Erosion and Resurgence of Biohiphilia in the Evolution of Yoruba Architecture

The concept of biophilia in architecture promotes features such as plants, water, light, and materials to increase occupant health and well-being while also fostering a connection with nature. In traditional Yoruba architecture, the buildings and cities were a continuum with the environment and all the construction materials completely sourced from the immediate environment. The evolution of Yoruba architecture into more attritive forms and spaces arising from acculturation of foreign architectures gave rise to less biophilic features. This presentation explores the extent to which the indigenous traditions have yielded towards absolute social-cultural functionalism to the detriment of conservation and bio-sustainability in modern environmental development in primarily Yoruba-speaking areas of southwest Nigeria. Information and data for the investigation were obtained from literature on biophilic designs and indigenous Yoruba architecture. The findings from the research indicate that there were no inclinations in the contemporary indigenous architecture of the Yoruba to bring back the elements of the environment into its building forms until the proponents of sustainability and greening gained prominence. The urban forms fare better due to the efforts of landscape and urban designers. The paper concludes that the proponents of indigenous architecture who are presently premising their advocacy on heritage preservation and urban tourism should include the advantages of biophilic architecture which was present in the Yoruba traditional architecture in their discourses

Thresholds of Architectural Morphology of Yoruba Buildings in Southwest Nigeria till the Millenia

The literary materials on Yoruba architecture that are more common are descriptive. They dwell mostly on the massing of units, individual configurations within buildings and cultural patterns in ornamentation. The direct links between the living spaces and their socio-cultural implications are emphasized to explain the origin of the forms. The morphological chronology in the building patterns is regarded as vernacularisation processes especially from the traditional patterns to the vernacular traditions. There are hardly any publications of Yoruba architectural buildings beyond the later vernacular patterns like the Afro-Brazilian style. While these volumes of literature are mostly limited to the traditional and vernacular styles, the ethno-acculturation of more contemporary and foreign building patterns like the "international" and the "postmodern" styles into the body of indigenous architectural building patterns of the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria are not being investigated and published. The culture of a people is preserved in their architecture. If the culture of the Yoruba is preserved in their buildings, the cross-pollination of the Yoruba culture with different inputs from foreign cultures should be evident in the new indigenous buildings that are evolving up till the end of the twentieth century. This chapter material has organized the different lines of thought in the morphology of indigenous architectural building patterns of the Yoruba into a continuum that extends beyond the limits of the current body of literature on the topic. It attempts to decipher the new forms and elements of the buildings of later Yoruba indigenous architecture up till the turn of the twentieth century. The emphasis is on the definition of newer building patterns that can be termed as "indigenous" to the Yoruba culture in Southwest Nigeria. Having increased the ambit of the Yoruba architecture concerning the building patterns beyond the exposition of the previous publications, the current surcease on the morphology of Yoruba architecture in print can be broken to open up more research and publications on contemporary thresholds of the indigenous Yoruba architecture. The chapter is concluded with a guide on the identity of buildings of indigenous architecture of the Yoruba even within the morass of foreign building patterns that crowd the Yoruba towns in Southwest Nigeria.&nbsp

INFLUENCE OF URBAN UPGRADES ON INDIGENOUS BUILDING MORPHOLOGY IN THE CITY CORE OF ABEOKUTA, NIGERIA

Indigenous architecture of the Yorubas documented over time have mainly been limited to the traditional and vernacular expositions with the morphology traced from the earliest structures and not explicit beyond the Afro-Brazilian style. The morphology of the indigenous buildings has progressed organically, based on the socio-cultural changes in the society. This progression is however prone to more rapid changes that tend to direct it towards building patterns from other cultures. Urban upgrades are common in city cores of Nigeria where the legacy of indigenous building patterns is most preserved within the urban setting. Abeokuta in southwest Nigeria has been highly reported in recent times as having witnessed urban upgrades that have led to very rapid changes in its socio-spatial environment. This study set out to investigate the impact of the urban upgrades carried out in the city core of Abeokuta between 2009 and 2018 on the forms and elements of the indigenous building morphology. This was done by tracing the morphology of the indigenous building pattern from the advent of settlements in the area till the study period as the first objective. Areas where urban upgrades have been carried out were identified and new building typologies that are evolving in the areas were analysed for changes in their forms and elements as different from the threshold of indigenous building morphology in the sedentary areas where upgrades were absent. The factors responsible for the adoption of the new forms and elements were subsequently identified. The research proceeded by examining literature, physically identifying and mapping out the upgraded sections of the city core, carrying out spot assessment of buildings with observation schedules, conducting interviews with state government officials and individuals in the study area and administering a close-ended questionnaire to generate requisite data and information on the objectives of the research. The data obtained from the research which were both quantitative and qualitative were subjected to analyses. It was discovered that the current threshold of the indigenous building morphology in the areas devoid of upgrading is still the post-vernacular style with strong inclinations towards the forms and elements of the early vernacular building pattern. The new buildings in the upgraded sections of the study area are mainly commercial and mixed-use buildings with a blend of postmodern forms and elements within the basic vernacular style. The new forms and elements in the aftermath of the regenerative efforts in the area are wider windows, long span aluminium roof finishes, deeper eaves and generally larger buildings. The research concluded that urban upgrades have stimulated far reaching changes in the indigenous building pattern around the areas where they have been carried out. These changes which were not pre-empted by the government while executing urban upgrades are reducing the patrimonial stock of the indigenous buildings and resulting to a loss of heritage values in the built environment. The study exposed the need for urban upgrade programmes to envisage and accommodate farther reaching changes in the indigenous building morphology when executed in historic city centres

A Documentation Review of Yoruba Indigenous Architectural Morphology

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 31st 202

Urban Sustainability Concepts and Their Implications on Urban Form

Since the middle of the 1980s, there has been a demand for urban centres to be more sustainable. City planners and administrators have had to lean towards the various city sustainability concepts in their schemes. The concept of “sustainable city” which became prominent as a progenitor for the others can still be deployed as the basis for most of the newer concepts. More recent concepts like “smart city” and “resilient city” have their essence in high technology and socio-environmental ideals that relate more with post-modern living. The urban form which is the most physical entity in the city is always evolving. The implementation of these concepts are likely to impact on the urban form in a way that may alter its organic or planned evolution. This study is a bibliometric survey of 5 of the urban sustainability concepts and their relevance in urban morphology. The paper analyses the core issues in each of the concepts and relates them to the aspects of the urban form they are more likely to alter with view of how such effects may determine the morphology. The five city sustainability concepts for this research are easily the most common with reference to SCI and SSCI databases and are therefore more relevant to current research. They are sustainable city, smart city, eco-city, low carbon city and green city. Green city and eco city may result in less compact urban forms while the rest are explicitly supportive of more compact urban forms