Marieme Ndiaye emerged from her igloo-shaped home in Senegal's capital, its 1950s space-age aesthetic in sharp contrast with the boxy, multi-storey apartments being built nearby.

The little concrete house is a head-turner, seemingly better suited for a sci-fi movie than the average Dakar residential block where it is located.

In the 1950s, around 1,200 of the tidy little homes were built in several neighbourhoods across Dakar to alleviate a post-World War II housing crunch.

The dwellings were made by inflating a giant balloon and spraying it with a concrete solution called gunite, before then deflating the balloon.

Row after row of the light-coloured domes, which could be constructed in just 48 hours, quickly sprung from the brown Sahelian landscape.

Designed by a California architect

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