Traditional Igbo Architecture: A Symbolic Evaluation

Abstract

| african arts SUMMER 2022 VOL. 55, NO. 2 In Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964), Chinua Achebe was concerned to show that Africans before the intervention of Europeans had culture, government, religion, philosophy, astronomy, music, dance, science, art, and architecture. These novels were set in the precolonial era, toward the onset of colonization in Igboland in Eastern Nigeria (Fig. 1). Traditional architecture has long been used as an index to measure humankind’s state of development or their response to their environment in terms of using available materials to afford protection over the elements, animals, and fellow people. Beyond these basic essentials, however, Vitruvius, in his treatise De Architectura Litori Decem (27–23 bce) considered philosophy, music, meteorology, astronomy, and engineering as related to architecture (Dmochowski 1990: v). It is within these and other contexts—like environment, religion, tradition and language—that traditional Igbo architecture will be examined to illustrate its symbolic attributes in this essay. Labelle Prussin (1969: 1) considers architecture first as a building process where humans manipulate materials at their disposal and hence as building technology. It is also seen as a concept that examines the nature and quality of the space created. Finally it is considered as the sublimation of a culture’s symbolism and therefore an array of its graphic and formal system of values. Similarly, Aniakor (2002: 273) appraises Igbo architecture within the matrix of society’s ideas, symbolism, space, building materials, and technology. Even when one views Igbo architecture as the art of space and space organization, a building is a spatial entity formally quantified into three-dimensional form as a structure. This is made possible by master builders who manipulate available materials to form distinct styles of architecture. The skill is a form of expertise, but the building design derives from ideas of the society. This interplay among form, symbol, idea, and expertise is crucial to any understanding of Igbo architecture. Aniakor further notes that “the ability of architecture to symbolize derives from the fact that it is a social institution and thus lies in the social matrix of the human society” (2002: 273). Traditional Igbo architecture, an aspect of the people’s material culture and artistic heritage, will be shown to intersect with and be contiguous with other components of Igbo cultural attributes, worldview, and mores using aspects of the fictive, but materially valid, environment in the novels Things Fall Apart1 (Achebe 1958) and Arrow of God2 (Achebe 1964).