WHO WE ARE

Okpara House is a platform created by Obiora Nwazota, an architect and designer based in Chicago. We are essentially storytellers rediscovering our roots. Through research and archiving, we are reimagining our rich oral traditions into a new space that allows us to exist and give new meanings to our lives as it relates to our heritage. We are excited about creating beautiful content that enriches humanity. The perspectives we are creating lie outside of current western hegemony. These stories are unique to us. They give meaning, define us, empower and propel us towards our normalisation.

“As an architect, I look forward to our work here at Okpara House, contributing to and stimulating the ongoing dialog on restitution and accepting our traditions and culture as a treasure for humanity. I believe that as we become more aware and conversant in the language of our cultural assets, the more profound our contributions will be to the human experience.” - Obiora Nwazota.

THE MISSION

Our mission is to harness the power of design, dialogue, and academic research as powerful agents to stimulate, reactivate, elevate, and reimagine Igbo culture. We are reclaiming and asserting the relevance of Igbo culture on contemporary lifestyles within and beyond the Igbo community.

THE VISION

ỌKPARA HOUSE© is to become the place to tell OUR story. It is a space of belonging, dialogue, and exchange. It is a place to be, a place to meet and an immersive experience of Igbo culture. The Igbos are one of the most recognized peoples yet like most indigenous and old-world cultures they are at risk of losing their identity due in part to misplaced priorities by various stakeholders. The narratives we create today will fill in the void that exists in our story as humans.

INSPIRATION BEHIND THE PROJECT

Our initial projects explore themes relevant to foundational structures of Igbo culture reimagined for contemporary lifestyles. Our projects will be a benchmark in quality and will contribute to ongoing efforts in preservation of Igbo culture in the diaspora and beyond.

• The lack of representation of the African within their own world and throughout the diaspora

• Normalising our existence

• Omenala - Igbo cosmology/Worldview

• Archival & academic research expanding outside the realm of institutions

• Celebrating our diverse identities

iGBO PEOPLE

The Igbos are indigenous to South Eastern Nigeria. Structurally, Igbo society belongs to the segmentary lineage type of African societies. There are no large Kingdoms. There are four to five thousand communities of people in Igbo land, generally referred to as village groups, communes, or towns, with populations averaging several thousand persons. 

The world of the traditional Igbo-speaking people of south-eastern Nigeria is remarkable for its wealth of ritual symbolism. There is a wide variety of concepts, verbal, gestural, and material object forms. It is an arena for the interplay of forces. The Igbo world is a world populated by invisible and visible forces, the living, the dead, and those yet to be born. It is a world in which all these forces interact, affecting and modifying behavior. It is a world that delicately balances opposing forces, each motivated by its self-interest, a world whose survival demands some form of cooperation among its members. However, that cooperation may be minimal and even hostile. The Igbos conceive their world as a marketplace in which people compete and bargain not only among themselves but also with their gods. They envision reincarnation as not only the bridge between the living and the dead; it is a necessary precondition for the transaction and transfer of social status from the world of man to the world of the dead. They believe that man spoils the world and not by spirits, yet man is allowed wide latitude in his behavior - an essential factor in the dynamics of Igbo culture.