Eco-Digital Construction In Africa. Decolonising Performative Architecture: From The African Fabbers Project To The Douala Cultural Hub

The chapter talks about the experimental work of CODESIGLAB based on more than 10 years of realised projects and applied researches from the African Fabbers project to the construction of the Douala Cultural Hub. Such work investigates the relations between African indigenous technologies and advanced design approaches towards synthetic vernacular architectures.
The accessibility to education and the development of creativity represent to us one of the major drivers to improve the life quality of a community from both the social and the environmental points of view. For this reason, we have accepted the proposal of the COE ngo to design and build the cultural hub of Douala in Cameroon. At that time, we were already collaborating with them with our African Fabbers School sessions, implementing a self-construction and digital manufacturing laboratory for community-oriented projects in the frame of the CAMon! initiative supported by the Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development – AICS. With this premise, as designers, educators and activists, we have conceived the architectural project as a creative open platform, an urban infrastructure able to provide spaces of production for both educational activities and community-oriented projects.
Therefore, as directors of the African Fabbers School, we have strategically decided from the very beginning to develop the project through a collaborative process involving a group of local students and artisans. The continuous dialogue that was established with the local community and with our client has generated a very challenging and articulated design brief that bridges the new building with the structure of an existing refurbished one, with the aim of generating a system of ventilated and diversified courtyards, connecting a series of spaces open to the neighbourhood such as the digital manufacturing labs, an exhibition gallery, a co-working area and a cafeteria. The hub also hosts a school of fine arts (Laba- Douala) and a guest-house while the outdoor area is organised as an urban infrastructure with relational spaces, playgrounds and productive gardens. For these reasons, the programmatic and architectural agenda of a such project makes this building unique of its kind in Africa and beyond. The Douala Cultural Hub project was displayed at the last Venice Biennale of Architecture (May 2021).