CRAFTING AND DRAFTING: SPATIAL NARRATIVE AS CULTURAL PRAXIS IN CONTEM

Abstract

This paper examines how African oral traditions and cultural narratives are translated into the material and spatial dimensions of contemporary living environments through the dual practices of crafting—the hand-based making of culturally encoded objects—and drafting—the thoughtful architectural planning of inhabited space. Grounded in the premise that the modern African interior constitutes a critical site of cultural continuity and memory production, the study interrogates how indigenous knowledge systems embedded in textile patterns, pottery traditions, sculptural practice, and spatial typologies can be responsibly and innovatively integrated into the design of present-day domestic environments. Employing an exploratory qualitative methodology drawing on the Afrocentric design criticism, material culture studies, and spatial phenomenology, the study analyses specific interior zones—the threshold, the living space, the nourishment space, the rest space, and the purification space—as discrete narrative chapters within the home as a whole. Findings reveal that when crafting and drafting are approached as mutually reinforcing epistemic practices rather than as discrete professional activities, the resulting living spaces function simultaneously as functional domiciles and as active archives of cultural memory, transmitting ancestral knowledge to younger generations through daily embodied experience. The study concludes that a design praxis centred on material intelligence, spatial storytelling, and ethical curation offers a viable and culturally necessary framework for the development of African interior design as a globally distinctive discipline. The implications of this research extend to scholars and practitioners in ethnography, anthropology, architecture, art history, and applied design.