The Beautiful Hand-Drawn Home Facades Of Burkina Faso

These earthen homes are decorated by groups of women within the community--they’re beautiful but also structurally necessary. Cob--a mixture of clay, dung, sand, and water--is pretty much the oldest building material in human civilization. It’s also one of the most durable, withstanding heat, earthquakes, and rain for centuries in some cases. You can find it in England, Afghanistan, and Africa, and thanks to the efforts of some modern builders, it’s currently enjoying a comeback. In Tiébéle, a small village in the south of Burkina Faso, it never went away. There, each new clay-and-straw cob home is decorated by a group of women from the Gurunsi community, in a process that is part group art project, part spiritual practice, and part architectural detailing job. These images from Belgian photographer Rita Willaert are some of the most beautiful we&rsq...