Senegal - Rural architecture of Basse-Casamance: The impluvium huts of Bandial kingdom

In Basse-Casamance, an African region considered as one of the "primary cradles" of rice cultivation, remarkable habitat forms have developed, as sophisticated as the types of agricultural development carried out in a vast estuarine mangrove zone. Throughout this area, the large banco houses, with their solid and elaborate frameworks and varied plans, show a great mastery of advanced architectural techniques. In the kingdom of Bandial, called the Mof Ëwi community, a totally original architectural form in Africa has been created: the crown house with central impluvium. Every large family once had a single house, all of whose elements under one roof with a double slope are arranged in a circle; the different rooms of the house and form a crown around a small central courtyard on which the inner face of the roof falls into a funnel, whose diameter is very variable, lets light and collects rain that falls into a trough from where it flows outside by a buried rhone drain. To multiply the pieces as the development of the family, we sometimes split the house by creating a second impluvium paired with the first. These houses with central impluvium crowns are practically only a few examples, whereas they were formerly also spread on the north bank of Casamance. The agrarian society which is at the origin of this unique earthen architecture also preserves cultural traditions and material goods of great richness, remarkably preserved and therefore also susceptible of inscription to the patrimony.