Sumayya Vally, architect, curator, and founder of Counterspace architecture office, joins the jury for the 2024 Obel Award. This international architectural prize, organized by the Henrik Frode Obel Foundation, honors projects that significantly impact people and the planet. The 2024 theme, “Architecture WITH,” invites a re-examination of the architectural profession, emphasizing collaborative and co-creative processes that integrate diverse bodies of knowledge into the core of design. Vally’s perspective on redefining architectural roles aligns with the theme’s focus on non-hierarchical, co-creative approaches.
South African architect Sumayya Vally has become internationally renowned for her innovative re-imaginings of cultural spaces. As the founder and director of Counterspace, a Johannesburg-based architecture studio, she became the youngest architect to design the Serpentine Pavilion in 2020/2021. In 2021, Vally was included in Time’s list of 100 emerging leaders shaping the future, being the only architect featured that year. Recently, she was appointed as the artistic director of the first Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, where she helped transform the Western Hajj Terminal into a space for redefining Islamic Arts.
In this interview, Sumayya Vally engages in a discussion with ArchDaily’s Editor in Chief, Christele Harrouk, about the theme of the Obel Award, “Architecture WITH.” The conversation builds on their previous dialogue about the intentions and impact of the First Islamic Arts Biennale, where Vally served as artistic director, emphasizing the connections between architecture and cultural expression.
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ArchDaily (Christele Harrouk): How can “Architecture work with” as opposed to for? In other terms, how can architecture be done with people, not just for them?
Sumayya Vally: I am a strong advocate for the power and the value of listening in architecture. To Listen to the land, the context, its history, and its people; in order to birth architectures that are made uniquely with place and in collaboration with its climate, conditions, skills, knowledge, and people from that place as key actors in the development of a project rather than passive participants; and rather than designing something and then figuring out how to build it retroactively.
AD: In your opinion, what are some famous examples of architecture that use the “Architectures WITH” idea?
SV: The Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali is the largest mud-brick structure in the world. It was originally built in 1907, on the site of a 13th-century mosque. Every 12 months, in April, its surface is re-mudded, to reinforce the structure in preparation for the rainy season – an event called the Crépissage. There is a collaboration with the weather, as the mudding takes place on the eve of the first rains. Through that process, its fabric shifts over time. In a sense, it can be seen as evolving into an entirely different building year on year. Its building is centered on the knowledge of the mud masons, who pass this skill down across generations.
When I worked with Yasmeen Lari in Pakistan, she described the ways she worked with women to create thousands of chulah stoves in rural Pakistan. She mentioned that the building techniques she used in working with them are akin to working in a kitchen with ingredients, quantities, and the suppleness of mud akin to dough. These other literacies have architectures waiting to happen.
AD: How can architects include knowledge from other fields to design more inclusive spaces? What other fields can and should be included in the creative process?
SV: It is important to honor bodies of knowledge that, at some point, were stopped — they weren’t allowed to continue because of colonization, apartheid, and other forces. I think that being able to learn from them, so they can evolve, is important. Because even when we look at so-called vernacular architecture, much of it appears to be frozen in time without having had opportunities to evolve. But there is so much to learn from the vernacular: Villages that may be overlooked in architectural canon often prove that they incorporate incredibly sophisticated forms of community, respond to climate and weather, and work integrally with the planet. We need new models for what African architecture is or for what new architecture is. Contemporary architecture should absorb more diverse bodies of knowledge and be more hybrid.
I hope that I am a part of the generation of architects that is thinking about who we are, how architecture can bring us together, and how it can respond to all the challenges we are facing. The architects now coming of age want to build differently, and I hope to see a multitude of ways to express different experiences and attitudes to bring new and unique imaginations into the world.
AD: How does today’s political and economic situation impact the chances for participatory architecture?
SV: Sometimes it feels dire, but in spite of that, we must remain optimistic. There is the opinion that the most sustainable thing we can do is sometimes not to build. But that understanding is because our understanding of the world is so tied to this current colonial capitalist model, that we can’t understand that an entirely different way of being is possible that listens to the seasons. That isn’t only about being zero carbon or net energy but can be generative in its making if we can create systems that are not just about negating the problems we have, but about looking at the question completely differently. So many societies past have had this attention to the earth and there are interconnections between so many indigenous bodies of knowledge all over the world.
Politically and economically, we are also in a time where the centers of architecture have shifted from the Western world to the Eastern and Southern worlds.
I hope that, instead of repeating failed models from elsewhere, these new world centers will look within, embrace ways of thinking and making that are from their unique cultures, climates, and conditions; and evolve these into entirely new worlds of architecture. This means that everything is possible – more kinds of collaboration across fields, with diverse bodies of knowledge; and in ways that honor and evolve cultural heritages that have so much to offer the world.
