This essay is part of Issue #1 “Agents Provocateurs: agitate normality”, a bimonthly series curated by KoozArch on the agency of architecture and the architect.

Sumayya Vally—the youngest person to ever design the Serpentine Pavilion in 2021 and the artistic director of the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennial 2023—aims to find design form and design expressions to embody the histories, conditions and futures with which she grew up with in her beloved Johannesburg. A huge lover of words and fiction, in this interview, Sumayya talks about the origins of her architectural vision, how her architectural work can be understood as a diverse spatial translation endeavour, the relevance of alternative archives and how the different facets of her identity give form to her multifaceted practice.

KOOZ With our current series, titled Agents Provocateurs, we are investigating how a heterogeneous group of practices position themselves in relation to the political and socio-ecological issues faced by our contemporary society. Could you share with us what Counterspace identifies as the agency of architecture today and what are the spheres of influence in which your practice thrives?

SUMAYYA VALLY I was born and raised in a small Apartheid township called Laudium but I spent much of my childhood in my grandfather’s stores on Ntemi Piliso Street in the heart of Johannesburg. A big part of my identity—and my practice—is informed by the historical moment into which I was born in South Africa: 1990, just a few days after Mandela was released from prison. I was four when our country became a democracy. I grew up in a time of incredible optimism with this new constitution where everything felt possible: we were the Rainbow Nation. At the same time, around 2015, when I was finishing my architectural studies, South Africa was in the midst of a very turbulent political time. It was the time of the Rhodes Must Fall movement, which led to the Fees Must Fall movement in South Africa, which then sent ripples across the world and led to student movements worldwide demanding for free, decolonised education. We could probably point to this as the pinnacle of the post-Rainbow Nation, where students really felt that they’ve had enough—we wanted to see a different curriculum. So I think these moments of political change and political shift are really big moments of wake up for architecture.

KOOZ In an interview for the Culture Summit Abu Dhabi 2022, you expressed that the role of the architect is to absorb, reflect and translate who we are into the world and also that you believe that the main responsibility of the architect is to materialise this translation into form making. Due to KoozArch’s interest in architecture beyond its built form, we would like to ask how is the “un-built” present in your research and practice and what potential do you see in it as a space where architects and designers can experiment in order to disseminate genuine radical ideas.

SV Everything I look at is through the lens of a fundamental interest in territory, identity, belonging and trying to understand architecture beyond that which is built. Architecture is complicit in separating, othering, excluding, but it can also be a force for the opposite. Architects make walls, but we also make doors. The architecture that moves me most is architecture that makes an offering about the human condition and about people, that facilitates and has something to say about our relationships to each other and our relationships to territory and place.

By its very nature, architecture is abstract. I think what I'm doing in my practice is making a concerted effort to find different sources for the origins of that abstraction. Because I think that what has happened in the canon and the profession is that we've inherited so much that we don't deeply question, which I have found to be a necessity.

KOOZ In that same unbuilt vein, you have mentioned the importance of archives, both visible and invisible, to imagining better futures for all. How is the archive connected to your practice? What is the role of memory and remembrance when talking about redefining the agency of architecture, of making forgotten or erased histories come to light?

SV I've always felt this frustration that there's a misalignment between what I'm seeing and what I'm inspired by; and the conventions that we have as architects. I felt that somehow my work didn't fit the form of the “professional” or the “archival” or the systems that we have. I am interested in forms and systems that are actually far ahead of the systems of archiving that we’ve been conditioned into—the oral, the aural, the performance-led.

Johannesburg is synonymous with movement and migration. A restless piece of earth, this ground was unsettled aeons ago by the meteor that brought the gold in its belly to the fore. Synonymous with rogue economies, underground trade networks, its connections stretch across the continent.

Architectural practice presents the opportunity to make visible these other archives which fall into the margins of the city and of the practice we have inherited—in the kitchen, in our recipes and stories, in the myths and whispers about the city, in our belief systems. All these layers that cannot be read by the eye that does not know how to see it.

I really wanted to make work that troubles and counters these constructed narratives about “lack” on the African continent—I believe that here, in the fringes and the margins, we can find what truly Johannesburg and African design languages can look like, and I wanted to work with and for this idea.

KOOZ This year you were invited to be the Artistic Director for the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennial. In that role, you mentioned the importance of decolonising museums and public spaces that engage art (and architecture). In what ways do you think the traditional definition of Islamic art (and of art in general) has been impacted by colonialism and what steps do you believe can be taken to address this issue?

SV The definition of Islamic Art as we know it is an inherited definition from 17th century France and has been defined from the outside—by forces outside of Islam. This definition has oscillated around geography, chronology or style and aesthetic tradition only.

This legacy has placed the very definition of Islamic art in crisisand a redefinition is urgent and important. I want to see definitions that are plural, diverse and resonant with our practices and experiences of being of the muslim world, and I believe the Islamic Arts Biennale has been a massive vehicle for moving that conversation forward.

Rather than being determined by aesthetics, geometries, geographies alone, here we are celebrating Islamic arts that take inspiration from the source: philosophies, rituals and practices, drawing on the knowledge, wisdom and experience of rituals in the faith. It is important that we take this arena and title “Islamic Arts” on and that we work with it. That we believe deeply and we acknowledge that Islamic faith, Islamic practice and Islamic tradition can and should be making a creative contribution to the world.

Existing definitions of Islamic art often focus on style, tradition, geography, pattern, and geometry. The ambition of the Biennale is to build on and challenge these criteria, expanding on the existing canon of Islamic art, and to question the narrative, museological, and artistic practices of this time. Islamic artworks may have surface similarities, but what really unites them is inherent in how they are made, used, and understood.

When we identify great artworks as Islamic, we are simultaneously honouring historical traditions by keeping them alive, and contemporary practices by giving them a history. It is important to situate contemporary work in the historical narrative because it is only in context that things can belong.

The works in the biennale are experiential—they put forth an entirely different definition for Islamic Art—rooted in the experiential, the oral, the aural, our ritual practices and the ingredients and infrastructures of gathering and community. In the broader context of the project of the museum as we know it, which is deeply in crisis and looking for relevance, this project puts forward worlds that are resonant with our lives and come from different bodies of knowledge that can push forth the future of museum and creative practice differently.

Every space is a dialogue between territory, function and its people. It’s an opportunity not only to express those functions and communities but in a real sense to become them—and rather than a distinction between north and south, or an attitude of essentialism toward African identity, I’m interested in the complexity, contradictions and intersections between them—relations between host and home, between past and future too. We’ve been deeply connected for a long time. Some connections are difficult and dark, but through colony, empire, migration, we have bits of both—North and South—in all of us. These connections and histories unite us in our diversity and cultural hybridity.

This project and its research trajectory is something I will continue to think about and work on, and points directly to our collective role; and the responsibility that architects have in working toward systemic change. To listen deeply to, and to seed and support different networks and bodies of knowledge.

KOOZ Teaching has been an important part of your career. For six years, you led master’s studio Unit 12 at the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg, have lectured in three continents and are currently leader of ADS11: الهجرة Hijra at Royal College of Art. What is your agency as an educator? In what ways do you think the energy and ambition of young architecture students and faculty can contribute to revolutionising and changing the systems and structures that have traditionally defined architectural pedagogy?

SV Energy and ambition can very quickly turn into feeling jaded when faced with the realities of the world beyond the classroom, which I was keenly aware of as a student. It was that fear of becoming jaded and despondent that led me to form Counterspace alongside friends who also fed off the spirit of Johannesburg that I mentioned above. Keeping that energy and optimism intact is an absolute necessity.

I was fortunate that the start of my practice ran alongside the beginnings of my teaching career at the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg. It was within this nexus that I developed a pedagogical practice under the guidance of Professor Lesley Lokko when she founded the school. And that contributed hugely to my confidence in being able to define a practice and pedagogy that came out of that context.

KOOZ In a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, you said that any architecture, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is political, and thus, creates something in someone's image. We want to end up asking you: in whose image is the work of Counterspace being made? What are the voices and stories that your work elevates? And finally, where do you envision Counterspace agency making a difference in the coming future?

SV I'm absolutely optimistic. I think the situation that we're all in is dire, but I’ve also seen a lot of shifts. It is my hope that every project Counterspace takes on can centre the overlooked, the marginalised, the erased stories, by focusing on narratives of hybrid identities, both rooted and diasporic.

Most importantly—seeing and thinking from the perspective of the “other” or the margin, is not from a place of lack, but a place of total abundance and imagination—it is incredibly generative because there are forms waiting to be born from them.

I've always seen all of the facets of my identity—being a woman of colour, being South African of Indian heritage, being Muslim—as fuel for my practice. And I've never seen it as a challenge. But as a power. I think that these are important things to bring to the architectural conversation because architecture has always been created in the image of a very particular identity—that of the heteronormative white male. And so anything that we can bring to trouble or challenge or complement and supplement that we should.

I find architects and thinkers who are able to translate something of this difference in their perspective into form interesting and necessary for our world. Form-makers like David Adjaye, Zaha Hadid, and Isamu Noguchi brought to the discipline different ways that embody aspects of history, culture and form that was not visible in our built worlds before them, and comes from different ways of being.

There are an infinity of untold stories, unheard voices to be told, retold, made and remade. There are many unrealised worlds to be made, if we just listen deeply enough. We have to realise and understand that we're standing on the shoulders of many; we're standing on the shoulders of Mandela, of Malcolm X, of James Baldwin, of Martin Luther King, of Miriam Makeba, of Simon Nkoli, of Winnie Mandela, Graça Machel, of Toni Morrison, of Maya Angelou, of bell hooks, of Steve Biko... These are small moments in a very long history. And though change is never enough or fast enough, it is happening, slowly.

Bio

Sumayya Vally is the Principal of Counterspace, Architect of the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion and Artistic Director of the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah. A TIME100 Next list honoree, Vally has been identified as someone who will shape the future of architectural practice and pedagogy. Vally has recently been appointed Honorary Professor of Practice at The Bartlett School of Architecture.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and digital curator whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2015 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Parallel to her work at KoozArch, Federica is Architect at the architecture studio UNA and researcher at the non-profit agency for change UNLESS where she is project manager of the research "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.