The Soil of New Culture Studios: A Spring for African Architecture

This paper reflects on the contemporary need for reconsidering circularity in architecture. For this, it investigates a vernacular building system rooted in the Niger Delta that supports an alternative form of understanding materiality. Framed within current research on re-animating soils, the practices of Demas Nwoko (Nigeria, 1935)—whose work has questioned circularity since the 60s—have resisted anachronism through challenges of contemporary architecture. From a physical material basis, his perception of ‘local’ is established by using the site’s soil applying techniques originating in ancient Nok ceramics. His understanding is that architecture is created within contemporary culture through a perpetual process of collaboration. From a temporal basis, he establishes a dynamism where the past and the future converge—digging up the past and building up foundations for the future are one and the same act; a cycle of life and birth. We argue that ours is a time of urgent reconsideration of human-soil interdependency; within it, ecological engagement with soil signifies hope. Focusing on Nwoko’s New Culture Studios project (Ibadan, 1967–), the article uses critical commentary to examine the processes placing them at the intersections of modernisation, post-colonialism and material resilience. We argue that this examination extracts important principles on how appropriate technology can evolve with use of local resources. This creates a possibility of thinking design circularity as an evolutionary spiral leading to the emergence of new sustainable cultures for architectural practice.