Designing (for) Biodiversity
Federica Zambeletti:
Hi there, and welcome to the second season of the Architectures of Planetary Well-Being podcast. The Architectures of Planetary Well-Being is a podcast exploring the interconnection of our social and ecological systems. Season two of the podcast is curated under the heading Between Us, presented by the re:arc institute and KoozArch. Between Us is a series of intimate conversations shared between two critical practitioners operating across architecture, art, curation, illustration, design, and literature. Across generational and geographical space, their discussions will move through shared aspects of practice to reach infinitely larger and more pressing issues on and around the roles of cultural practice for planetary well-being. The conversations are intended to provoke still more responses and further discussions, from micro to macro, with and led by emerging and further underrepresented communities. The guests chosen for these conversations are innovative thinkers and practitioners who we believe remain committed to the critical reframing of their disciplines and their attendant discourse.
These intimate yet wide-reaching exchanges aim to reflect the need for interdisciplinary conversation and unsiloed imagination in order to attempt the realization of a more just, caring, and restorative world.
Today we're going to hear from Architect, Nzinga Mboup in conversation with the designer and researcher Seetal Solanki. You'll also hear from me. My name is Federica Zambeletti. I'm the founding editor of KoozArch and I joined Seetal and Nzinga for this exchange.
To introduce them both, Seetal Solanki is a materials translator, founder and director of Ma-tt-er, a relational practice focused on providing access to materials through creating fluency, understanding migration, and putting it all into practice. Seetal is also the author of Why Materials Matter: Responsible Design for a Better World, a tutor on Silva Systems at Design Academy Eindhoven, and programs After School Club at STORE STORE.
Nzinga Biegueng Mboup is a Dakar-based Senegalese architect. In 2019, alongside Nicolas Rondet, she co-founded Worofila, an architectural practice specialized in bioclimatic design and construction using earth and biomaterials sourced locally. In addition to her architectural practice, Nzinga has been a researcher for the African Futures Institute since 2022 and is the invited curator of the CCA Dakar Public Program between 2023-2026.So, thank you so much Seetal and Nzinga for joining us today. Would you mind maybe sharing a few words on yourselves and your practice?
Seetal Solanki:
My name is Seetal Solanki. I am a materials translator. I founded Ma-tt-er in 2015, which is a relational practice of finding ways to relate to materials through language, through migration of materials. I'm actually trained as a designer—a textile designer in particular—and how we have translated materials is through multiple sectors, industries, the way that a material can be many things in its versatility and be applied to many different applications as well as scales, as well as sectors, as well as people. And that feels more of an expansive description of what I do, because I have to also speak multiple languages through the people that I encounter and where I travel to—and also even trying to be acknowledging the cultural side of things, as well. I'm based in London, if that helps to place a geography to where I am and I work very internationally as well.
Nzinga Biegueng Mboup:
Hello, my name is Nzinga Biegueng Mboup. I am an architect. I am based in Dakar, Senegal. I'm Senegalese as well, and I co-founded the practice of Worofila six years ago, which initially was a collective and moved into a studio in 2019. And we specialize in bioclimatic architecture. We try to make buildings that are adapted to the context—most importantly to the climate—so making passive buildings using locally sourced biomaterials. And we work mostly with raw earth and typha, which is an invasive species. We are preoccupied with showing how we can make much more livable spaces—whether it's buildings or planning public spaces and neighborhoods and cities—while responding to the imperative calls by climate change, but also by drawing inspiration from traditional resources, such as traditional building techniques, but also any of the type of material industries and knowledge systems that are indigenous to Senegal, and Africa as a whole.
FZ:
Thank you so much. And yeah, both Ma-tt-er and Worofila aim to readdress, fundamentally, our relationship with the planet through the material choices that we make as architects and as designers. What does the term “planetary” mean or allude to in your reciprocal practices?
SS:
We have a three-step approach to finding a way to a more planet-centered approach, and a lot of the time there's an unlearning process that needs to happen to therefore re-engage our relationship towards the planet. From the industrial revolution and capitalism and colonialism, there's been a very extractive and exploitative approach towards the planet. There's a lot of take and not very much reciprocity in the way that we've then not given back to what we've taken. And that's a very human-dominating approach towards the planet. The unlearning is to, really, find another way to relate towards materials, which is really what we're made of—figuring out how to discover what we're made of—and the unlearning has to start with the self. And then we understand how we place ourselves in community or society and then we understand our role towards the planet. So then it's an approach which feels more collective, materially.
When we understand that everything is made of something, we can then understand what we are giving back as well as what we're taking, and it hopefully feels like an exchange—I would even say a practice of care and respect, ultimately. So that's what I would describe as sustainability: simply, it's care and respect. And a planetary approach feels more towards that, in my practice anyway, and how I engage with what I do and with others. So that's not just with the planet, it's also towards each other and ourselves.
NBM:
That was really beautifully put. For me and for us at Worofila, when we think about the planet, I think one of the first element that comes to mind is that of the climate. We all inhabit this planet, but we inhabit it in different regions that have been shaped through different geological processes and ages. But we're all subject to climate in our respective geographies. We are at a point where we're trying to ensure that the buildings and the spaces that we craft are actually informed by the climate. The easiest way to look at it in the context of the architecture and building is how to provide a shelter and protection and a certain level, also, of physiological comfort. All of this has stemmed from observation of our empirical knowledge that is based on years and years, millennia, of human experience. That is also coupled with a certain material knowledge and science, which again, is usually informed by the geography in which we are located. So, depending on where we are, we have different resources in terms of what the natural environment provides—so historically, it's been anything from stone to ice to timber to mud and clay in our context. There's something quite symbiotic about being able to use the materials that are available in our direct geography, but also in the way that we respond to the climate as well. Our approach and our understanding of bio-climatic architecture really sits at the intersection of that, and is really to try to realign ourselves with these two elements and with that level of sort of specificity—but also drawing from, again, years and years of knowledge and of science that has been developed as a response to those two conditions.
FZ:
I think what's quite interesting is that a definition of “planetary” calls for us to redefine and understand the local—both in terms of the relationship that we have, but also then the materials themselves. I wonder if, Nzinga, maybe would care to expand a little bit more as to what role the local plays in how you approach the act of building.
NBM:
The local context is truly what informs how is it that we build, and also what we build. So whenever we're given a project or a brief, which is usually in the site, the first elements that we look at are the raw meteorological conditions, the amount of rainfall that we have, the type of season, the level of humidity, the wind directions as well, the solar trajectory. In Senegal and in Sub-Saharan Africa in general, we tend to mostly live in hot climates, so we are a lot more preoccupied with how to keep cool and how to protect, as well, from hot sun. Solar orientation allows us to know, depending on the time of the day and the angle of the sun, how we are able to protect ourselves from it.
The second bit—which is understanding, as well, other conditions, like role of the ground in which we are being implemented, the type of soil that we have, how to ensure that we also do not disturb the geology greatly by what we do, if there are any materials available in situ as well to be able to utilize that into the construction and also pay attention to the vegetation and whatever is existing, let’s say, in the ground, to be able to really build with it. And the materials we work with are all locally sourced. In the context of Senegal, we have a lot of clay-rich soils and that's usually what we use in order to build the masonry. And then, depending on the regions of Senegal, we have a range of fibers—vegetable fibers or timbers—at our disposal to make roofs and to also provide a certain amount of insulation.
Lastly, I would also say that there's a range of other types of grass that have been developed all the time, some of them much more recent than others. So, some of the material techniques that we use, particularly with clay, are actually ancestral. Some have been modernized as well, but we have a very wide ecology of local materials and also materials that have been transformed through craftsmanship—such as the ceramics as well, which is another form of clay that we can use as well in building for the waterproofing qualities that they have, et cetera, et cetera. I think maybe the best way to summarize it is that all the ingredients of our architecture and the way that we implement mostly the building or whatever space we're making, is all done using the resources that we have at our disposal here—spatially, materially, but also in terms of the knowledge systems and the know-how that exists.
FZ:
Seetal, when I look at your work, you're an incredible cartographer, whether that's working and trying to map the scale of a continent or the scale of an island. In your introduction, however, you define yourself as a material translator. Would you care to share a little bit of what you mean and to what extent have we become materially illiterate?
SS:
What a great description. Thank you for gifting me the title of a cartographer. I might start using that one.
I might start with the literacy. We have become quite illiterate with materials, due to the fact that we have categorized materials in typologies, which removes a lot of feeling and emotion and behaviors and characteristics, and it’s kind of so definite in its definition of wood, metal, plastic, glass, textiles. I mean, like a textile is made from many materials, and it can be cellulose, it can be cotton, it can be hemp, but it can also be in many composites. To categorize textiles in a very reductive way like that—it removes our relationship to what it's made of, and even with the wood, for example, it can be many things. In our interpretation, it should be solid, whereas a wood can be flexible, it can be made into many things, not just flooring or a door or door handles or shutters for windows. It's very simplified. So, I really like to add more emotion, more culture, more spirituality, so that it feels more holistic and it feels more human.
Ultimately, materials have their own identity, much as we do as humans. The identity of materials and ourselves then really goes back to the projects that I involve myself in, such as the materials at Material Atlas. There was a project that we did with the British Council and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. It was mainly looking at 10 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. So, we had Nigeria, we had Ghana, we had Senegal, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, and these 10 different practitioners from the continent in Sub-Saharan Africa approached them and said, "Let's build an atlas together." The Atlas really is about getting people to map themselves, their practices, their materials geographically and their location—and how they even go about understanding how to build a practice, even where some of these materials are imported from and how far they've traveled. And they've applied it through song, through native languages, through symbology, through video, through imagery, through words and so many other languages and mediums and formats, and it feels so much more visceral, so much more relatable or there's even more kind of an embodied intelligence attached to it—not just the scientific intelligence; sharing this word, “relate,” because we have disengaged ourselves and disconnected ourselves from that a little bit. And that's the illiteracy, I would say, because we've understood materials through its aesthetics and how it's described or how it's been titled, which removes the rest of it.
And then it's forming an identity for us of place—and even Nzinga, you've described your practice as getting to know what's available to you in your locality and understanding how to build from that. And that is forming an identity of place. That is so powerful to understand where you are. And not only is it attaching pride to it, but it's also attaching a sense of craft and skill and all of this Indigenous knowledge. And that's really what was the Bali project, the Potato Head Desa, which we were involved in for quite some time—and we basically mapped the island of its materials, its crafts, its manufacturing, its waste, and how to design and make a hotel with only local materials from the island. And that's such a powerful tool to be able to show people: "This is what Bali is made of and these are the people involved, these are the skills involved, these are the processes, these are the materials. This is how we can appreciate where we're traveling to or where we come from." And that sense of, I would say, pride really allows you to feel where you are and who you’re there with. In many hotels in Bali, you could be anywhere in the world and it doesn't really give you a sense of place or identity.
FZ:
I think obviously when one talks about place, then one starts talking about community and, Nzinga, you mentioned how community is key to how, as Africans, you relate to one another. And Seetal, I remember this very well in a conversation at the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, you talked about the multiplicity of the cultures which are embedded in your persona, both at a local and planetary scale. What are some of the inheritances that you bring with you into your practice—and whether this is in terms of content or approach?
SS:
I have many nationalities in my heritage such as Ugandan, Kenyan, Indian, Middle Eastern, maybe slight German, and I'm born in the UK, so it's quite a mixture, which have all contributed to my approach in our household when I visit my parents. We can speak three different languages in one sentence—so it'll be English, Gujarati, and then Swahili. Even the way that we cook in our household, it's very all-encompassing in terms of cultures, this mixture of things. So I kind of say I'm West Indian but East African, and it's really helped shaped me. Everything started from cooking for me, actually. So to learn about how to make a dish with simple ingredients is very much similar to how to make with materials. The end of it… It’s like the process is involved, it's very similar to how we kind of process with materials, but the end result has multiple applications and different textural qualities. So that has informed the idea of culture within materials and how integral and important that is to acknowledge and behaviorally first, and also how to connect to one another and understand one another. And that's really through observation and listening first.
And I was living in Nigeria for quite some time and in Lagos and I learned so much about how Indian culture is quite similar to West African culture as well. And that's through how everything is spilling out onto the streets and how important food is, how important convening is, how important gathering is. Now here, we’re very polite in the UK. One anecdote I can share is I was at a market stall in Lagos—it was outside where I was living—just to buy water. And I was asking so politely, "Can I have two bottles of water, please?" And then this woman came in front of me and says, “two Eva,” which is the brand of the water, and she got it immediately. I was like, "Why am I overcomplicating everything?" And so I learned so much from that one experience to just be like, "This is what I need and I just need to share it." And so that kind of behavioral shift allows adaptability, and I think for me, adaptability has been such a key component to how I start to integrate into different cultures—and how I even begin to understand my own materials are very much that they adapt as we do as humans. The one thing we can rely on is the only constant is change, but I feel like the evolution of things is something we need to be very much in keeping with, but also the idea of remembering, as well. So, ancestry, heritage, culture, mixed with our needs of today.
NBM:
There's so much to say when it comes to how political community is, but I think in general it really boils down to having a people-centered approach to the work that we do, and also to how we live. And there's a saying in a lot of here, which says, “Nit nitai garabam.” That translates into "Human beings are each other's medicine," which is quite similar to the idea of Ubuntu, which is that I am because you are. That's probably a very summarized way to describe a form of humanism in African cultures. And I think as much as whatever we do, what we produce, is materialized in buildings, they're all made by people. There's a lot of translation that needs to happen, which I believe is part of a definition of what the term of “architect” is in Zulu. I draw a lot from the cultures and experiences that I've had.
Being from Senegal, Cameroon, having been born in Mozambique, growing up in South Africa, studied between the UK and South Africa, and now being based in Senegal—my whole life as a person, but also in practice, has always been a series of having to mediate and translate, either between languages or sometimes between, let’s say, a drawing and what happens on-site.
What happens a lot when we work with bio-based materials here—there's been a lot of loss of those knowledge systems. Training is something that is quite important—the reconnection, just generally, with those forms of knowledge, I think can be quite powerful in the sense that they have the capacity to empower people. Earlier, Seetal was talking about the unique sense of place and of identity, and I think we don't fully know what that is anymore in urban environments, in Sub-Saharan African cities. We've been quite disconnected and quite removed from understanding how we can craft space using what we have or at least harnessing all of our technologies. I also think that what is possibly the greatest potential of actually working with bio-based materials is how much it engages the human body and other forms of relating, like intuition, in order to work with the material. A great example of it is when you work with clay, there's a lot that you can tell about the material, a lot of scientific knowledge and data that one can grasp by using the body. When you work with a soil, if you are trying to avoid any presence of salt, you can actually use taste in order to know whether, either water that you find or a type of soil, has salt or not, just through taste, even just eyesight. Yesterday, we were looking at three samples of clay, which actually is used to make ceramics. So after visiting one of the ceramic factories, we knew exactly which one was sandy, which one was pure clay.
To go even further than that, earlier when you were also talking about recipes—there's a lot of the traditional techniques and the knowledge systems that are transmitted just like recipes. Especially when you speak to traditional builders, they tell you all of that they know almost as if it's second nature. It's like when you're trying to get a recipe from your grandmother and there's no instruction, there's no measures, and she just tells you that you just put a handful of this and you put this spice until you know that it's right. And you're like, "No, give me grams, give me measurements. I need to know exactly what it is." But I think through practice and through years of development, there's certain balance that people know about through intuition, but also just through immersing the body and all the senses. It seems maybe slightly esoterical, but I think there's something quite powerful in reutilizing those modes of tradition that really center the human body and as a true practice as well, that we can learn and really, I think, gain a lot more of a harmony with our environment.
And I think the natural materials allow us to do that, because I think they are made of the same things we're made of, probably in a broader sense, and it's a bit more of an intrinsic connection there—in addition to them also providing a great deal of other properties, like that of thermal resistance when it comes to clay or the porosity as well, vegetables fibers but also raw earth has the potential to actually absorb moisture and contribute to dehumidification and then thermal control. If we think about the sort of scientific language as we understand it in the western sense—but I think in a much more cultural and personal way—I think I'm a lot more interested in people really understanding almost very intuitively the benefits of actually working with all these biomaterials.
FZ:
Seetal, thank you for bringing up the cooking analogy and Nzinga for also picking up on that. As an Italian, let's say, the cliché for me is all there, but there's a beauty. I mean, I come from two different regions in northern Italy and both my grandmothers taught me—both through oral transmission and cooking with them, but then actually I engaged with both of them in writing a book. And the beauty is that the book somehow remains, although they might have passed away. So, the recipe is grounded on a page and both of you are engaged with the idea of publications, rediscovering of archives—Seetal especially, you're working on the new book, The Language of Materials, which will bring together contributors from different parts of the world and different sectors, whilst, Nzinga, you mentioned the importance of assembling an atlas of the materials and constructive techniques of Senegalese architects. What kind of dialogues, resonances do you hope to leave behind from your own practice?
SS:
With this book in particular, I really want to engage people who don't really have access and are exposed to this knowledge because this material knowledge is somehow in science and academia in general. And the languages that are used in those spaces are very elite and also very specific. So the jargon is quite bamboozling, I would say, for the majority of people—the people who are in those spaces, it's very familiar, but to really make change, it needs to feel relatable. So, I'm trying to reduce the barriers to entry with understanding a more simple way of engagement so that more people, who perhaps aren't of a socioeconomic background where they can afford this kind of education… So I want it to feel very informal, less formal and more cultural, relatable through different anecdotes. I really want to invite a farmer, a chef, maybe someone from football, maybe a rapper. I would love to have someone like Kendrick Lamar, because in his DAMN album he speaks of, “what happens on Earth stays on Earth.” This line is so apt for me. He summarized sustainability in one sentence, and to be able to share that in my book, reaching a much wider audience that can be like, "Oh, really? Is that what… He can also apply that in that space, too? I didn't know that. But yeah, that makes a lot of sense." It's really to make it wide-appeal, but in a way where it feels, "My people can understand it.” And I've had to really fight for this space that I'm in right now and still fighting a different fight now, but I don't think it should be a continuous fight. I really want more people involved and more people aware and then more people to actually be part of this approach, because it's always been within us as. Like, being brought up in my household with so much spirituality that's really like a belief system. It doesn't have to be religious, but having a belief system helps you have grounding and then something to then apply yourself in.
Materials have allowed me to form that, basically, and it's really helped shape who I am, and I really want to be able to share that with others. And it's not that difficult, really, because it's inherent. It's like you say, Nzinga—it's intuition, it's instinct, it's really inherent, but we've forgotten. So to remember through simple language and simple descriptions, this book will hopefully expose more people to it and invite others to be part of it too and create community within that space. And also to be able to say that there are multiple translations to these words or terms or approaches that feel multicultural—not just Eurocentric or American or UK. I really want it to feel like we can share it through other cultures too. So, 2025, you'll see this happen. And maybe we can work together as well, Nzinga?
NBM:
No, I truly hope so. I'm so happy to get to learn about this project because it resonates so much with the journey on which I am embarking, particularly in the context of my three-year appointment as a curator by the Canadian Centre for Architecture. My main concern is that of rediscovering our architectural traditions and it's going to be manifested through two projects. One is concerned with the history and journey and architectures of Senegalese architects, which for too long I think have been quite put on the side of the discourse. So that's something that has always frustrated me. And then the second bit is really about understanding our material heritage, and I think it stems from [a] personal quest to want to learn, truly, and be an informed architect because I did not train here in Senegal. Senegal had private schools of architecture, but we haven't had a national school of architecture for over 30 years now.
So I feel that there's a lot of knowledge that isn't being transmitted and I want to go and seek it. Also, just because I see it everywhere. I actually see it in the landscape. You see a lot of variation of various building techniques. Very ironically speaking as well, when thinking about heritage, I think the demolition of a lot of heritage buildings do inform us a lot about how they were built, and I think it's prompted a lot of my current research work. But it's quite funny that sometimes, when you demolish a building, that you realize what it's made of. I didn't know that many of the buildings here were made with the laterite, including buildings of the colonial era—actually made with laterite blocks. But when you demolish, you see it. Many old modernist buildings, also had a steel frame construction. I thought we only knew how to build with concrete frame, and it's again, through demolition that I actually realize these things. So when you really pay attention, you see that there's been this kind of palimpsest of material techniques, even in a small geography like that of Dakar, which is the capital. But throughout the ages, it's really collected a series of building systems, of typologies, which nowadays we have no ways to access because there's no education.
I've recently done an exhibition that tried to reconstitute a demolished building, which was done in the seventies by a French architect that was preoccupied here with making an architecture that is informed by the local culture, and rebuilding parts of the building for an exhibition. I had to look a lot for people that could do shell concrete. Nowadays, the modern buildings in Senegal are built with mostly cement frame or you have glass, you have aluminum, you have tiles—and none of those last three materials are actually produced in Senegal. There used to be a time—not that long ago, about 40 years ago, so even in the, let's say, modern era—where there was shells that were used in order to plaster the facade, and nowadays nobody knows how to do it. We see it, we see it in the city. You still have some examples of this particular technique, but it's very difficult for people to be able to reproduce it. So I'm also quite curious to understand what are the systems that were at play to actually erase certain material histories as well, because I really do not understand it—if it's a question of trends, if it's a question of economy, if it's a question of political wills or a form of dominance of certain industries and products. So I think there's a lot of our history that we can learn by really paying attention at the materials.
I remember, once, I went to the archives and I was reading specification documents of the colonial era, and it was very specifically said that under the French colonial rule that you could build using certain local materials or they had to be imported from France. But I think there's a lot of more political, social, and cultural history—ultimately also ecological histories—in the particular material technologies that we've had over time. That's why I'm preoccupied with this project. It's meant to allow as well, for us to, I think, better understand our history, to be able to reconnect with some techniques that we have lost, but also look at it through a critical eye of wondering whether this is what serves us more or whatever serves us best. But what I don't want is to continue to exist in a framework where modernity is only possible through the importation of models and the importation of materials because it feeds, I think, economical dependency, and I really look forward to seeing what kind of modernity, contemporaneity, we'll be able to design as architects—but also just as citizens once we actually understand better and we have some critical understanding of our history, particularly our material history.
FZ:
Thank you both, Nzinga and Seetal, for the incredible exchange. At the beginning, when the invite came in from re:arc in terms of curating the podcast, it came quite automatic and a little bit of a conscious decision—the idea of bringing in conversation two practitioners, really with the ambition of using this platform as an opportunity to nurture meaningful collaborations, which can actually then ultimately lead to more architectures of planetary well-being. So please do keep us updated on how each individual project develops, but also more importantly, when there's moments of exchange.
NBM:
It’s really great to be in conversation with fellow thinkers and people aligned that are on the same journey.
SS:
Thank you for bringing us together in this space to be able to share our stories and our approaches, and to build these connections as well.
FZ:
We hope you enjoyed that beautiful exchange between architect, Nzinga Mboup and designer, researcher Seetal Solanki. Of course, you can find more information on both speakers and the rest of the series in the show notes on the re:arc institute website and on the digital platform KoozArch. All episodes of the podcast, all equally insightful, can be found through Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to yours. I'm Federica Zambeletti. This has been Designing for Biodiversity of Between Us, the second season of the Architectures of Planetary Well-being podcast. Thank you so much for joining us and stay well, happy, soft, and strong.