ABSTRACT
As we have seen, the numerous architectural components within Larabanga's structural environment are the result of long processes of migration and influence involving the selective assimilation and transformation of incoming components. Many of these components were filtered through lenses of numerous cultural identities along the way in order to eventually contribute to a Larabanga-specific sensibility. In addition, these processes allowed the Kamara of Larabanga to develop the necessary structural vocabulary to layer their physical environment with the narratives of their distinctive cultural paradigm. This is a paradigm that has been understood largely through the constructs of faith, origin, kinship, and language. Architecture has supported the maintenance of this identity by embedding it as an artifact and a memory shaped into physical form, a narrative fleshed out through the organization, layout, and utilization of space within the community. These elements have enabled Larabanga's architectural environment to map its own unique location in time through an ordering of facts with regards to the village's fundamental components of identity, allowing historical narratives to become visible and accessible via the community's shared participation in a collective past. 1 In addition, the act of creating these forms in accordance with clan ownership practices, rules of spatial demarcation, and protocols that enforce Islamic tenets of living have catalyzed the built environment to function as a continuous mediator between multiple contemporary currents supporting, collaborating with, and sometimes even pushing against this lifestyle. In this way, a coherent cultural system in sustained within Larabanga's structural landscape.
