How is a house built?
The House Holds begins with memories of childhood homes to explore architecture as a collective process shaped by knowledge, care and relationships.
Equatorial Guinea · Barcelona · Nairobi 2026
The House Holds begins with memories of childhood homes. Through conversations filmed in Equatorial Guinea, different people recall the spaces in which they grew up: their rooms and courtyards, the materials they were built from, their sounds, the people who inhabited them and the ways in which they changed over time.
These memories reveal the house not only as a built object, but as a material, emotional and social space — shaped by family relations, shared knowledge, care and collective forms of making.
Part of a broader research process developed by LAUGE in Equatorial Guinea, the project takes the form of an experimental audiovisual piece directed by Matilda Vidal de Llobatera, with cinematography by Gloyer Matala Evita.
The House Holds is itself shaped through a network of relationships. Developed by a team working between Equatorial Guinea and Catalonia, the project brings together architectural research, local knowledge and audiovisual practice.
LAUGE is a research and practice platform focused on architecture, cities and territory in Equatorial Guinea.
Architects and researchers Laida Memba Ikuga, Ursicino Endaman Nsé and Xavi Rodríguez Soriano develop and curate the research through LAUGE. Matilda Vidal de Llobatera directs its audiovisual expression, with cinematography by Gloyer Matala Evita.
From Bata to Barcelona and Nairobi, the way the project is produced mirrors one of its central ideas: architecture and knowledge are not generated from a single centre, but through relationships, exchanges and forms of interdependence.
The house is more than a physical object. It carries memories, values, relationships and ways of understanding the world. Looking closely at how we build and inhabit it can reveal the cultural and social structures that shape architecture.
A house is sustained over time through maintenance, adaptation, negotiation and care. Architecture emerges not only through construction, but through the relationships and everyday actions that allow spaces to continue supporting life.
Architecture is rarely the result of a single author. Building involves different people, forms of knowledge and decisions accumulated over time. The House Holds questions the architect as the unquestioned centre of architectural production.
Local knowledge, inherited practices and everyday ways of making are not simply traces of the past. They remain active tools for understanding the present and imagining other architectural futures.
The House Holds takes the form of an experimental audiovisual piece that brings together voices, images, sounds and memories recorded in Equatorial Guinea.
Conceived to travel, the project can be presented in different spatial configurations and adapted to cultural institutions, exhibitions, universities and public programmes.
Its deliberate economy of means is understood not as a limitation, but as a critical position towards the logics of overproduction, consumption and spectacle in contemporary architecture.
The House Holds will be presented in Nairobi as part of the inaugural Pan-African Architecture Biennale, bringing the project into a wider conversation around African architectural futures, situated knowledge and new ways of thinking about architectural practice.
The first architecture biennale of this scale on the African continent, the Biennale brings together voices, practices and ecologies from across Africa, placing them at the centre of contemporary architectural debate.
The project is conceived as a travelling platform that continues generating dialogue through exhibitions, screenings, conversations and institutional collaborations.
Architecture · Research · Curatorship
Architecture · Research · Curatorship
Architecture · Research · Curatorship
Film Direction · Editing · Production
Cinematography
The project welcomes collaborations and exchanges with cultural institutions, universities, researchers, curators and media interested in architecture, memory, situated knowledge and the future development of The House Holds.