Samoan architecture centers on the fale, an open sided building with no walls, an oval or circular plan, and wooden posts supporting a domed roof. Its frame is built without metal fastenings, its poles lashed together with a plaited coconut fiber cord called afa, a single house requiring between 30,000 and 50,000 feet of this handmade rope. Builders traditionally used breadfruit wood for the main posts and coconut wood for the flexible principal rafters, with the roof thatched in sugarcane or palm leaves that last around seven years before needing replacement. The fale's open interior is spatially organized by directional orientation and post position, which determine where chiefs, orators and guests sit during formal gatherings, so that the building's structure directly embodies the Fa'amatai chiefly system that governs Samoan social life.
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