Malagasy Architecture

Madagascar's architectural traditions are distinctive within Africa because of their strong Southeast Asian roots, carried by the earliest Malagasy settlers who emigrated from South Kalimantan in Borneo nearly two thousand years ago. Traditional houses across the island share a rectangular rather than round form with a steeply sloped, peaked roof supported by a central pillar, though building materials vary by region: plant based materials such as raffia, bamboo, thatch and reeds along the coast, historically wood and later earth based brick and cob in the highlands, and a hybrid cob and stick construction in between. Wood construction declined as deforestation made it a privilege of the nobility, brick construction spread during the reign of Queen Ranavalona II from 1868 to 1883 under the influence of London Missionary Society missionaries, and French colonization after 1896 accelerated the shift to concrete and imported materials, while stone remained reserved for tombs, reflecting the central place of ancestor veneration in Malagasy cosmology.