Dogon Architecture

Dogon architecture is the building tradition of the Dogon people, whose villages are built along the Bandiagara Escarpment in Mali near sources of water, with an average village containing around forty four houses arranged around the ginna, the head man's house. Dwellings are built extremely close together, often sharing walls and floors, and are sited defensively in the escarpment's natural nooks and crannies. The Dogon build separate granaries for storage, with pointed roof granaries used by men to store millet and grain and separate structures used by women for personal belongings. Villages also include the toguna, a men's meeting house built deliberately low so that no one can stand upright inside, its roof formed from eight layers of stacked millet stalks, a design meant to keep discussions from turning violent, as well as the punulu, a structure built outside the village used to house menstruating women.