Phoenix Rise: A History of the Architectural Reconstruction of the Burnt City of Kumase, 1874–1960

Abstract

Abstract This work presents a history of the reconstruction of the architectural landscape and built environment of Kumase, the traditional capital of the Asante nation of the Gold Coast (now Ghana), following its destruction at the hands of the military forces of imperial Britain in 1874. It converges archival documents, oral histories of individuals instrumental in the built environment of Kumase, and some secondary sources of historical information to explain how the colonizing British political regime and its agents, as well as Asante political authorities and citizenry, acted to architecturally reconstruct Kumase between 1874 and the 1960 emergence of the Republic of Ghana under an African government led by Kwame Nkrumah. This material demonstrates that the planning and reconstruction process involved two processes: architectural imposition and architectural hybridization. The first involved an official colonial regime-controlled introduction of British and European plans, methods, and structures. The second involved a shaping of the built environment through a democratic combination of both foreign and local architectural ideas and inventiveness, which produced the hybrid Akan courtyard house.

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