Architecture
Divisions:	Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics > School of Civil Engineering and the Environment
Depositing User:	Mr Solomon Bayoko
Date Deposited:	29 Jan 2014 02:44
Last Modified:	17 Dec 2014 13:43
URI:	http://eprints.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/id/eprint/2084

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