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Dogon Peoples and the Desert Region
Project Researcher: RRA
Collaborator: Adjaye Associates
The research on the Dogon people of the Mali Bandiagara Escarpement was a part of a larger project in looking at the architectures of the seven biodiverse regions of the African continent. Instead of looking at each country, RRA noticed a connection in how the architecture unfolds as a response to the climate and not as a response to a nation state.
The desert is highly characteristic of sun-dried adobe brick building techniques and spiritualities that cover magnificent mythologies that become building materials in and of themselves. The Dogon people are one of the oldest societies in the desert, in Africa, and in the world. Their structures play particular significance to a different style of designing where the arrangement of buildings symbolize a human body. The most important structure being the Toguna (House of words) representing the “head”.
“Everything that is Dogon landscape is also a material representation of Dogon story. Mythologically speaking, the way of life, urban structure and ritualistic organisation of Dogon villages follows a set of intricate and scared principles outlined within their cosmogony. Although there are many variations of the creation myth, each account points towards the power of spirit and language as the “fertilising word” into material form through the beginning of the world with the creator God Amma.”