The culture of people determines and shapes the domestic space in their domestic architecture. Subsequent modifications of the idea have focused on more precise revelations of how the spatial arrangements of material culture are culturally patterned. Through a topological analysis of house plans and patterns, collected from the City of Benin, this study detects a transformation in the house-type aspired and developed by people during the last five centuries. A group of 1054 houses, located in four residential zones in Benin City, Nigeria, has been analysed by means of frequency distribution, Space Syntax categories and factor analysis.
The research is determined to find out how the use, organization and meaning of space in Benin have changed and whether or not there are continuities over the years across the entire City. The Space Syntax approach is used to measure the varying degree of change at each stage of the evolution. Here, the „space-activity‟ interaction is the main idea that enables us to see what underlies the process. As the old spaces take different names and functions in the new design, they bring about the recombination of their activities, and when this occurs repeatedly at each stage, it leaves behind „topological paths‟ from which the direction of the evolution can be measured. Further examinations reveal that the space-activity interaction arises both at each partitioned space and at the collective space that is closely related. The analysis of the attitudes and responses of the residents using factor analysis revealed that both socio-economic and socio-cultural factors are responsible for the change and continuity in the domestic space.
