"I love Counterspace Studio — inter-disciplinary architectural studio"

2022-05-08 09:40:30

Skip to main content Counterspace , Johannesburg Menu ProjectsNewsAboutDictionaryCounterparts Counterspace .red { fill: #ff0000; } .sand { fill: #a39373; } .darkgrey {fill: #221e1e; } .brown { fill: #886417; } Sumayya Vally joins WEF's 2022 Class of Young Global Leaders Fifty architects and designers you need to know on Earth Day Dezeen's top 10 low-carbon buildings of 2021 Top five buildings of 2021 by Rowan Moore, The Observer The best architecture of 2021 by Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian Port Magazine: Sumayya Vally on 'Material Histories' The Talks #EmergingMasters Series featuring Sumayya Vally CNN Africa Avant-Garde: Transformative Architecture featuring Sumayya Vally Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Partners with leading African women architects to design the world’s first Presidential Center and Library for a Woman Head of State Sumayya Vally, alongside Saad Al-Rashid, Omniya Abdel Barr and Julian Raby, are curators of the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale. Sumayya Vally shortlisted for the Moira Gemmill Prize ‘Emerging Architecture’ Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Sumayya Vally, Counterspace project Fragments of the 20th Pavilion project Support Structures Fellowship project Listening to the City project Constructing Belonging writing Excavating the Social Layers of London writing Counterimage writing Belonging in Unbelonging *Limited edition: Sunday Rice Ritual A Letter To A Young ArchitectDear (younger) Sumayya,There is always architecture waiting to happen in places that are overlooked:you will soon fall in love with gold, kitsch, supernatural ideas,with very strange and everyday things – a disco-church on wheels in the inner city,the performance of a ritual gathering on a patch of veld-grass of a traffic island nextto a highway,the rhythms and space of an Ethiopian coffee ceremony,the smell before a Highveld thunderstorm,the choreography of Fordsburg on a Friday before, during and after prayer time,the specific colour spectrum of a mine-dump sunset,the tenacity of indigenous plants and indigenous ceremonies and practices – all the magic that is Joburg. There is another canon here.Ingest atmospheres – learn how to read and feel colour, dust, mist, the phases of the moon. There is another canon here.Look at these things deeply.Feel them, absorb them.You will soon develop a mistrust for the historical record. Listen to that.Look so deeply at what is present that you notice the silences and the absences too. There is yet another canon here, in these silences and absences.Read in other languages.Write in your mother tongues. Look deeply at sentence structure and vocabulary.There is another canon here.Learn how to dissect the index of an archive.And how to make your own indexes for archives.Stay soft and sensitive – it is a deep strength, and architecture needs it. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that everything you can ever imagine has already been done. They are incorrect.Beauty and social justice are not mutually exclusive. Beauty is social justice.There is an infinite number of untold stories, unheard voices, unrealised dreams, undreamt worlds.Poetry is a necessity.And dreaming is everything.Love,(older) SumayyaJohannesburg, South Africa26 June 2020The Architectural Review Counterspace StudioJohannesburg, South Africa Office Press Visit Follow us on Instagram Follow us on Facebook