IV.

Architecture in Africa

The architecture of sub-Saharan Africa is just as diverse as the art. Traditional architecture can be divided into two categories: buildings in rural settlements, and buildings in larger, self-ruling urban centers called city-states.

A.

Rural Settlements

The way of life in Africa’s rural settlements determines the types of dwellings built. Settled farming societies have different requirements than herding societies, which are usually nomadic. Other rural societies in Africa are based on farming, hunting, and gathering in various combinations.

Of the many types of traditional rural dwellings, relatively permanent houses grouped in villages are found only in agricultural settlements. A typical farming village consists of a number of family compounds along with structures that serve the larger community. Each family compound may have separate structures for cooking, eating, sleeping, storing food, and protecting animals at night. Structures may be round, rectangular, or semicircular. Communal structures, for holding meetings and teaching children, are located in a prominent place in the village.

The Dogon people of southern Mali cultivate grain on a plateau at the top of the Bandiagara cliffs near the Niger River. They construct villages on the steep sides of the cliffs. Their rectangular houses are built of sun-dried mud brick and stone. The roofs are thatched, and the dwellings rest on ledges along the cliffs. The Dogon store and protect their harvest in granaries that have beautifully carved wooden doors and decorative locks. Figures carved on many granary doors represent sets of male and female twins, which symbolize fertility and agricultural abundance.

The Zulu of southern Africa, who cultivate grain and raise livestock, have traditionally built houses shaped like beehives. They arrange these houses in a circular, fenced compound, and they keep their cattle in the middle of the compound. Zulu houses are made of thatch that covers a framework of wooden strips and is bound together with a rope lattice.

Nomadic herders need homes that they can easily build and take apart when they move their herds to different ground. The Masai of eastern Africa, for example, construct homes using a framework of sticks that they seal with cattle dung.

Many rural societies in Africa adorn the outsides of houses with painted designs or with relief (raised) patterns worked into a soft clay surface. The job of decorating houses generally belongs to the women. Frafra women of northern Ghana decorate the walls of houses and other buildings with geometric patterns that communicate information about the social status of a building’s owner. Ndebele women in Zimbabwe and the northeastern part of South Africa paint the mud walls of their houses with geometric patterns based on the shapes of windows, steps, and other building features and everyday objects. Traditionally, Africans have used natural clays as paints, but today brightly colored acrylic paints are popular.

B.

Towns and City-States

Towns and city-states may have buildings that are larger and more elaborate than those in rural settlements. These buildings serve the purposes of government, trade, or organized religion. In general, towns and city-states have developed where trade has brought people together or where conquest has merged neighboring ethnic groups. Consequently, these settlements were built for diverse groups of people rather than for family units.

A good example of a diverse community is Whydah (Ouidah), a coastal city in the former Kingdom of Dahomey (now southern Benin). In the 17th and 18th centuries slave trade with the Americas turned this city into a major trading and commercial center. The presence of foreign traders greatly influenced the architecture in Whydah, where indigenous mud-brick buildings stand next to buildings in South American styles. These styles were transported from Brazil to Africa in the 19th century by returning slaves of African ancestry.

As a result of trade across the Sahara, many towns developed along the southern edge of the desert, especially in Mali. Mosques, palaces, and houses met the needs of the inhabitants: Arab traders, rulers, and common people. Tombouctou (Timbuktu) in Mali is one of the best-known settlements in this area, but the city of Djenné was even more important. Djenné served as a center of Islamic learning and as a commercial center for the trade of gold, slaves, and salt. It boasts one of the oldest mosques in the region.

The Great Mosque of Djenné was built in the 13th and 14th centuries to provide Islamic traders with a center for prayer. The Djenné mosque consists of a main structure of baked mud with vertical buttresses (wall supports) that rise to pinnacles; on the roof is a flat terrace lined with palm fronds and wooden or ceramic spouts that drain water from the terrace. The eastern facade of the structure has three hollow minarets (towers from which worshipers are called to prayer) rhythmically interspersed between 18 buttresses. The Djenné mosque has come to represent Islamic style in this region and has been imitated in many of the mosques along the Niger River valley in Mali.

B.1.

Palaces

Palaces to house the king and his court were often built out of the same materials and in the same basic forms as ordinary houses, although palaces had thicker walls, more elaborate designs, and larger spaces. Some palaces were so large they resembled towns inside of towns. In what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the palaces of Kuba kings were mazelike in their complexity. They were typically situated on a mound in the center of town so that the king could see the entire town from the palace. A palace had two main sections: one for the king and one for his wives and children. Mats woven with beautiful designs formed the palace walls. Because of their fragility and impermanence, these mats required constant maintenance. Architects kept plans and records of palace and town layouts so that public buildings, streets, plazas, private compounds, and the palace itself could be re-created if the capital had to move.

In Nigeria, the Yoruba built more permanent palaces of sun-dried mud bricks. These palaces consisted of a series of courtyards, with each courtyard flanked by four rectangular units. Mud bricks formed the outer walls of each unit, and an overhanging roof shaded a veranda on the courtyard side. At the entrance to every Yoruba palace was a set of double wooden doors, intricately carved with abstract designs and images of human and animal figures. The Olowo Palace in Owo, southeastern Nigeria, had as many as 100 courtyards. Each courtyard had a specific function and was dedicated to a particular deity. The largest, said to have been twice the size of an American football field, was used for public assemblies and festivals. Some courtyards were paved with quartz pebbles or broken pottery. Pillars supporting the veranda roofs were carved with statues of the king mounted on a horse or shown with his senior wife.

In 17th-century Ghana, art and architectural traditions of the Ashanti Kingdom proclaimed the godlike powers of the king. For example, much of the art associated with the king was made of gold, a symbol of endurance, the soul, and the giving and safeguarding of life. The king represented the soul and vitality of the nation, and gold reinforced this image of him. The Ashanti king’s palace had several oblong courtyards surrounded by rectangular buildings. The walls of the palace compound and the shrines included inside were decorated with curving, abstract designs modeled out of mud and painted. Although the Ashanti never converted to Islam, Muslims living nearby probably influenced these decorations. Indeed, the patterns recall those of Hausa houses in northern Nigeria, where Islam is strong.

B.2.

Great Zimbabwe

Ancestors of the Shona in Zimbabwe, the Karanga, built the ancient city-state of Great Zimbabwe. Great Zimbabwe flourished from the 12th to the 15th century, most likely as a center of trade. Some of this trade was with Arabs and Asians who arrived on the nearby east African coast by ship. The surviving ruins of numerous large stone structures testify to Great Zimbabwe’s wealth and power. A massive wall known as the Great Enclosure rings the largest complex of buildings, which probably served as the palace. The Great Enclosure was skillfully crafted from locally quarried stones, without the use of mortar or cement, and rises as high as 10 m (32 ft), with walls up to 5 m (17 ft) thick. At the top, two rows of cut stones are arranged in a double chevron (V-shaped) pattern. Most of the buildings inside the wall were built of interwoven reeds and branches, known as wattlework, and were reinforced with mud bricks and sheltered by a thatched roof. (The use of wattlework as a building technique continues today.) Remains of enclosures for livestock, along with pottery figurines of cattle, show that the inhabitants were probably animal herders at one time, and continued to raise livestock after they became traders.

One of the most distinctive structures in the Great Enclosure is the Conical Tower, which is 9 m (30 ft) tall and built of stone. It may have provided a symbolic representation of the king’s power. At a short distance from the Great Enclosure, another set of structures called the Hill Complex may have been used for defense or for religious purposes.