Recingere e coprire. Sguardi contemporanei sulle origini dell’abitare

An attention toward the multiple forms of traditional dwelling characteristic of Africa, the object of numerous historical and ethnographic studies, was stimulated by the UNESCO action to protect Indigenous Peoples and Intangible Cultural Heritage. Nonetheless, the historical memory and identity of the built environment, but above all the survival of tangible culture and technical-building know-how passed down through the generations represented by traditional construction, is gradually disappearing, above all in rural contexts. Fortunately, a recent generation of architects, both African as well as non-African, is working across the country, combining a global approach with local solutions and testing a renewal of traditional forms of settlement, dwelling and building. The intention is to create environmentally integrated systems by adopting building techniques, processes and methods centred around sustainability and the hybridisation of local materials with advanced technologies. By critically confronting the authorial conception of architecture, these projects often propose forms of assisted self-construction, guidelines for local actors to be used during design and construction, proposing a process capable of generating “architecture without architects”.