African Architecture

Africa, where three major cultures - indigenous, Islamic, and Western - all converge, reveals more about human history than does virtually any other part of the world. To study African architecture is, in the words of author and architecture scholar Nnamdi Elleh, "to go on an intellectual and spiritual journey which takes one to the distant past, back before 6000 B.C." That is why this landmark publication, the first complete and definitive illustrated study of African architecture from antiquity to the present, is of such monumental importance to anyone interested in architecture, art history, or cultural history. Featuring hundreds of museum-quality photographs and drawings from archival and modern sources, the book provides an extraordinary account of the evolution, transformation, and development of architecture across the African continent. From Egypt to Ethiopia, Botswana to Burundi, and Zimbabwe to Cameroon, the architecture is examined and evaluated from the standpoint of a wide range of ethnic, climatic, political, regional, economic, religious, and historical factors.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.