Through design, material intelligence and speculative storytelling, the pavilion challenges conventional narratives of cultural permanence, by asking how heritage, loss and reinvention shape the way societies evolve.

At the heart of the pavilion is Lejja, a historically significant community in South-Eastern Nigeria, home to one of the world’s earliest iron-smelting traditions. While this technological mastery has long faded from contemporary use, the ecological and social structures that formed around it endure, offering profound insight into how indigenous knowledge systems shape governance, gender dynamics and communal resilience.

Lejja serves as a conceptual foundation for the pavilion, illustrating how design can excavate suppressed histories and activate new ways of thinking about the built environment. By reframing Lejja as a symbol of transformation, the pavilion moves beyond preservation, instead offering a speculative vision—one where the past is not a fixed reference point, but a catalyst for imagining alternative futures. It invites visitors into a fluid, utopic communal space, where personal and collective narratives merge, where architecture is not merely a structure but a vessel for memory, and where design is a living archive of evolving identities.

More than an exhibition, 'Hopes and Impediments' is a call to action, challenging audiences to rethink the ways in which history, material culture, and design innovation intersect. By amplifying the voices of an overlooked region, the pavilion proposes a radical new framework—one that asserts that the future of African design lies in the intelligence of its past.