This article examines, among other 1950s architectural publications, Afrique Noire, published by L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui in 1957, a key issue for understanding architectural modernism within the broader framework of coloniality and the late-colonial expansion of France in West Africa. Rooted in colonial economic and epistemological structures, the journal promoted architecture as an instrument of extraction and control. First, architecture was presented as a node within a material system of resource extraction, particularly bauxite, feeding industrial production chains, including building components. Second, through what this article terms climatic coloniality, architectural design promoted Eurocentric standards of comfort—such as air-conditioning, cross-ventilation systems, and industrial shading devices, including Jean Prouve’s brisesoleils— largely detached from local architectural knowledge.

Case studies including housing projects and a hotel in Conakry (Guinea), demonstrate how so-called “climatically responsive” modernist architecture functioned as a testing ground for technologies later re-exported to Europe, while marginalizing indigenous building practices. By foregrounding modern architecture and climatic design, the journal simultaneously obscured colonial resources exploitation. The post-independence persistence of these buildings, particularly in Guinea, exposes their technical contradictions and palimpsest-like character. In the context of the contemporary climate crisis, this history requires a decolonial/coloniality rereading. Confronting this legacy entails abandoning colonial habits of knowledge and power in favor of low-carbon, community-based approaches. From this perspective, architectures that once embodied a singular colonial modernity may now offer opportunities for creative re-appropriation toward more plural and just futures. ... Read more

In this review article, two independently authored texts examine how modernist architecture on the African continent continues to shape and be reshaped by the operations that actively produce memory. The authors approach these operations in individual yet interconnected analyses of building ‘performance’, both a tool of colonial production and a practice of decolonial re-enchantment. The first text examines how modernist buildings, urban plans and infrastructures in West Africa created a narrow and technocratic definition of performance, focused mainly on European standards of climate comfort. Presented as bringing ‘civilised’ living standards to the continent, these interventions, equipped with sun shading, natural and mechanical ventilation, obscured the colonial and capitalist extractive practices that sustained not only European development in the 1960s but also the very same comfort. The second text counters this narrative by centring performance as an embodied, relational practice happening through and within architectural form. Looking at the life of the Uganda National Cultural Centre and Theatre, performance becomes a practice of reclaiming epistemic authority. The piece situates the struggles of reclamation within contemporary debates on preservation, where institutions often risk reinforcing a universalising heritage gaze that prioritises architectural form over lived experiences. Read together, both texts propose that decolonial futures emerge not by analysing and preserving architectural form alone but by interrogating the operations that produce memory and reclaiming performance as a situated, collective, and continuously negotiated practice. ... Read more

This paper presents the findings of an interdisciplinary academic exchange exploring the transition towards a circular built environment (CBE), developed over two years of collaborative work at Delft University of Technology’s Circular Built Environment Hub. A key outcome of this work is developing a comprehensive definition of the CBE and the related Scales to Aspects model, which connects the multi-scalar and cross-disciplinary nature of circularity, ranging from materials and components to buildings, neighbourhoods, cities, and regions. It highlights critical tensions, such as the lack of integration between circular strategies and other global challenges. ... Read more

In a few interviews after the paper’s publication, Superuse Studios declared that it would be appropriate and relevant to specify that they commissioned the initial research from where this research paper derives and that they provided a solution regarding one of the main issues after the commissioned research and before the publication of this research paper. The authors agree with Superuse that integrating such information into the research paper is crucial to provide a comprehensive and clear overview of the project and the research process. [...] ... Read more

In 2017 Prof Kate Raworth from Oxford University and Amsterdam University published the book 'Doughnut Economics: Seven ways to think like a 21st century economist'. The Doughnut, the core concept at the heart of Doughnut Economics (DE), is a tool for human prosperity in the 21st century to meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. It consists of two concentric rings, a social foundation and an ecological ceiling, and in between lies a doughnut-shaped space, the safe and just space where humanity can thrive. ... Read more

In 2017, Professor Kate Raworth from Oxford University and Amsterdam University published the book “Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist”. The Doughnut, the core concept at the heart of Doughnut Economics (DE), is a tool for human prosperity in the 21st century to meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. It consists of two concentric rings, a social foundation and an ecological ceiling, and in between lies a doughnut-shaped space, the safe and just spacewhere humanity can thrive. ... Read more

In 1969, English researcher Gordon Pask published an article named “The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics”, defining a theoretical framework concerning a cybernetic theory of architecture. Throughout the 1970s, the Cambridge Research Group designed the Autonomous House, a self-sufficient dwelling in terms of energy and food. Part of the Cambridge group approach relates to cybernetics. However, the group did not regard several aspects of cybernetics described in the theoretical framework of Pask. Through a literature review primarily focused on 1970s architectural magazines, this paper analyses which cybernetic aspects were not regarded in the Cambridge Autonomous House and other similar houses as case studies. Through an innovative analytical method, it demonstrates that some limitations of the house design, such as the main focus on costs and technologies, could have been reduced if aspects of cybernetics had been more incorporated. Using cybernetics as a lens represents a method which can be beneficial also in analysing today’s examples of sustainable and autonomous architecture. ... Read more

This research focuses on the architecture of degrowth with regard to the Circular Economy (CE) in the built environment and the role of the architect. Today, to achieve a sound CE, the challenge related to the global decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation has to be addressed. The impossibility of pursuing economic growth in a planet with limited physical resources forces us to face the necessity of limiting growth, especially in wealthy regions. Furthermore, to incentivise sustainable growth in more deprived areas is key, particularly in places providing shelters and better health conditions is mandatory. Several high-density newly built neighbourhoods, even if positioned as sustainable and circular, often have a negative socio-economic and environmental impact on local communities and less developed world regions from where materials and energy are extracted(Nelson & Schneider, 2018) (Lehtinen, 2018). Economic growth and national GDPs are considered among the essential values in a world with limited energy and material resources, where the population and production of goods are constantly growing. The only possibility to reverse this trend is introducing a global shift in knowledge and culture (Calisto Friant et al., 2020) (Nelson & Schneider, 2018). Both the 1970s and recent years saw architects taking different roles in practice, for instance, increasing social cooperation and decreasing energy and material consumption, contributing thus to degrowth. Against this background, this research aims to elaborate an architectural perspective on the question of growth, exploring emerging practices and reflecting upon the limits and the potentials of their approaches. The outcome will provide insights into how best practices in architecture regarding CE and degrowth can generate alternative roles for architects. This research will analyze and elaborate upon relevant case studies such as De Ceuvel, Amsterdam by Space&Matter; R-Urban, Paris by Atelier Architecture Autog r e (Calisto Friant et al., 2020); the Heckenbeck village, Germany (Grewer & Keck, 2019) and other examples from the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale entitled 'Enough: The Architecture of Degrowth (OAT, 2019).' ... Read more

Today, the evident need for more efficient conservation, management and redistribution of natural and human-made common resources have inspired thinkers, researchers, and designers to redefine the organization of our societies. For example, Silke Helfrich and David Bollier argue that the common-pool resources (CPR) defined by Elinor Ostrom require new “practices of commoning” that reconsider the conventional discourses of market economy and state intervention. Several contemporary architectural firms have introduced innovative design strategies concerning the collective collection and reuse of local materials, the commons and the circular economy.

However, already after the oil crisis in the early 1970s, practices like the Secondary Reuse Group (SUG) engaged with circular reuse of materials but did not correlate to discourses concerning the commons. This essay analyzes SUG’s projects during the 1970s using a lens calibrated on the contemporary debate of the commons, to unveil and highlight some relevant aspects of their work. This lens will refer to Michel Bauwens and Tom Avermaete who differentiate between material commons, that is, human-made and -handled reserves of materials from our environments and cities; immaterial commons, knowledge and craft skills existing in a particular place; and commoning processes, social practices of mutual collaboration. The first goal of this research is to describe the work of SUG concerning its material and immaterial commons. The second goal is to inform the contemporary debate regarding waste and materials as a CPR to be unlocked by architects and users through commoning processes of materials reuse. ... Read more

Throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, some European architectural magazines illustrated the Trombe Wall: a solar collector designed by engineer Felix Trombe, integrated into the southern wall of some housing prototypes by Jacques Michel in France. Magazines such as Architectural Design, Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Technique et Arquitecture, Casabella and Domus, illustrated these examples especially during the years before and after the 1973 oil crisis. However, they mainly focussed on the technological aspects of the innovation and on energy performances. Taking as a reference the concept of Equipoise described by Sigfried Giedion (1948) and re-considered within the sustainability debate by William Braham,1 the technological interventions of sustainable architectural practices entail three limitations. The first underlines that the interventions could affect the health of the people, the second that sustainability is ultimately a social condition and the third regarded the necessity of regular maintenance and renewal. This article aims to highlight the absence of debate about the three cautions in the magazines throughout the 1970s and the consequence of this lack on sustainable and energy-efficient architecture of today. ... Read more

This paper analyses the user safety of a playground built out of reused blades from a dismantled wind turbine. Located in Rotterdam and designed by the Netherlands architecture firm Superuse Studios, the playground, called “Wikado”, represents an example of the circular economy applied to the built environment. With reused materials, Wikado represents a saving in resources and energy, when compared to a standard playground built with primary materials. Furthermore, the playground creates a unique design experience for its users, who can still recognise the original rotor blades following their transformation into slides, platforms, and tunnels. However, the safety of the playground could be questioned. This paper will analyse the materials and products used in the playground and their condition some years after opening. The analysis focuses on the risks of human health during the use of the playground. It considers the shape and the sharpness of the rotor blades, its components such as glass fibres and epoxy resin. As a result of the analysis, two risk analysis conceptual models help to assess the health concerns regarding the contact with the materials, and some yellow drops leaching from the rotor blades. This analysis informs the contemporary debate concerning the reuse of materials, and more generically, the circular economy applied to the built environment: whether it is recommended and safe to reuse materials for a different function from that which they were originally designed. This paper will explain that in the analysed case study, it can be safe to reuse materials for a different function, but only with the appropriate precautions. ... Read more

This paper is part of a wider research that focuses on the 1970s, when architectural debate and practice saw an enormous increase in the attention for the various ways that architecture and the built environment relates to questions of energy, economy, natural resources and society. In effect before and after the 1973 oil crisis, such events happened: the drastic increase of oil prices at the beginning of the decade, the UN meeting in Stockholm culminating with the publication of Limits to Growth1 in 1972, the financial crisis subsequent to the oil crisis from 1973 until 1976. Architects, scientists and researchers reacted to these events proposing theories, methods, tools and projects in order to: intervene innovatively in terms of energy efficiency, especially in relation to housing; rethink the relation between architecture, resources and energy. The paper analyse tools of the architect to intervene in the built environment in projects related to housing in the central western European climatic zone classified as Temperate Oceanic Climate2. It focuses in particular on solar houses using as energy storages the thermal masses of architectural elements as: internal walls, external walls (e.g. Trombe Wall) and floor slabs. ... Read more