"Tesi, antitesi, sintesi." The philosophical triad of a thesis, antithesis and synthesis, often incorrectly attributed to Hegel, construes the very being of an idea. While the triad itself is famously (and often incitingly) employed in political and cultural discourse, it is the synthesis or 'sintesi' that is the resolution of the tension between thesis and antithesis to birth an idea, as well as the birth itself.

In chemistry, synthesising implies fabrication in the ilk of nature. It is, simultaneously, a destination, a source and a process with which to arrive at either. The rich etymology of the term then begs an entirely different understanding of 'synthetic'—matter, material and making. Its distinct linguistics harbour a world of tensile inequalities, bridging the natural and the unnatural, the created and the fabricated, the implied and the reasoned-with. For what could be more natural than a thought's genesis? In this issue, we thus un-synthesise 'sintesi' in material sciences, greener architectures, digital algorithms, as well as established socio-political paradigms.

An interview with Stefano Boeri, the president of Triennale Milano, dwells on this year's theme, 'Inequalities' and the imperative hierarchies that we are bound to operate with, synthesised or otherwise. Chilean practice ELEMENTAL unveils a carbon-sequestering housing prototype with Holcim. Belgian studio BENTO and 'Synthetic Geologies' by Studio Eidola look at two very different synthetic materials - mycelium and cement - to formulate alternative materialities. Anna Kostreva's book, 'Seeing Fire | Seeing Meadows' uses speculative drawings to ward off our synthesised digital realities.

'Sintesi' therefore emerges as a space of not just tensions, but overt dichotomies, and of concord and co-presence despite them. Interestingly, the Italian translations for synthetic are gendered: 'sintetico' claims the man in 'man-made' while 'sintetica', the feminine, is a summation. Even in reasoning, must a synthesis of thought comply with or adhere to synthetic standards?