African architecture

Introduction

      the architecture of native Africa, particularly of sub-Saharan Africa. In areas where Islam and Christianity linked Africa to the rest of the world in precolonial times, architecture predominates among the visual arts. Included here are parts of western and eastern Africa, taking in the magnificent mosques, built of mud, of Djénné and Mopti in Mali, the rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia, and the Islamic monuments of coastal eastern Africa. But for the rest, in areas where pastoral cultures predominate, stress in the visual arts is laid upon personal adornment and upon the aesthetic values of cattle. Discussions of architecture in these regions focus chiefly on rural housing types and compound structures.

      This article mostly treats the architecture of sub-Saharan Africa. For a technical exploration of architecture as an art and a technique, see architecture. For a discussion of the visual art of Africa, see African art (art, African). For a discussion of ancient Egyptian architecture, see Egyptian art and architecture (art and architecture, Egyptian). For a treatment of the later architecture of Egypt and other parts of North Africa, which were heavily influenced by Islam, see Islamic arts: Visual arts (Islamic arts).

 Of the buildings (building construction) of the continent south of the Sahara, only the ruins of Great Zimbabwe are widely known. This complex of stone enclosures, particularly those popularly termed the elliptical building and the acropolis, was built on sites established as early as the 3rd century AD. The first Shona phase of building was probably begun six centuries later and continued until the 15th century when, under the Mwene Matapa, or “Ravager of the Lands,” in this gold-bearing district, Zimbabwe reached its peak.

      Important though Great Zimbabwe is, in many ways it is not representative of African architecture. First, it is built of stone. As an archaeological site, it has a massive defensive wall and, included in the elliptical building, a conical tower of unknown purpose. It is also monumental in scale, having functioned as a royal citadel, and has become a national symbol. While some of these features can be found in other examples of African building, they are rare, and the emphasis on Zimbabwe has been at the expense of other architectural forms.

      Arab and Berber architecture of Egypt and North Africa have had an impact on African architecture south of the Sahara. Similarly, the states of the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea have influenced architectural types in The Sudan, the Horn of Africa, and the coasts of Kenya and Tanzania, where the Muslim presence has also been strong. These influences are discussed below (see Influences of Islam and Christianity (African architecture)).

General characteristics

      African architectural types reflect the interaction of environmental factors—such as natural resources, climate, and vegetation—with the economies and population densities of the continent's various regions. As the most durable of building materials, stone survives from the past, while other materials have succumbed to rain, rot, or termites. Stone-walled kraals (kraal) from early Sotho and Tswana settlements (South Africa and Botswana), and stone-lined pit circles with sunken kraals for pygmy cattle (Zimbabwe), have been the subject of archaeological study. Stone-corbeled shelters and circular huts with thatched roofs were also recorded in the 20th century among the southern Sotho. Rectangular and circular stone farmhouses, unusual in being two-story, have been built by the Tigre of Eritrea and Sudan for centuries, while in Niger some Tuareg build square houses in stone.

      Such exceptions apart, the overwhelming majority of Africa's thousands of distinctive peoples build in grasses, wood, and clay. Constructions tend to be light, with much of the material for building transportable. Because of the impermanence of many of these materials, the dwellings, though based on forms many centuries old, are of relatively recent date. Where vegetation is largely confined to thin grazing cover, peoples are often nomadic, using tents of animal skins and woven hair for shelter. In the veld and less-forested areas, grasses are used as building material as well, being employed widely for thatch and mat roof coverings. Hardwoods in the forest regions are used for building, though bamboo and raffia palm are also often used. Earth and clay constitute a major building resource, the characteristic soils of much of Africa being semidesert chestnut earths and laterites (reddish residuals of rock decay), which are often low in fertility but easily compacted. Earth-sheltered housing is made by the Iraqw of Tanzania, and a number of peoples in Mali and Burkina Faso have partly sunken dwellings. In general, however, Africans do not excavate.

      Ecological and demographic factors play an important part in building design. Nomads are in decline, while the prevalence of the tsetse fly limits the extent of pastoralism. Past migrations have had a profound effect on the dispersal of house types. Large African populations in cities first developed in the 20th century, especially after the 1960s. Soil erosion and overgrazing, increasing pressure on land as a result of population growth, and the attractions of the city have all contributed to migratory movements.

Geographic influences

Nomads (nomadism) and pastoralists

      A hunting and gathering economy (hunting and gathering culture) obliges the San of the Kalahari to move camp frequently. Some San scherms (shelters) may be little more than depressions in the ground, but groups such as the !Kung build light-framed shelters of sticks and saplings covered with grass. Other hunter-gatherers, such as the Hadza of Tanzania, live amid relative plenty; their dry savanna territory has a wide range of game animals. Their domed huts of tied branches may be given a thick thatch in winter. Some forest dwellers, such as the Bambuti of the Ituri Forest in eastern Congo (Kinshasa), are also hunter-gatherers. Their similarly constructed temporary shelters are interlaced with crossed sticks, over which mongongo leaves are layered.

      Pastoral nomads follow defined routes, which reduces the risk of overgrazing and enables them to contact other nomadic groups. Camel-herding nomads such as the Kabābīsh of the central Sudan use the traditional Bedouin tent, which consists of a rectangular membrane of strips of woven camel hair that is strained on webbing straps and secured with guys over a rectangle of poles. A central row of four poles supporting curved ridge pieces reduces the possibility of damage to the tent. In Niger the Tuareg of the desert use a tent of superficially similar form, though the strips are made of goat skins sewn together. As many as 40 skins are required to complete each tent membrane. Farther south, Tuareg subgroups employ a structure similar to that used by many camel-herding nomads, such as the Afar, from as far away as Djibouti. Common to these people is the use of the pole frame in the form of a humped dome over which woven mats of grass or palm fronds are secured. Dum palm leaves are split by the Oromo of Somalia; Oromo women then weave strips of coloured cloth into the mat, the patterned side being laid over the frame so as to be visible within the tent, while the shaggy, rough fibres are exposed like thatch on the outside.

      The cattle-herding pastoralists of Southern and East Africa may settle for some years in one location. The Masai (Maasai) of Kenya and Tanzania construct an oblong, or sometimes square, low-domed hut some 20 feet (6 metres) long and at shoulder height from closely woven frames of thin leleshwa sticks and saplings. Arranged in a circle around the cattle enclosure, or manyatta, the frames are packed with leaves and plastered over with cattle dung, which acts as a deterrent to termites. The huts are aerodynamically proof against high winds, and the manyatta thicket boundary acts as a defensive barrier. A number of other tribes use a similar structure; the Barabaig of Tanzania, for example, build thornbush enclosures in the form of a figure eight, with one loop used as a kraal for the cattle and the other lined with huts with flat-roof frames.

      In Southern Africa, frame domes are constructed by the Zulu, the Swazi, and, in KwaZulu/Natal province, South Africa, the Nguni, using concentric hoops. Others make a ring of poles inserted into the ground and brought together in a crest, either as a continuous curve (early Xhosa) or to a point (Sotho). These structures are expertly thatched, the Zulu domes, or indlu, having finely detailed entrances. Some Nguni types have layers of mats beneath for insulation, the covering thatch being brought to a decorative finial and the whole held down with a grass rope net to withstand strong winds.

Savanna kraals and compounds

      Later houses of the Xhosa have tended toward a consistent form, the rondavel, or cylindrical, single-cell house with conical thatched roof. This type is prevalent throughout Southern Africa. Variants in the region include a low plinth or curb supporting a domed roof (some Swazi, Zulu), flattened domes or low-pitched cones on head-height cylinders, and high, conical roofs. The methods of construction also vary, though a common method is a wall with a ring of posts and infilling of wattles or basket weave packed and plastered with mud. Rings of posts may have packed earth infilling, and in more wooded regions walls may consist mainly of timber posts. Some southern peoples, including the Venda of the Transvaal region and the Tswana of Botswana, build veranda houses, with deep, thatched eaves supported by an outer ring of posts. Traditionally the units are single-cell and undivided and are illuminated only from the doorway. Additional living space may be claimed from the exterior, with a semipublic space to the fore and a private space, with hard-packed earthen floor, to the rear of the dwelling being used for food preparation, cooking, and domestic occupations. Both spaces are bounded by a low wall. In many areas houses are dispersed, but in others the kraal, with huts ranged around the perimeter of a large cattle enclosure (as among the Ila of Zambia), serves a defensive function against raiders and predators. In Namibia the kraal of the Ambo (Ovambo) people had an outer concentric ring leading to cattle pens, an inner fenced meeting place, and subdivisions for wives', visitors', and headman's quarters.

      Similar houses are constructed in the East African lakes region, where the form probably originated. Houses of considerable size are built by some Luo (near Lake Victoria) and Kuria (Tanzania) people, the former making extensive use of papyrus reeds from lake borders, using the thicker stems structurally and the leaves for thatching material. Luo homesteads are frequently ringed with hedges within which cattle are penned; fields extend beyond for the growing of cereals. Most of these Central African peoples construct granaries, often basket-shaped and basket-woven, raised on stilts to keep away rodents and placed beneath a thatched roof to keep them dry. Veranda houses are also built, and secondary thatched roof crests, which permit ventilation, are not uncommon.

      Cylindrical houses are built by the majority of peoples in the savanna and semidesert regions of the Sudan and West Africa. With less wood available, these are often constructed of mud in a coil pottery technique. It is customary to lay the mud spirally in “lifts” of approximately half a metre, allowing each lift to dry before adding the next. Among the Matakam of Cameroon, conical roofs are covered with thatch or woven mats, often terminating in decorative finials. Many houses, as among the Sudanese Nuba, have molded doorways shaped to accept the shoulders.

      The characteristic settlement form in West Africa is the compound, a cluster of units linked by walls. Many compounds are circular in plan, but others, conditioned sometimes by the uneven terrain, are more complex. Earthen wall and floor surfaces are plastered smooth and dried to a rocklike hardness. These surfaces are often decorated with coloured clays (as done, for example, by the Bobo in Burkina Faso) and, in some instances, sculpted with ancestral motifs (as the Kassena do in Burkina Faso). Flat roofs with parapets are also built, sometimes in the same compound, supported either independently by a log frame of forked posts and cross members or by joists inserted into the clay walls; hollowed half-log gargoyles throw off water during seasonal rains. Dwelling huts, granaries and other stores, and pens for goats and fowl are built within the same compound.

      Dwellings of approximately rectangular plan, though often with curved and molded corners, are also found among the cylindrical units, and some peoples, such as the Lobi of Côte d'Ivoire, build compounds with straight walls. Throughout the western savanna region the trend has been toward rectangular-plan houses, largely because of Islamic influence from the north (see below Influences of Islam and Christianity (African architecture)) and to contact with rainforest peoples from the south.

Forest dwellings

      To the south of the savanna is a thinly populated strip, possibly depleted by the slave trade, beyond which lie the rainforests. These regions, especially in Nigeria, are among the most densely populated parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and they have had contact with European traders since the 16th century. The rectangular-plan houses of the Akan peoples, including those of the Asante in Ghana, date to a period before the 16th century, but they may have replaced an earlier savanna form. Until the 20th century, Asante houses were mainly of pole frames with mud infilling. Frequently they were finely decorated, in mud molded over grass armature, with spiral motifs of a symbolic significance akin to those found on weights used for measuring gold. In the early 21st century, however, the Asante house was constructed of “swish,” or pisé de terre (earth rammed into a wooden formwork), raised in lifts. The pitched or hipped roof is covered in thatch or, more frequently, with corrugated iron. Though the materials have changed, the basic form remains in the village compounds: four independently constructed, rectangular-plan huts forming the sides of a courtyard. Yoruba compounds in Nigeria are somewhat similar, but the four sides are often under one continuous roof. Rain is collected from the roofs, so that the plan has frequently been compared with the Roman impluvium, or cistern, house plan. Farther south in Nigeria the Igbo and related peoples traditionally built rectangular houses, often with open fronts facing a courtyard and surrounded by enclosing mud walls. Similar rectangular buildings with thatched, hipped roofs are used by other rainforest peoples, including some groups of the Fon in Benin and the Baule and Dan of Côte d'Ivoire. But in regions where widely dispersed peoples, such as the Senufo of Côte d'Ivoire, border the savanna, cylinder-and-cone houses with deep thatched eaves are common.

 Closer to the coast of West Africa, some peoples build houses raised on stilts; the most notable are those built in the lakeside village of Ganvié in Benin. The buildings are constructed of mangrove poles, a material also used by coastal Swahili-speaking people in Kenya. In some coastal regions, such as that occupied by the Duala in Cameroon, houses are of bamboo, though they are mud-plastered. Bamboo, which grows to heights of more than 49 feet (15 metres) in Angola, Congo (Brazzaville), and parts of Central Africa, is used by many peoples as a building material. Its straight stalks, used as screen walls, are lashed with thin wood strips to produce crisp, rectangular houses with peaked, thatched roofs, as among the Nyakyusa of Tanzania. Bamboo construction reached its apogee in the tall houses of the Bamileke and other peoples of western Cameroon, who constructed steep, prefabricated pyramidal roofs raised on platforms with verandas; the whole structure frequently reached 33 feet (10 metres) or more, with male and female ancestor figures often flanking the doors (see photograph—>). Tall conical houses, made of bamboo poles joined at the crest and then leaf-thatched, were built by the Ngelima and the Panga of Congo (Kinshasa).

      Raffia palm is also used by the Bamileke and the neighbouring Bafut and is an important material among the Kongo of Angola and the Bushongo of Congo (Kinshasa). The most impressive of these structures are the rectangular, pitched-roofed meeting halls of the Mangbetu in Congo; their houses are of the cylinder-and-cone type, mud-plastered and geometrically decorated. Large meeting houses are found in Nigeria among the Yako (Yakö) and other peoples. On special occasions pole-frame shelters are constructed with monopitch roofs loosely covered with grass or palm fronds. Awnings are also used, and among the Asante immense umbrellas shade dignitaries and members of royal families.

Palaces and shrines

      In the 19th century the earth-and-stone palace of the Asantehene (king) of the Asante empire at the capital city of Kumasi covered some 5 acres (2 hectares). It had many courtyards with verandas and open screens and more than 60 rooms with steep thatched roofs. However, little of the palace survived the Asante wars and a punitive expedition by the British in 1874. More extensive was the great palace of the oba of Benin City, Nigeria. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was equally as large as a European town, with many courts surrounded by galleried buildings, their pillars encased in bronze plaques. Roofs were shingled, and there were numerous high towers topped with bronze birds. Benin City was burned by the British in 1897. The Yoruba of western Nigeria are also an urban people. Their towns traditionally have as their centre the afin (palace) of the oba, from which radiate broad roads dividing the town into quarters, each with its compound of a subordinate chief. Some afins in the precolonial era were of great size, encompassing much of the surrounding bush; that at Oyo, the capital of the Oyo empire (17th and 18th centuries), was reported to cover 640 acres (260 hectares). The palace buildings were substantially built, and the open verandas were supported by carved caryatid pillars. Yoruba towns still have oba's palaces; though the architecture of many is Westernized, the traditional courtyards, recreation grounds, and high surrounding walls persist.

      The zimbabwes (“stone houses”) built in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Rozwi kings of southern Central Africa were royal kraals, an example being the citadel of Chief Changamire at Khami, Zimbabwe. Ruins at Regina, Nalatali, and Dhlodhlo (also in Zimbabwe) all display fine mortarless stonemasonry worked with chevron patterns and banded colours. Many African palaces were larger and often better-crafted versions of the traditional dwelling type, raised on hillocks or plinths. Such were the palaces of the kabaka (king) of the kingdom of Buganda, including the great barnlike thatched dome with an open reception veranda at Mengo, near present-day Kampala, Uganda. Other palaces were royal compounds, such as that of the fon (chief) of Bafut, Cameroon, which within a high fenced enclosure comprised separate quarters for the older and younger wives, dormitories for the adolescent sons, houses for retainers, stores, meeting places, a shrine house and medicine house, burial huts for former chiefs, and huts for secret societies.

 While many African peoples have or have had kings, not all have resided in palaces and not all have been divine. Some peoples have no recognized chiefs or leaders at all. Religion, however, plays an essential part in the life of all African societies. Among some, such as the Fali of Cameroon or the Nankani of Burkina Faso, spiritual symbolism informs every part of their dwelling types. Among the most-studied peoples in this respect are the Dogon who live on the rockfall of the Bandiagara escarpment in Mali. The Dogon perceive each dwelling compound anthropomorphically as a man on his side in the act of procreation. The man's head is associated with the hearth, the stores with his arms, the stables with his legs, the central workroom with his belly, and the grinding stones with his genitalia. From the individual parts of the house to the entire village plan, each element has a religiously symbolic association, and totemic sanctuaries with markedly zoomorphic form are built and dedicated to the ancestors of the living.

      Monumental temple architecture is virtually nonexistent in Africa, for in animist religions spirits may reside in trees, carved figures, or small, simple shrines. Cult houses and shrine rooms containing votive objects and dedicated to spirits or ancestors are common, though, like the fetish house of the Asante, with its rooms for orchestra and officiating priest, these may be similar to the dwelling compound. A more notable structure is the elaborate mbari house of the Owerri Igbo of Nigeria. A large open-sided shelter, square in plan, it houses many life-sized, painted figures sculpted in mud and intended to placate the figure of Ala, the earth goddess, who is supported by other deities of thunder and water. The remaining witty sculptures are of craftsmen, officials, Europeans, animals, and imaginary beasts. Because the process of building is regarded as a sacred act, mbari houses, which take years to build, are left to decay, new ones being constructed rather than old ones maintained. This cycle encourages the continuance of a lively tradition.

Influences of Islam and Christianity

      Early civilizations in the western Sudan region had strong trading links across the Sahara, and an Islamic (Islamic arts) presence south of the desert was established 1,000 years ago. In the 11th century Kumbi, the capital of the kingdom of Ghana (in present-day Mali), was described as having a dozen mosques. Subsequently the kingdoms of Mali and Songhai superseded ancient Ghana, with Timbuktu and Gao on the Niger River becoming major centres of learning and commerce. Excavations have revealed that these towns were large, prosperous, and well constructed. Muslim builders introduced a type of dwelling reflecting their Arab and North African traditions: rectilinear in plan, flat-roofed, and often two stories or more in height, these dwellings were built of sun-dried mud brick or of mud and stone. By the 16th century this form had penetrated the Nigerian savanna with the establishment of the Hausa states. Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, and Zaria today present an appearance probably comparable with that of earlier centuries, but with the former cylindrical huts replaced by those of square plan, reflecting the changing size of families. New houses are built from tabali, or pear-shaped mud bricks, and the large palaces of the emirs (emir) are often richly decorated within, with spaces spanned by palm ribs.

      Prominent in many West African towns are the mosques, which frequently display a formal conjunction between Islamic structure and indigenous conical ancestral pillars and shrines. The earliest surviving of these is probably the ziggurat at Gao, but more typical of the savanna form are the mosques, bristling with wood reinforcement, of Agadez (Niger) and Djénné (Mali) and the great mosque at Mopti (Mali), which was greatly restored under the French administration.

      On the east coast of Africa, Islamic influence began with the establishment of the dhow trade, which, relying on the trade winds, linked East Africa with the Arabian and Persian Gulf ports and with India. Kilwa, an island port that flourished between the 12th and 15th centuries, was built largely of stone, as were Zanzibar (where the mosque at Kizimkazi has a 12th-century inscription), Dar es Salaam, Malindi, Mombasa, and other ports and city-states built by Swahili- and Arabic-speaking traders along the Tanzanian and Kenyan coast. With the coming of the Portuguese at the close of the 15th century, the east coast towns were plundered and burned. Only the northerly island port of Lamu, Kenya, retains the character of the Swahili town. Built of coral rag stone, roofed with mangrove poles, and covered with rag and lime mortar, the houses have fine plasterwork, decorative rows of niches, and deeply carved doors.

      Until the late 19th century, Christian influence on African architecture was minimal, with the remarkable exception of the rock churches of Lalībela, Ethiopia. Following the Islamization of Egypt, the Ethiopian church was isolated for many centuries, but, during the reign of the ascetic Zague king Lalībela in the 13th century, 11 churches were carved out of the red tufa, including the cruciform Church of St. George excavated out of bedrock. Some of the churches, among them St. Mary and St. Mercurius, were richly painted with biblical murals. Throughout the Tigre region of Ethiopia, there are many other rock-carved and cave churches, such as those at Cherkos, Wik'ro, Abraha Azba, and the great mountain monastery at Debre Damo Debir.

The 20th century

      Churches built by Christian missionaries, sometimes with imported stone, generally followed modified Gothic forms and had no impact on African building, but the growth of colonial towns encouraged the adoption of European styles, including the use of the rectangular-plan house. This trend was reinforced by the infiltration into the hinterland of the indigenous Swahili-style house in East Africa, the rainforest house type in West Africa, and the Islamic house type of North African origin in the western Sudan—all of which have rectangular plans. Though the effect has been to reduce the variety of house forms and to regularize settlement patterns, the trend has not been without interesting hybrids. In particular, the decorated lapa (courtyard) walls and facades of the Southern African Sotho, Pedi, and Ndebele, with their ziggurat details, have a colourful vitality. Elsewhere, in Laputo, in Mozambique, and in Johannesburg, owner-built houses and resettlement townships have been erected, extended, or decorated, often with originality, within the limitations of economy and space.

      With the Westernizing of African cities, much indigenous architecture has been lost, though not necessarily in street life or surface enrichment. Two- and three-story houses and shops have become commonplace with the use of reinforced concrete and steel frame construction. After World War II a number of African architects gained prominence, including Oluwole Olumuyiwa of Nigeria and David Mutiso of Kenya. Their work is immaculately designed and responsive to climate and environment, but it is firmly in the modernist International Style.

      While these and other African architects have shown themselves to be effective designers of major buildings in the urban centres, the greatest challenge to African designers lies in the burgeoning suburbs of African cities. Unserviced, unsanitary, and often in locations subject to disease and flood, the squatter settlements of, for example, Lagos, Nigeria, or Lusaka, Zambia, underline the importance of economical housing that is responsive to the diversity of cultural needs in urban contexts. It is here that the African genius for building unpretentious, functional, and environmentally appropriate housing from indigenous resources can make its most important contribution to the future of its architecture.

Paul Oliver Ed.

Additional Reading

A general introduction to building in Africa is Susan Denyer, African Traditional Architecture: An Historical and Geographical Perspective (1978). See also Paul Oliver (ed.), Shelter in Africa (1971, reissued 1976), case studies, and Dwellings: The House Across the World (1987). Early stages of African urbanism are discussed in Basil Davidson, The Lost Cities of Africa (also published as Old Africa Rediscovered, 1959, reissued 1970); and Richard W. Hull, African Cities and Towns Before the European Conquest (1976).Of the regional studies, the most notable is James Walton, African Village (1956), which deals with southern and East Africa; it is brought up-to-date in Franco Frescura, Rural Shelter in Southern Africa: A Survey of the Architecture, House Forms, and Constructional Methods of the Black Rural Peoples of Southern Africa (1981). Visually impressive, though with less substantial research, is René Gardi, Indigenous African Architecture (1974; originally published in German, 1973), which deals with savanna forms of West Africa; other fine examples are to be found in Jean-Louis Bourgeois, Spectacular Vernacular: A New Appreciation of Traditional Desert Architecture (1983), with photographs by Carollee Pelos; and Jean Dethier, Down to Earth: Mud Architecture (1982; originally published in French, 1981).Of the local studies, the early and influential one by Jean-Pierre Béguin et al., L'Habitat au Cameroun: présentation des principaux type d'habitat: essai d'adaptation aux problèmes actuels (1952), records the styles of former French Cameroun with immaculate drawings and photography. A noteworthy successor, Jean-Paul Bourdier and Trinh T. Minh-Ha, African Spaces: Designs for Living in Upper Volta (1985), examines comparatively a number of compounds in Burkina Faso. Also important is Labelle Prussin, Architecture in Northern Ghana (1969), in which the forms and functions of six compounds are compared. Four villages in eastern Botswana are discussed in Anita Larsson and Viera Larsson, Traditional Tswana Housing (1984). Also useful is Kaj Blegvad Andersen, African Traditional Architecture: A Study of the Housing and Settlement Patterns of Rural Kenya (1977).Perhaps the most exhaustive anthropological study is Friedrich W. Schwerdtfeger, Traditional Housing in African Cities (1982), comparing the architecture of Zaria and Ibadan, Nigeria, with that of Marrakech, Morocco. Hausa mosques and palaces are discussed in J.C. Moughtin, Hausa Architecture (1985). The symbolism of built forms is movingly described in Marcel Griaule, Conversations with Ogotemmêli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas (1965, reprinted 1980; originally published in French, 1948). Cult houses or shrines are the subject of Michael Swithenbank, Ashanti Fetish Houses (1969); while Ulli Beier, African Mud Sculpture (1963), is largely devoted to Igbo mbari houses and Yoruba palace reliefs. Studies of palaces include G.J. Afolabi Ojo, Yoruba Palaces: A Study of the Afins of Yorubaland (1966); Jacob Egharevba, A Short History of Benin, 4th ed. (1968); and James S. Kirkman, Gedi: The Palace (1963), a study of a number of Arab-Swahili centres. Of these, Lamu survives and is examined in Usam Ghaidan, Lamu: A Study of the Swahili Town (1975). A detailed study of the influence of Islamic forms on sub-Saharan architecture is to be found in Labelle Prussin, Hatumere: Islamic Design in West Africa (1986). Ruth Plant, Architecture of the Tigre, Ethiopia (1985), surveys the rock-cut Ethiopian Christian cave churches, many dating from the 13th century. Colonial influence on African town form is discussed especially with reference to Lagos in Akin L. Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria (1968). Problems in rapid urban growth are the subject of Josef Gugler and William G. Flanagan, Urbanization and Social Change in West Africa (1978); while design by contemporary African architects is included in Udo Kultermann, New Architecture in Africa (1963; originally published in German, 1963), and New Directions in African Architecture, trans. from German (1969). In addition, a number of journals, including Tribus (annual), occasionally publish articles on African architecture.Paul Oliver

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