Traditional Igbo Architecture: A Symbolic Evaluation

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...