Thermal Performance Assessment of Burkina Faso’s Housing Typologies

Abstract

Burkina Faso is a sub-Saharan African country suffering from a high poverty rate. It has quadruplicated its population over the last twenty years, that is, from 4.5 to 18 million inhabitants. Such demographic changes, together with an intense migration process from rural areas to large cities, among other issues, are contributing to a rapid process of socio-cultural transformation. In this context, changes in both traditional and contemporary housing are analyzed for this article. To this aim, a thorough thermo-hygrometric evaluation is carried out by processing significant data from on-site measurements to shed new light on the adaptation of the said dwellings to the environmental and local cultural values. Preliminary results show that the introduction of land ownership linked to climate change and the increasing scarcity of natural resources are forcing native ethnic groups to modify their traditional ways of life, even threatening their subsistence. Consequently, we can prove that the new building typologies are not suitable in the least for the climatic conditions nor the rich cultural heritage of Burkina Faso. This fact negatively affects the possibility of revitalizing vernacular and environmentally oriented solutions for the contemporary world and the necessary advance towards a more sustainable architecture. With this research, we intent to start a reversal of such a deterioration process.