In this conversation, architect, researcher, and educator Paolo Cascone, and contributor Maddalena Laddaga reflects on the ideas and practices developed in his book African Fabbers Atlas: Manual of Synthetic Vernacular Architecture (Actar Publishers, 2025). Drawing from years of work with CODESIGNLAB and the African Fabbers School, Cascone presents Africa not as a peripheral testing ground, but as a generator of architectural knowledge capable of addressing global ecological and social challenges.
The discussion explores how synthetic-vernacular architecture merges indigenous intelligence, material ethics, and digital fabrication into a new design paradigm. From counter-mapping and adaptive platforms to hands-on pedagogies of making, Cascone articulates an approach where architecture becomes a cultural technology rooted in local ecologies yet scalable as a planetary model.
Rather than proposing fixed solutions, the talk frames architecture as an open system—one that learns from context, empowers communities through fabrication, and reprograms inherited notions of modernity. Positioned at the intersection of decolonial thought, ecological transition, and technological experimentation, this conversation invites us to reconsider where architectural futures are imagined—and who gets to build them.
