Dogon Architecture
THE DOGON
The homes the Dogon people of Central Africa are an excellent example of how the original container is reproduced almost literal form. Although these people live quite simply in our terms, their culture is very complex and closely aligned with nature. To the Dogon, home is not a particular building, but a series of stages, which includes several buildings. The home is closely related to the development of the individual. For example a Dogon wife stays with her father until she has had her third child. She does however sleep with her husband during the night and returns to her father’s house during the day. It is a hierarchical system where the family is spread over several houses until they have achieved the status required to own their own home. Their homes are not owned by individuals as such, but are stages in one could say, psychic development and are shared as such.
Dogon Home
Plan and Section of Typical Home
The typical Dogon house in plan is modeled on the human female form. The kitchen is round and represents the respiratory organ. It and is always located where a fruit of the nono plant (nono=perpetual) is walled-in during the building process. The kitchen thus becomes the head of the house. The main living area is thus the body of the woman with two storage spaces to either side. The entrance of the house is the vulva of the woman. As the Dogon are marking the plan on the ground,
a series of complex rituals are enacted. It is according to Ogotemmeli, an old Dogon sage, the marking of the house’s image. It is interesting to note that the Dogon house has no windows therefore it is quite dark inside, the intention being that the interior is distinct, enclosed and presumably cooler, in contrast to the exterior which is light, hot and open. A man was asked during the construction of his house why there were no windows and he answered by saying Anybody who wants light can go outside. In the house it should be dark. Its better that way.
As the status of the patriarch develops, he may build the next stage in the form of a divine couple.
It is also the universal arch descended from the heavens to reorganise creation. The four main spaces grouped around the principal one are the four ancestral couples (these together with the animals, plants, minerals and Nommo [2] constitute the universal arch).[3]
The Ginna or family patriarch’s house is Nommo in form. The ideal pair lying on their sides procreating. The whole plan of the house is contained within an oval, which represents the universal arch, from which all space and all beings have emerged.
The Dogon people have no separation between their spiritual and mythological ancestry and their everyday life. To them, nature and their spiritual ‘arch’ are one and all life is permeated by this belief. If we look at the nature of their homes, it shows a very interesting pattern of behaviour. The plan is a woman lying down; the entrance to the house is the entrance to the maternal womb. Indeed, the house is a container of psychic life. This is a universal idea that exists in many cultures worldwide. The house is a spiritualised reproduction of the original home, that is, the maternal womb. The Ginna house on the other hand is a reproduction of not a single person, but an ideal pair. That is the original parental authorities, the mother and father of all creation. The first type a pre-birth reproduction of the original home, the maternal womb, the second, post-birth born and residing within the ideal pair.
Source: Merkus, E. An Introduction to The Pyschology oF Architecture.
[2] The Nommo are a twin pair from the god Amma born in the second creation. They are the ideal pair of male and female, who with the water brought the second word of god to the world.
[3] ‘The Dogon people’ an essay by Paul Parin