Around the World in Six Homes

In the frozen north of Canada, some Inuit families once built winter hunting shelters out of packed snow blocks called igloos — and the air trapped in the snow kept the inside warm enough to melt ice into water. Thousands of miles away in Mongolia, herding families live in round felt tents called gers that a family can take apart, load onto a truck, and set up again in a new pasture in about an hour. Not every home has four walls and a pointed roof. People build homes out of snow, mud, wood, water, and even floating rafts — and the home they choose depends on the weather, the land, and what materials are nearby.

• Why homes look different in different parts of the world • How climate and materials shape the way people build • The names of four real home styles: igloo, ger, stilt house, and adobe house • Why it's respectful to learn about homes instead of calling them 'weird'

In icy places, builders trap warm air close to the ground. An igloo is built from blocks of hard snow stacked in a spiral, which is actually a very good insulator — snow has tiny pockets of air inside it, just like a puffy winter coat. In Mongolia's grasslands, a ger uses thick wool felt wrapped around a wooden frame, with a small stove in the center so the family can stay warm even when it's -20°F outside. Both homes share one big idea: they're built to be warm without wasting fuel, using whatever material — snow or wool — is close at hand.

In Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, some fishing families live in houses that float right on the water, tied together in little floating neighborhoods with their boats parked outside the front door. In Ganvie, a town in Benin, West Africa, houses stand on tall wooden stilts above a lagoon, because the town was originally built on water to stay safe from invaders hundreds of years ago. Living on or above water means these families travel by canoe instead of by road, and kids often paddle themselves to school.

In hot, dry places like the American Southwest and parts of Mali, builders use adobe — bricks made from mud, straw, and water, dried hard in the sun. Thick adobe walls soak up heat slowly during the day and release it slowly at night, which keeps the inside of the house cooler when it's blazing hot outside and warmer once the desert night turns cold. The Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali is one of the largest adobe buildings in the world, and the whole town re-plasters it with fresh mud every year.