ArchiAfrika-April-Magazine-English-final-v2

There are two main issues that had to
be reconciled with building modern
buildings such as schools using
traditional Dogon architecture.
Firstly, in Mali and especially in
the Dogon area, cellular buildings
with small sized spaces are the most
common type architecture and part
of the traditional building method.
Even Mosques are bigger buildings
on the exterior, but on the interior
are still divided into small spaces
with small spans. The second issue
is the position of the schools and
housing for teachers in relation to
the village. The school buildings are
a clearly different size, scale and
structure. In contrast to the Dogon
tradition which says one’s village
is one’s home, the Foundation built
outside the villages. On the one
hand this exclusion from the village
gives freedom to architecture, but
on the other hand it demands reestablishing
a connection to the
genius loci. The first school of the
foundation was built using building
methods already common for
school buildings throughout Mali,
and became very utilitarian. The
challenge in the future is to adapt
these issues and respond to them
more directly.
Inset: House Hogan Arou
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