Walls and Ancestors: Spatial Organisation and Tensions in the Evolving Built Environment of Urhobo Architectural Tradition in Nigeria
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper investigates the traditional communal lifestyle of neighbours who live in vernacular structures, and how modernity and globalisation threaten these ways of life.The Urhobo people of southern Nigeria, in their traditional built-environment live in 'nucleated' settlements, which are not built around physical central features but around a mental central kinship belief system.The adoption of modernity and Western cultures has changed people's mindset toward one another, and this modern trend affects how houses and compounds are now constructed.This study compares childhood memories of living in Urhobo vernacular spaces and a recent ethnographic fieldwork experience of social trends in the same location.It explores the relationship between architectural spaces and human behaviour towards these spaces in a changing world.In addition to direct observations, and interviews, the interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) was adopted to explore the lived experiences of participants in Urhobo-built environments.These approaches helped to extract the ethnographic context of the relationship between architecture of the Urhobo people and their social lifestyles.The findings of the study indicate that the "spirit of kinship" and the traditional social relations of kinsmen are declining, other social tensions have increased among neighbours.
Author: Akpobome Diffre-Odiete
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4412617362