A Documentation Review of Yoruba Indigenous Architectural Morphology

Abstract

The indigenous architecture of the Yoruba which is the summation of the traditional, the vernacular and the contemporary ethno-acculturation of contemporary styles has not received a robust level of reporting from recent publications. This study was carried out with the sole aim of organizing the various lines of thought into a continuum for defining the evolution of the Yoruba architecture in the simplest way. A search was conducted in the Social Science Citations Index and Google Scholar to sift out the publications with “Yoruba Architecture” and “Southwest Nigeria Architecture” as search words. Thirty relevant publications of the sixty-seven publications that related to the topic among others were selected for further scrutiny. It was discovered that most of the publications were descriptive and eclectic in their analysis. They sought to explain the architecture basically as a spatial product of the socio-cultural demands of the society. The traditional and vernacular styles are well documented and easily explained by this approach. There was however very little attempt to decipher the current threshold of the indigenous architecture in the face of the overwhelming influence of the postmodern and contemporary building styles that are common in Yoruba towns of recent.

Keywords: International style, post vernacular architecture, postmodern architecture, traditional architecture, vernacular architecture, thresholds.

DOI: 10.7176/JAAS/66-05

Publication date:July 31^st 2020