African Architecture and Identity: The Nineteenth Century Asante Palace of Kumase, Ghana

ConCave Ph.D. Symposium 2022 Proceedings, April 7-8, 2022. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia.Architecture and ritual interconnect to define cultural identity. In the traditional procession ritual of the Asantehene, the Asante king, into the palace, the Golden Stool, Kente cloth, and Adinkra symbols are a part of the space and place narrative. These narratives encompass symbolic cultural habitation and the geographical landscape. This dissertation examines as a case study the nineteenth century Asante palace in the traditional city of Kumase, Ghana, Africa, to reveal the cultural and material connections to the identity of the Asante. In the nineteenth century, missionaries and European officials collected ethnographic surveys of the Asante palace before it was destroyed by the British during the colonial period. The existing ethnographic survey archives of Thomas Bowdich, a European official, explain the Asante Architecture and the palace from a European hegemonic perspective. Bowdich states that the construction of the ornamental architecture of “Coomassie” reminded him forcibly of Sir James Hall’s essay, the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions, that Asante Architecture was the tracing of the Gothic order to an architectural imitation of wickerwork. The records proclaim the architectural ornament on the Asante buildings was adopted from interior countries and did not originate with the Asante.1 The findings in the survey do not address the phenomenological experience, ritual practice, holistic architectonic structure, and sociocultural expression of the Asante Palace according to the nation of the Asante. This research aims to materialize and define the connection between the nineteenth century Asante palace of Kumase and the socio-cultural identity of the Asante to ameliorate the damaging effects of colonization on traditional structures. This research works between architecture and anthropology to reveal the ontological association of the Asante cultural elements, the Golden Stool, Kente cloth, and Adinkra symbols and their ritual significance to the Asante palace. From an anthropological point of view, collective memory, ritual praxis, and political and social organization explain the embodied meaning of Asante culture identity. The palace’s architecture defines traditional construction methods, sustainable practices, structural phenomenological experience, and spatial narratives to interpret the social context. This research includes archival work of ethnographic records of the Asante palace, Asante culture, and the context of the city of Kumase. A close study of the Akan language of Twi reveals each cultural element’s spiritual and social meaning that is an integral part of the Asante life. Analytical drawings of symbolic details and reconstructive drawings of the Asante palace are used to link material culture, phenomena, and the socio-cultural identity of the Asante based on the African point of view. Expected results include the demonstration of the social and cultural expression of the Asante palace and the original embodied meaning based on the etymology of traditional structural references. Furthermore, this research will contribute to the history of African Architecture and vernacular palatial structures