ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Urban Science
Adoption of Neo-Vernacular Architecture Strategies in Selected Arts and Cultural Centres in Lagos, Nigeria
Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Abstract
Arts and cultural centres play a vital role in preserving heritage and fostering cultural identity. However, no systematic, strategy-based evaluation framework for neo-vernacular architecture exists within Nigerian cultural infrastructure. This study addresses that gap by developing and applying a 40-strategy observation framework to assess the adoption of neo-vernacular architecture across five relationship categories — Direct, Abstract, Landscape, Contemporary, and Future — in three Lagos arts and cultural centres: the John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History, Terra Kulture, and KAP Hub. Using a qualitative, observation-based case study method, each strategy was scored on a five-point scale anchored to observable physical criteria, producing cumulative percentage adoption scores. The John Randle Centre demonstrated the highest adoption (80%), followed by KAP Hub (71%) and Terra Kulture (70%). Triangulation with a companion user perception study (Jegede & Enwonwu, 2025) reveals a significant inversion: Terra Kulture, the lowest-ranked centre architecturally, received the highest aggregate user satisfaction score, while the John Randle Centre recorded the lowest despite its architectural depth. This inversion, in which deeper architectural adoption of neo-vernacular strategies does not automatically yield higher user-perceived sustainability benefits, is what this study terms the perception-adoption gap and constitutes the study's primary analytical finding. The study contributes a comparative strategy-based evaluation framework for neo-vernacular architecture in Nigerian cultural buildings, identifies varying levels of adoption across five relationship categories with consistent gaps in Landscape and Future-oriented strategies, and advances a two-tier evaluation model combining expert observational assessment with user perception analysis as a replicable framework for culturally grounded architecture in postcolonial African urban contexts.
Summary
Keywords
Cultural identity, Cultural preservation, neo-vernacular architecture, sustainable tourism, Yoruba architecture
Received
17 June 2026
Accepted
17 July 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Jegede and Enwonwu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Chiagozie Mitchelle Enwonwu
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.