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Ansah, Andrea Esiarba

This project examines the questioning of identity in Ghana and its manifestation in the built environment from a socio-political, and environmental perspective. By drawing connections between colonialism, identity questioning and cultural discontinuity, this project revalues the domestic Ghanaian courtyard while critiquing the shift from communal housing typologies towards inward-looking typologies such as the single-family house and the high-rise apartment building. This revaluing is done in the spirit of ‘Anansesem’, a didactic Ghanaian storytelling tradition. It breaks free from Western conventions and hegemonic frameworks which rely solely on academic sources and goes further to include the voices of post-colonial Ghanaian fiction and my lived experience. The culmination of this project is a spatial story which celebrates cultural identity expressed in the traditional domestic courtyard while exposing the shortcomings of aspiring towards Western housing typologies and ways of living.

Ghana

Text

University of British Columbia. ARCH 549

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0442405

Applied Science, Faculty of; Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/