ABSTRACT
This chapter examines one's definition of modernity through the lens of Islamic identity in the context of Larabanga specifically and West Africa more broadly. Larabanga's current situation speaks to architecture's relationship with culture as a response to the social, political, and environmental pressures characterizing the present context of the community. Simultaneously, it offers tangible solutions to the problems of existing in a society rooted in the past, present, and future. Islam is both a method of living for the Kamaras as well as a tool deployed to structure their social, political, cultural, and spiritual reality as a type of conceptual architecture. In Larabanga, the intimate relationship that exists between culture and architecture is largely due to the ability of the built form to respond to the realities of the community's Islamic identity. Architectural practices thus in many ways articulate and make lucid cultural ideas and norms, creating something of an idealization or dream of culture in material form.
