Today, the world is overbuilt, yet it still lacks space for many. And while the ecological and climate crises intensify, modernisation and construction remain deeply tied to extraction and waste. Now, more than ever, we must collectively reimagine one of our time's most prevalent architectural forms: the unfinished building. Can these ruins – trapped in a perpetual state of limbo – become sites for new circular, non-extractive approaches to spatial production? And could they inspire a new vision of architecture, one that is community-led, process-oriented and regenerative?

The Limbo Architecture Lab, a unique AA Visiting School in West Africa, engages with modern ruins through an archaeology of the present that explores the relationships between buildings, human and nonhuman entities, materials, data and infrastructures. This program builds upon Limbo Accra's digital archive, which maps and catalogues incomplete concrete structures across West Africa, including landmarks such as Ghana's Airport Tower and La Beach Towers. The nine-day workshop is a collaboration between the AA, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the Limbo Museum. Taking place both in Kumasi, on the campus of the KNUST, and at the Limbo Museum in Accra, the Lab invites students and young professionals to engage with both the data architecture of the archive and the physical architecture of unfinished buildings on-site, such as the John Kufuor Library.

Transdisciplinary in nature, the Lab produces research through practice and experimentation. Organized by Limbo Accra (Dominique Petit-Frère and Emil Grip) and curator and architect Lennart Wolff, Limbo Architecture Lab considers unfinished buildings as carriers of ecological, political, social and economic histories—myths and infrastructures that stretch from the past into the future. An interdisciplinary team of educators, including international and local guest experts, will lead lectures, discussions, mapping, research and design-build activities. Participants will develop projects that span speculative policies, building designs, virtual environments and community-led interventions.

While buildings in Kumasi and Accra are the primary focus, the Visiting School acknowledges the trans-local and planetary nature of unfinished architecture, facilitating engagements and design interventions across distant yet interconnected geographies. It operates at the scale of the collective and the plural, envisioning a future where unfinished structures offer new possibilities for living and building.

PROMINENT FEATURES of the workshop / SKILLS developed

• Research-based design

• In-depth conversations, lectures and exchanges with local and international practitioners and stakeholders

• Group discussions and selected readings

• Learning and developing digital documentation, mapping and recording techniques

• Hands-on design and build interventions at the intersection of art, architecture and social practices