The impacts of postmodern architecture in contemporary residential buildings of Northern Nigeria

Modern architecture began as an “international style” at the museum of modern art in America with the aim of simplicity, functionality, and no ornamentation or reference to past historic/traditional context in favor of mass-production. However, as the mission progressed, historian and critics complicated the issues with the aim of traditionalism, revivalism, historicism and contextualism, which modernist architects did not have focused on. As time goes on, with the progressing processes and the influences of the oppositionist, postmodern architecture was conceptualized as a new style, which is a reaction against “Architectural modernism” with much emphasis on reference to traditional buildings, historic heritages and new ambiguous kind of form and space. Postmodern architecture became a complete fashionable style in Europe and America and within the limited time frame it connected to various places including Africa and Nigeria as well. After its development as well as the connections in eighties, Northern Nigeria experienced changes in the contemporary designs due to the influence of the new trend especially in residential buildings. These contemporary residential buildings comprises of many design approaches and architectural styles from different architectural period, which is being mixed with indigenous concepts and formed postmodern designs in a splendid appearance. Based on these current contemporary situations, this study aimed at discussing the impact and the significances of postmodern architecture in northern region. The study further based its scopes on single family postmodern residential buildings in the Northeast and Northwest region with emphasis on architecture, which comprises of plan scheme (spatial organization), façade treatments, built forms and physical built elements to determine the strong effects of those built features, which is referred to as postmodern architecture. On the base of these and in accordance with aims and the scopes of the study, literature survey and field study (personal observation) will be used in this finding to explore the impacts of those organized features/elements in postmodern residential buildings. In order to succeed and achieve these aims 52 numbers of selected cases and 26 floor plans were used. The study concludes that post-modern architecture creates no constraint to the northern urban context. Their contextual built elements have influenced the aesthetics and identity of the region positively. The need for privacy in postmodern residential buildings of the northern region has resulted to diverse system of plan forms. Keywords: Postmodern Architecture, modern architecture, indigenous built elements, postmodern residential buildings, Northern Nigeria.