HT1218 Module 5: Instructor: James Inedu-George, Typological Mining: Developing a Contemporary (Architecture) Philosophy from Traditional Hausa Architecture

COURSE SYLLABUS

HT1218 – Typological Mining: Developing a Contemporary (Architecture) Philosophy from Traditional Hausa Architecture

Instructor: James Inedu-George, MSc Architecture

Head of Design Services, Hub City (Tech) Ltd, HTL.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course introduces students to the concepts required to understand the architectural typologies within traditional African Architecture and the philosophies behind them. It shall attempt to guide the students, by starting from the first principles, towards harnessing these readings in view of the creation of contemporary philosophical responses hinged on traditional Hausa Architectural thought.

Course Outline

●      This course is designed as an introduction to the philosophies behind traditional Hausa architecture and urban design. By tracing the assumptions that created the contemporary understandings of Hausa Architecture, it shall attempt at creating new assumptions that dispel the limited view of Traditional African Architecture and the objects and spaces and practices that are a manifestation of it.

●      This course will investigate the forms and shapes generated by the Hausa architect and the process through which form and city were created in antiquity.

●      The course traces the first principles of traditional Hausa Architecture

●      This course will be a philosophical study of an architectural reading of a traditional African habitat.

●      It shall expose the students to the parts of the traditional Hausa House from a clear architectural perspective that can lead the students to cataloguing these parts and their similarities in the light of Vitruvius classifications of columns and Greek Temples.

●      The course will give clues on how new world views developed from Traditional Hausa Architecture can help in the creation of new forms and solutions to the problems of todays Mega City

Course Objective

The course Typological Mining: Developing a contemporary (Architecture) Philosophy from Traditional Hausa Architecture, allows us to critically study, with contemporary architecture means, Hausa traditional Architecture. This architecture has been vilified over the years because the basic assumptions with which it had been studied were neither correct, nor architectural, and therefore the outcome had been focused less on the systematic behavior and philosophical leanings of the architecture, but more on the surface patterning and sociological behavior of the architecture.

The research becomes critical as African societies embark on major infrastructure and redevelopment projects that at their core, seek to build upon more realistic ‘home grown’ models, inspired by African culture, history and architectural heritage. Over the duration of the course, students will be exposed to the importance of the creation of an architectural world view by the understanding of traditional architecture and the philosophies therein, with the intention of adding depth and spirit to the architecture that will be developed in the future by these students.

COURSE MODULES:

MODULE ONE:

The Traditional Hausa Plan

In module one, students will be introduced into meanings and new readings of and from the generic Hausa dwelling plan. This module will help the students to begin to create a new intellectual platform for the understanding of the otherwise banal Hausa Plan that has only been researched, from a very limited perspective, as a sociological object.

MODULE TWO:

House not Compound:

This module shall focus on exploring a new basis for the understanding of traditional Architectural Form. The student shall be made aware of the current assumptions around the reading of traditional Hausa forms and the implications of those on architecture generally. The student shall then be introduced to new assumptions and shown the result of the readings that emanate from those new assumptions

MODULE THREE:

The Traditional Courtyard

The students will be introduced, in Module Three, to the architectural significance of the courtyard as the generator of the form in Hausa architecture.

MODULE FOUR:

The Hausa Street

In module four, students learn will be helped to explore through a comparative method, form and characteristics of the traditional Hausa street, and its place in the creation of Hausa Architecture.

MODULE FIVE:

Birni: The Form of the Hausa Traditional City

Students will be exposed to the entire composition of Hausa Architecture in City-Form, and test their knowledge from the preceding modules on the generation of the forms in the city.

MODULE SIX:

Systems not Objects

In module six, students will be helped to explore, through a comparative method, a philosophical essence of traditional Hausa Architecture that emanated from all the understandings of the previous modules.