The most common use and understanding of the word “Atakpamé” in present-day Ghana is as the name given to a type of construction method that is widespread in the southern half of present-day Ghana.

All Mognori buildings are built in earth obtained by digging close to the specific building site. After construction, the pit is used to hold refuse. The dug mud is used in two main ways. (1) It is rolled into roughly spherical balls and used while damp or (2) moulded into bricks and sun dried. These represent the more traditional and the modern approaches respectively.

Having identified that Ghana has a housing deficit in excess of one million units, the question which may arise is: how have Government addressing this issue? Various governments have tried various approaches in addressing the challenge of housing. Governments’ interventions on housing would be looked at in two main periods; colonial and post-colonial era.

The aim of this case study is to develop alternative, theoretically grounded and speculative ideas for

communal urban dwelling in the future. The premise is that recent attempts to put forward ideas for

urban housing have inherited a number of historically-conditioned shackles.