DESIGNING TO MEET INDIGENOUS NEEDS: PLACE OF TRADITIONAL STUDIES IN ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION

One of the roles of architectural design process is the ability to create spaces that meet the users’ need. Global regions have their peculiarity in building designs which is influenced by regional conditions; socio-cultural, physical and climatic conditions of the place. This could be seen in countries in Asia, Middle - East countries, Africa, Europe and American. It is exhibited in their building designs, building materials, cost, forms and techniques. It is very imperative to recognize the local and regional forms, especially of domestic buildings, altering with the cultures, the environment and the climate of the area concerned. In view of this, some courses that deals with traditional architecture and studies were incorporated into the curriculum of architecture schools, but it has been observed that the guiding principles of the curriculum formulation and implementation of these courses have not been properly merged with contemporary architecture courses to reach a meeting point to draw in the desire result of architecture forms that will create design and environments that respond to the needs of users. Using secondary data from literature and curricula of four architectural schools in South-west and Northern Nigeria, this paper examines how adequately the curricula catered for the traditional content of architectural education and its uniqueness to specificity of the environment. It was discovered that aspects of traditional studies were rarely incorporated sufficiently into the curricula of the schools investigated. This paper recommended that curriculum review be done parametrically with special focus on pedagogic dynamics of required traditional architecture courses. It is desired that architectural training would always recognize the place of traditional architecture and teach based on its principle