"Like other types of rural architecture in the world, traditional African architecture - designed, lived, and perceived by mortals - exists only through a set of relations with the gods and with nature. This architecture born of profoundly spiritual and productive relations between dweller and dwelling, space and habitat, accommodates sociability and implies the continuos existence of the group. E
ach house reveals itself to be at once a tool, a work of art, and a spiritual space. It is built according to the model of the human body to shelter, protect, receive, revive, and survive; to give aesthetic pleasure, to dream in peace, to create a social terrain, to facilitate communion with ancestors and gods, but also to comply with the forces of nature. A lived-in house is, like adult humanity, apt to procreate - a house in constant evolution. It is a living element the grows and shrinks, that demands regularly looked after, repaired, and care for like a sick person, and dies when allowed to fall into disrepair. The house is neither a means nor an end in itself; it is both constructed space space of construction - a framework within which, with which, and thanks to which one lives."
-Vernacular Architecture of West Africa. A World in Dwelling. by Jean Paul Bourdier & Trinh T.
