Italian photographer Andrea Ferro has documented the remaining 1950s bubble houses in Dakar, Senegal, as they face increasing threats of demolition.

Ferro decided to document the concrete-dome homes – known as bubble houses due to their construction using inflation – to show their unique forms and offer a glimpse of daily life inside them.

"As a documentary photographer and videographer, I spend a few months each year based in Dakar," Ferro told Dezeen. "I recently discovered this subject with strong architectural and visual potential that immediately inspired me to develop a new, different story."

"My aim was to record the architectural and historical significance of this rare experiment in thin-shell design, and to portray a fragment of everyday life that reveals Dakar's social as well as urban fabric," he continued.

Built from the 1950s through to the 1970s, the houses were informed by a concept developed by American architect Wallace Neff in California.

Each of the homes was built by inflating a dome-shaped balloon, which was then sprayed with cement to form a solid shell. While only a handful of these Airform homes were built in America – almost all of which have now been demolished – by the 1970s, there were around 1,200 of them in Dakar.

"Post-war Dakar faced a sharp housing shortage under the late-colonial French administration – the city was growing fast, budgets were tight, and new workers needed homes quickly," explained Ferro.

"Neff's Airform domes offered a rare fit – fast to erect, material-light, and climate-savvy for heat and sea winds – so authorities adopted them at scale in sites like Ouakam, Zone B and Hann, creating what became the world's largest concentration with around 1,200 units."

Originally built in groups of 100 to form entire neighbourhoods, many of the houses were demolished as Dakar expanded, while others have been integrated into the city fabric.

The ageing material, along with the current wave of development in the Senegalese capital, means that in recent years, many of the remaining homes have been demolished.

It is estimated that fewer than 100 remain in the city, but the majority of these are still occupied. Ferro was keen to show how they are being used while drawing attention to the fact that they are increasingly under threat.

Trained as architect, Ferro believes that raising awareness of the structures and demonstrating how they could be renovated may increase the chances of some of the bubble houses being saved.

"In Dakar, they became a unique urban experiment: modular, low-cost bioclimatic homes now partially absorbed, altered, or decaying – leaving a fragile, living record of tropical modernism," he said.

"They're pressured by land speculation, lack of legal protection, 'obsolete' layouts and services, and marine-climate decay of thin ferro-cement shells – so owners demolish, overbuild, or abandon them," Ferro continued.

"I'm a documentary photographer; meaning I observe and elaborate through images, though, if I imagine possible future strategies to save them – at least some of them – these could be: to list key clusters, publish simple retrofit toolkits and pilot one or two model restorations."

Other recent photography collections published on Dezeen include Johan Blasberg's pictures of Egypt's New Administrative Capital.