In the previous issue of AArchitecture, we explored the theme of ‘route’ as the space or process between two points. We inquired into both the means and the ends. If we carefully traced lines with our fingertips last time, in this issue we turn our attention to their trajectories, questioning where they bend, break or begin.
‘Reroute’ invites a shift in direction where uncertainty and anticipation collide. It challenges architectural conventions and inherited systems, asking us how we move forward and where we imagine going. To reroute is to reflect on the paths we have followed and to allow other futures to take shape. While the act of building might suggest permanence, architecture – understood here as both a process and a structure – is always in flux. From routine maintenance to sweeping demolition, moments of transformation are easily overlooked, yet they carry the potential for something new.
AArchitecture 49 continues this inquiry by tracing movements that reroute patterns of thought, from the West African landscape across the Sahel to the Somali coast, and onto the shifting terrain of Mumbai’s coastline. It also turns inward toward London, questioning the histories that shape our architectural profession. What emerges is a multiscalar reshuffling of geographies, ecologies, artistic practices, disciplinary boundaries and the very terms by which we engage with our school. We invite you to do the same: to consider how, from each of our positions, we need to do things differently.
DHIKR: BETWEEN THE MEMORIES AND THE ABSENCE OF SUDANESE DIASPORIC IDENTITIES
Noor Ibrahim
Traditional architectural practices, often grounded in materiality, fail to address the intangible connections existing between people in spaces. This is particularly so in the context of the current Sudanese civil war between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese Armed forces (SAF), a crisis which has propelled over ten million people into mass displacement. This continues a generational wave of Sudanese becoming diasporic due to ongoing political conflict, rerouting whole communities and putting into question the dogma behind preservation and meaning of conservation in the face of war.
For these displaced Sudanese citizens, rerouting means fleeing from home and losing heritage, and generational knowledge is often destroyed as they leave towns and cities. For many, home is more than a physical structure, it is a lived and remembered experience, making it a symbolic mobile habitat taken from one place to the next. However, the nostalgia tied to these spaces cannot be formally preserved. In these circumstances, the balance between what is existing, destroyed, remembered and recreated is highly sensitised. Spaces are recreated along their journeys, warping knowledges into new ones. Through generations of conflict since Sudan’s independence in 1956, the margins of lost and unknown knowledge multiply as a result of movement.
Dhikr (ركْذِ) is a word, translating to remembrance in Arabic and a vision to address these lost margins. Dhikr stands to begin to conserve the inhabitation
of Sudan beyond its explicit materiality, and pushes towards the archiving of the metaphysical experiences of the city scape. The more these are recalled, the deeper the acceptance of the prayer. Whether displaced in Sudan or abroad, diasporic Sudanese are allowed to recapture their stories, creating an archive which can be accessed within domestic spaces, online or on site. Beginning with complex and varied notions of home, participants may be re-placed in the city of Khartoum through recordings, establishing the concept of home as both a material location and as immaterial experience, which can be used in the rebuilding of communities elsewhere. These are oral recitations of spaces existing and destroyed, sketched reimaginations and extracted satellite imagery. New communities are established from collaged knowledges of the plentiful new challenges forcing change.
This results in a new chapter of Sudanese remembrance and often involves fading out past conditions. Within the evolution of Sudanese diasporic identities, new architectural systems and methodologies are forced to change due to their failure in considering intangible aspects of culture, such as identity and memory. The theme of reroute in this case directly projects into the future, dynamically battling diasporic losses and standing to represent the resilience of millions of communities displaced over decades due to historical conflict.
A cyclist on the old bridge in Khartoum, 2011.
Photo credit:
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
M. Venieris, An elevated view of the gardens in Khartoum, with a path running between walled-off sections, 1906.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
FROM GURUNSI EPISTEME TO COLLECTIVE UNLEARNING
Aude Tollo
‘Our culture of domination always wants to think of power as outside ourselves. So that we think of power as I’ll get this amount of money, this fabulous career, this fabulous partner. But power is always conceived as power over something and not as what is my power within. Part of our colonisation as brown people, black Asian people, is that we internalise that sense of powerlessness because we feel like what is my power in relationship to the world, I don’t have any.’1
Dwelling with Gurunsi earth architecture led me, and perhaps many of us seeking meaning in material and memory, to see how very tangible forms can connect explicitly to abstract ideas of self in ways that prompt innovation within our current constructive paradigm. Yet, even with an architectural education, we often find ourselves lacking, unequipped with frameworks nuanced enough to apprehend the depth and scale of value that could emerge from a different system altogether. I began to recognise what many of us might feel: an implicit, internalised hierarchy, where our cultural heritage is undervalued, measured through borrowed standards and external definitions of worth.
Author, theorist and social critic bell hooks identified this as one of many reverberations of a ‘culture of domination’, one that was instrumental in justifying colonisation and still colours our world today. It makes us ponder and ask: how do we step away from equating value with power over the other? How do we, instead, find power within, a collective power that lives in a self
that is strengthened through the embrace of community? And how do we carry that knowing into our spatial practices, into the way we build and belong?
These questions reveal an urgent need for a methodological shift. For me, and perhaps others walking parallel paths, inspiration comes from hooks and from the intricacy of Gurunsi earth architecture, leading to a careful study of the land and its more profound paradigm. Frantz Fanon reminds us that ‘For a colonized people, the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity’.2 For the Gurunsi, the belief that humans are clay carries weight. The land represents an idea of ‘self’ with extended boundaries. It connects us across time and space. Like the philosophy of Ubuntu, the Gurunsi remind us that we become human beings through the community that holds us. I believe and invite others to consider that we can uncover a deep-rooted creativity by investigating the forces that shape our ancestral lands. This is a creativity that draws power from a collective within; from roots that reach far back into history and stretch outward into shared futures. This is how we begin to shape spatial propositions that do not impose but integrate, within and beyond the territory. Uncovering the inherent power within might reshape how we relate to one another, allowing us to imagine a paradigm where respect, reciprocity and possibility stand at the centre. If each of us dares to embark on such a journey then many new worlds can take root.
1 bell hooks, ‘Moving from Pain to Power’, the New School on YouTube, posted 12 October 2015, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=cpKuLl-GC0M (accessed 26 March 2025).
2 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Richard Philcox (Grove Press, 2004), p 9.
Reo: Family archive. Photo credit: Aude Tollo.
Traditional Gurunsi architecture in Burkina Faso. Photo credit: Aude Tollo.
MUDDY WATERS
Saamia Makharia
Layered colonial spatial interventions have shaped Mumbai’s coastline. These interventions emerged through military strategies, infrastructural impositions and colonial modes of seeing and mapping. Mumbai has an imperial history that has flattened, fixed and domesticated its watery landscapes, privileging stability over fluidity. Yet if land itself is a construct, shaped by maps and policies that erase intertidal realities, then rerouting must begin not with the city’s geography, but with the frameworks that govern how we think about it.
Colonial cartographies imposed new spatial logics onto Mumbai, redrawing its shifting edges into rigid lines and transforming a fishing city into a sprawling urban metropolis. British maps from the 19th century concealed ecological gradients, depicting shallow waters as dry land and obscuring the city’s amphibious character. The 1803 Sion Causeway exemplifies this logic: its construction blocked tidal flows, triggered silt accumulation and created new land, laying the groundwork for ongoing speculative transformations.
From this inherited land–sea binary, rerouting becomes necessary. It is an epistemic act, a disruption. This means envisioning beyond the map’s fixed boundaries and challenging the assumption that land is permanent while water must be tamed. It is about reclaiming muddy waters not through
Mumbai’s coastline. Photo courtesy of author.
new infrastructure, but by embracing their presence as a site of resistance. Mumbai’s Koli fishers have long occupied these intertidal zones, their livelihoods embedded in rhythms of flux. At low tide, they appropriate these spaces as fishing commons, defying the city’s impulse to delineate, formalise and privatise. Similarly, Mumbai’s mangroves – sometimes submerged, sometimes visible – expose the limits of territorialisation. These ecosystems support the fisheries Kolis depend on, forming part of the intertidal ecologies threatened by urban expansion. Yet colonial logics persist, with the city suppressing these entanglements, as seen in the 30km Coastal Road, which reclaims 90ha of intertidal land, displacing Koli communities without recognition.
This particular colonial history of enclosure extends beyond interstitial spaces. Open water bodies, too, have been selectively sequestered. Breach Candy Club, for example, was built as an elite swimming enclave, where the British asserted control not solely over land but also through access to the sea. Its pool, shaped like British India, once connected directly to the ocean, effectively privatising a stretch of coastline. In the early 2000s, the club severed this connection to isolate itself from rising pollution, enacting a final enclosure, one defined not by expansion, but by withdrawal.
What does it mean to reroute these conditions of control? Instead of imposing new landforms, could we learn from existing enclosures – those that are stable, even static – and begin to imagine ones that respond to fluctuating tides? One such space functions as a temple tank during certain tidal phases. Its earthen boundaries resist the rigidity of the urban grid, yielding to nature over time; softening private edges, reconnecting to the creek and turning solid lines muddy. Water, brought inland, carries the memory of the coast, working as a Trojan horse that unravels its own enclosures over time.
Rerouting is not about reversing history or reclaiming lost land, but about unsettling the surface, critiquing imposed stabilities and asserting alternative spatial logics. If enclosure was the tool of colonisation, then impermanence, contingency and muddy waters offer a different way forward. This logic is not about physically rerouting the city but rerouting our perspective – disrupting binaries, rethinking land–sea relations and unsettling frameworks that have long defined Mumbai’s terrain.
HOW TO CIRCLE FORWARD IN TIME? DIAGRAMMING NON-LINEAR APPROACHES TO PRESERVATION
Valeriia Chemerisova
As technological advancements continue to evolve, the ways in which we preserve and represent historical spaces are increasingly challenged by new forms of visual media, which prioritise selective historical moments and allow for maximum monetary extraction. This diagram aims to reveal the relationship between time and architecture, not just as a linear progression, but as a complex web of forgotten, overlooked or reimagined histories and memories. It specifically maps the vibrations of formal and programmatic histories of Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, breaking from a conventional urban mapping exercise to reveal the contextual complexity of airfield infrastructure that exists within.
The diagram allows us to find moments of connection between contemporary proposals and forgotten or unrealised moments in the history of the airfield: CHORA’s vibrating edge proposal and Ernst Sagebiel’s original proposal with constructivist roots; MVRDV’s geometrical park and the ideal neoclassical version of the airport included in Albert Speer’s plans for Germania. It also tracks ideological conflicts, such as the military ground versus the public garden, or the prison versus the site of freedom during the Berlin Airlift.
Such an approach to time uses qualitative and quantitative archival data to calibrate different temporal pathways that either did not occur, were erased over time, or shifted due to incoming dominant ideologies and strategies. Drawing temporal disjunctions allows us to view the city as existing between the datascape of destroyed and erased histories and the material realm of enduring structures, where both forces interact in non-linear ways.
Valeriia Chemerisova, Between Immaterial Icons and Material Scars.
FROG’S EYE VIEW
Naina Gupta
‘In his mind he saw, with a cartographer’s eye, a string of swimming pools, a quasisubterranean stream that curved across the country. He had made a discovery, a contribution to modern geography…’1
Roger Deakin’s swimming travelogue, Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain,2 was inspired by John Cheever’s short story The Swimmer where Neddy Merrill (the protagonist in the story) reimagines his usual route home as a swim through a ‘string of swimming pools’.3 The story is a cautionary tale about youth and ageing, and suggests that our imagination of the city changes when mapped from the view of its water bodies. Or as Deakin’s work appears to question, and I paraphrase, how does the landscape change when viewed from a frog’s eye view? The question that Deakin poses here is: how does one’s experience of the world change when one is part of nature or immersed in nature? This immersion is not purely metaphorical, it is physiological and psychological; demanding the relinquishment of any dominant positioning in relation to nature (swimming is not a position of strength for most humans).
Waterlog is a swimmer’s journey through the British Isles, indiscriminately weaving plunges in inland – man made and natural – bodies of water along with dips along the coast. Deakin is credited with reviving the culture of wild swimming. In Waterlog he argued for the right to swim in the rivers, lakes and ponds of the British countryside, commenting that it was a natural complement to the Right to Roam: ‘The right to walk freely along river banks or
to bathe in rivers, should no more be bought and sold than the right to walk up mountains or to swim in the sea from our beaches.’4 Deakin advanced a form of nature writing that has come to be intimately connected with swimming and healing.
Joe Moran, a writer, lecturer and professor of English and cultural history, said that ‘new nature writing hit public consciousness in the 2000s’5 and this was further advanced by an issue of Granta Magazine in 2008.6 Deakin, with the founders of Common Ground, along with Robert Macfarlane and others are early contributors to this form of writing, which can loosely be described as nature writing that focuses on the local, the commonplace and even the unremarkable. It is predicated on ‘touch’ and interweaves scientific knowledge with beautiful discursive styles of writing that attempt to reconnect and display the interrelationship between nature and people. Deakin’s influence on Macfarlane is well documented, and in many ways he could be regarded as the inspiration for another form of nature writing, one that is inextricably linked with swimming. This niche genre is only now emerging through the collections posited by the podcasts of Joe Minihane, author of Floating: A Return to Waterlog or a Life Regained, 7 and Freya Bromley, author of The Tidal Year 8 Minihane and Bromley used swimming to come to grips with their depression and grief respectively, allowing nature and swimming to be part of their healing. Their books centre around these themes which only serve to cement the relationship between care, the environment and human wellbeing. Bromley’s The Tidal
Year is in equal parts a swim-travelogue and a scrutiny of her grief from the death of her brother, until she distils the universal from her personal bereavement. Their podcasts host conversations with people who swim and contribute to a swimming culture, many of whom are environmental scientists. Jessica J Lee, a celebrated British Canadian Taiwanese writer who has a PhD in Environmental History and Aesthetics, has appeared in both podcasts and challenges the premise that access to nature is equal.
Lee’s book Turning: A Swimming Memoir 9 paints a very different Berlin seen through the lens of a journey swimming in its lakes. The title refers to the changing temperature along the depth of a lake as the seasons change, felt by the swimming body; displaying intricacies and intimacies that can only be understood through a full immersion in the subject. In her conversations and writing, Lee addresses issues of access to nature writing, public waters and swimming. While Deakin argues that all rivers are public, Lee questions this assumed equality to natural bodies of water by questioning who can swim, displaying that swimming – and ideas such as ‘right to swim’ and in turn, ‘right to roam’ – are fraught with race and class issues concealed behind the natural.
1 John Cheever, ‘The Swimmer’ in The New Yorker, 10 July 1964, www.newyorker.com/magazine/1964/07/18/ the-swimmer (accessed 29 January 2024).
2 Roger Deakin, Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain (Chatto & Windus, 1999).
3 John Cheever, ‘The Swimmer’ in The New Yorker
4 Roger Deakin, Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain, p 33.
5 Joe Moran, ‘A Cultural History of the New Nature Writing’ on the blog Joe Moran’s Words: On the Everyday, the Banal and Other Important Matters, joemoran.net (accessed 29 January 2024).
6 See Jason Cowley, ‘Editors’ Letter: The New Nature Writing’, Granta, 102 (2008), pp 7–12.
7 Joe Minihane, Floating: A Return to Roger Deakin’s Waterlog (Duckworth, 2017).
8 Freya Bromley, The Tidal Year, (Hachette, 2023).
9 Jessica J Lee, Turning: A Swimming Memoir (Virago, 2017).
MICHAEL HO IN CONVERSATION: PAINTING, PROCESS AND TRANSITIONING FIELDS
Michael Ho (MH) and AArchitecture (AA) explore Gregg Bordowitz’s There: A Feeling at Camden Art Centre, reflecting on career transitions, the future and the role of painting.
AA: You started your practice with Chiyan, with whom you’ve mentioned that your dialogue continues internally. Do you believe this collaborative nature developed because of your background in architecture?
MH: I think, as an architect, you have to collaborate. I mean, there’s no choice. I’m not sure whether it started at the AA necessarily, but I would say it’s just inherently tied to the profession. And of course, starting to work as artists, we had to navigate a lot, because it’s different to architecture. As an artist, it’s usually more about a very specific identity or an artistic vision. It becomes way more personal. The hardest thing was to let go of our egos and see our practice as one. I would say it’s a little bit different to architecture.
AA: Yes, it’s a lot more representative of oneself. Compared to other practitioners that you’ve met in the art sector, do you feel like you operate differently because of your background? Different from other artists, other painters?
MH: Also hard to say. I mean, it’s so varied. I would say that I’m not tied to the medium. I think that’s the one thing that came from the AA specifically: that all architects have to learn how to make models, how to take
photographs, make videos etc. It can be any medium really, as long as it conveys your idea. And I think I still have that approach. Although, of course, most people know me for my paintings. I never really wanted to become a painter. It just so happened that we didn’t have any other resources than paint and fabric in the studio when the pandemic hit.
AA: Painting is probably the most traditional medium. I think people see it as something quite concrete or confining if that makes sense?
And I assume you have a lot more freedom coming from a nontraditional background.
MH: Did you go to the Noah Davis show at the Barbican?
AA: Yes, that’s an incredible show.
MH: I thought that was so beautiful, because of course he was a painter, but it resonated with me in the sense that he didn’t want to be pigeonholed. I think it’s so important. But I feel it’s easier for collectors or maybe the art industry and institutions to know what kind of work you’re doing. I mean, I was discussing that with my friend yesterday. If you have a specific body of work, or a specific field that you’re focusing on, it’s easy to be curated. Though I think if you have the need to branch
out artistically, I don’t see why you should confine yourself just because career-wise it makes sense.
AA: I guess there are other temptations as well – we can see that painting has recently had a kind of reemergence, a renaissance almost. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that. Galleries are doing a lot more shows with painting and representing a lot more painters this year. Do you feel that market pressure to continue?
MH: It’s good in a sense that it’s the easiest medium to sell because it’s tangible and it supports my practice. In that sense, it’s good. But I think you don’t want to just follow the market. That’s the danger, sometimes I see paintings and it just feels very market driven.
AA: You mentioned your practice kind of touches and/or is central towards your heritage, upbringing, diaspora and this idea of assimilation. How different has it been exploring these themes in art versus architecture? Is there more freedom now? Or has it been quite a similar experience across both worlds?
MH: Well, I always answer that the difference between architecture and art is that I think in architecture, you always tend to seek solutions. But art allows you to pose a question and leave it at that. I think for me, somehow this idea of solving things is very pragmatic and utopian. I find much more meaning in questioning. I think it’s easier to do that in art. I don’t know how I would deal with these questions through architecture. I also think that architecture – as well as art – is very much driven by capital and the clients that you work with. I felt that as an education, it’s great. But when you get into the real profession, everything changes drastically. You have to deal with very real things, which can be exciting and
challenging as a design parameter, but a lot of the time I feel you end up just working.
AA: You’ve previously said that for you, painting is a way to think through things, something that often leads to other projects. Being at the Gregg Bordowitz exhibition, we should probably touch on Bordowitz’s work. There: A Feeling centres around Bordowitz’s commitment to writing more as an activity of thought, which manifests through various forms and modalities. The question we have is that, is a painting more of a culmination of thought or representation of thought?
MH: Yes, I think I treat them more conceptually. Oftentimes for me they are in a way a world-building exercise. With the paintings, I’m trying to navigate or depict this liminal in-between space that I am exploring with my practice and that’s based on my diasporic experience where questions of home and identity were always blurred. I’ve been particularly referencing the Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser, who gave a lecture which was titled Taking Up Residence in Homelessness, I guess the way he describes this idea of home is this thing that’s quite nebulous and that’s not tied to a specific nationhood. I think what I’m trying to do is define that through my paintings. Because in Germany, I don’t feel German. In China, I don’t feel Chinese. For a lot of diasporic communities, it is somehow this in-betweenness that forms this idea of a home, which is of course completely fictional. It doesn’t manifest as a real space, but I’m very interested to see how this space does manifest – a space where borders dissolve and cultures mix.
MICHAEL
Michael Ho, Looking Towards Other Skies, 2025. Oil and Acrylic on canvas, 250 × 140 cm.
MICHAEL
Michael Ho, River Gestures Before Dawn, 2023.
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 220 × 340 cm.
AA: Kind of an informal idea of home?
MH: Yeah. I also use the paintings to test out ideas for films specifically. I mean, a lot of times it goes back and forth. Sometimes I use films that I’ve done as references for paintings, but then also vice versa. Some paintings form a storyboard for some films.
AA: It’s very much a process, isn’t it? At the gallery I work in, we currently have an exhibition by Mike Kelley that focuses on Kelley’s video works. To create the videos, he would paint characters which are viewed as works in themselves. The development is also a work itself.
MH: People maybe don’t see things, or see paintings in that way, because it takes a longer process to get to a final thing, whereas obviously a sketch is a sketch. What I’m touching on is the unseen, and it’s very intangible to grasp that somehow. And I think the painting can hold that.
AA: Anything upcoming with video? Any clues as to what it might be about?
MH: Yes, I’m working on a documentary. It’s about a specific region in China, where Tibetan culture still exists. It’s a Tibetan autonomous region in Qinghai and the mountain range of Kunlun basically ends there, which is the longest mountain range in Asia, but also exists as a cornerstone in Chinese mythology and cosmology. It will centre around this Tibetan nomadic family that lives in the mountains and around this specific mushroom that grows there. It’s called the Chinese caterpillar fungus. It’s a cordyceps mushroom that infects a caterpillar and has been a sacred source for them, but it has now become a commodity. The market value has risen to a point where the family solely depends on these mushrooms. China has now managed to artificially produce them and there’s this weird thing where the farmers
have to livestream when they farm these mushrooms. So you have capitalism creeping in through technology, and the sacred is becoming a commodity. I guess on a broader spectrum, it looks into our relationship to nature and the spiritual, which in the West is based on a very dualistic view that nature is separated from humans. Whereas in a lot of collectivist cultures or Indigenous cultures, it’s more seen as one.
AA: As an architectural educator and now moving into art, what kind of advice would you have for students and architects who are graduating or changing careers in a climate where you have a lot of uncertainty happening in the world and architecture seems like a failsafe if they want to pursue something more creative. Do you have any advice on how to approach this sort of landscape?
MH: Well, I guess it’s very subjective. I don’t want to sound like I’m dismissing architecture, but I do think the architecture industry needs to be changed. I think the working environment is sometimes very toxic, and people are overworked and underpaid, especially for the number of years you have to study and what you bring to the table. It takes a lot of courage if you have studied architecture to take on a different profession, but even starting your own practice as an architect takes so much courage. I would say nothing is easy, you know?
AA: Yes, everything is a bit risky.
MH: I think you kind of need to risk yourself a little bit and believe in yourself. I think when I started practising art, I had no idea how this would turn out, there’s no right or wrong path. I gave myself five years of not earning money from art. I think I just wanted to give myself the freedom to explore. And I think it’s crucial for you to
fail. I think that’s hopefully what the AA teaches you. I mean it sounds cheesy, but honestly, I think only through failing can you get somewhere that’s unexpected. I think when you’re trying to play it safe, it’s hard to tap into that realm. That’s why I was very fortunate with the pandemic: I had so much time to just really experiment. It’s how the whole practice kind of developed, because there was no pressure to work towards a deadline or to do all these things where now, of course, with the world continuing, it’s hard to find that time for yourself. I keep telling my friends who might want to try to shift into the art world, or a different industry, that you just need to commit to it and it will work out somehow.
AA: Even from a very blue-chip gallery environment, risk is so hard to avoid. There’s no guarantee of success in the art world, right? It’s a risk regardless. I mean, obviously, a much larger risk for an independent to go out there and start an art practice like yourself.
MH: Well, I guess it depends. If you’re talking about financial security, yes, for sure. You have a steady income if you work for someone. But then also, at what compromise, you know? You compromise your creative freedom. For some people it works. I don’t think it’s right or wrong, but I think it’s for each person to decide whether you want to take that risk. With success, I don’t know what that means, just being represented by a blue-chip doesn’t mean that you’re successful. I think everyone sees success differently.
I think you can be successful in the sense that you have a practice and are doing it successfully for yourself. I think that should always be the agenda when you start something. You should always just do it for
yourself and not for other people. It’s easier said than done, of course, but I think as long as you’re genuine to yourself, it will reach the right people.
AA: Just to wrap it up, can we look forward to anything in 2025?
MH: There are some projects I can’t talk about yet, but I have two group museum shows coming up in the next couple of months. One is in Hangzhou with the museum By Art Matters and one is in Centro Pecci, close to Florence. This year, I wanted to focus on the documentary, but I also wanted to slow down a bit and allow this time of experimenting and failing, that I had lost a little bit over the last years. This year I was conscious of what shows I would take on. I started working and experimenting with sculptures and installations. The paintings are also getting more sculptural. I think my year ahead is looking more like experimentation.
STUDIO RAAD RAAC/ TO RESEARCH/FOLLOW A TRACE
Jabir Mohamed
Studio RAAD RAAC, meaning ‘to research’ or ‘to follow a trace’ in Somali, is a practice founded by Jabir Mohamed. The studio arose out of a deep concern over the ongoing loss of Somali architectural heritage through war, neglect, post-war building booms and the impacts of climate change. With a dedication to documenting, restoring and preserving heritage at risk, the goal of RAAD RAAC is ‘RAAD REEB’ – ‘to leave a trace’. We believe that preserving Somali heritage should be integral to sustainable redevelopment, nation building and investment in future tourism, rather than short-sighted profit making. RAAD RAAC engages in preserving heritage by rediscovering lost traditional building techniques through oral histories from elders, working alongside international experts and testing ideas at 1:1 scale in collaboration with local communities. By empowering local people through skill and capacity building, they gain the tools to adapt and conserve the heritage buildings they value. Through initiatives like digital documentation with Lidar, photogrammetry and architectural drawings, the practice works to leave a lasting trace of Somali history and culture.
Nearly a third of buildings in Berbera have partially collapsed or are in ruin, primarily due to the loss of traditional knowledge necessary to maintain them. RAAD RAAC has partnered with conservation and lime expert Mark Womersley and the Commonwealth Heritage Forum to combat this challenge. Together, they have launched a five-week training programme focused on restoring historic buildings, reusing traditional materials such as lime mortars, plasters and renders, and have been passing these skills onto local builders and engineering students. In the next phase, and with the generous support of the Commonwealth Heritage Forum, we will restore the full site and support the creation of the Berbera Museum. The project aims to reintroduce sustainable and locally sourced materials to ensure the longevity of Berbera’s architectural heritage. By empowering local communities with the knowledge to conserve and restore their cultural assets, RAAD RAAC hopes to create a lasting impact that reaches beyond the project itself.
Emergency structural works, replacing stone.
Photo courtesy of the author.
Existing condition and restored condition. Photos courtesy of the author.
CULTURAL CAPITAL AND THE HUSTLE: JACK SELF ON ART, ARCHITECTURE AND NAVIGATING THE SYSTEM
AArchitecture (AA) student editor Shafika Talib sits down with Jack Self (JS) and Deri Russell (DR).
AA: To start, you are headed to Sadie Coles after this interview for her new event series Gargle. How did that collaboration with Sadie Coles come about?
JS: I’ve known Sadie for several years and have hassled her on and off for access to her artists to contribute to Real Review, my magazine. She started this evening programme and we were the second to be invited. I think the broader context to that is that the art market is in chaos. It has been underpinned for the last 15 years or more by the global luxury sector, which has collapsed and created difficulties for the commodification of art and its sales.
So in that environment, how do you distinguish yourself? The best way is through building social and cultural capital, which means doing a public programme. I think a lot of galleries have not bothered with this in recent years because there was no financial need. Now they are reminded that a strong connection to the place in which they live, and being a part of the production of its contemporary culture, is quite critical for them. Not to be critical of Sadie. I’m sure it was not so calculated but that’s the context in which I see this occurring. I spent too long refusing to commodify
any scraps of cultural capital that I’ve amassed.
AA: In galleries there is a lot more focus on how engaged people are. A few years ago, people weren’t paying much attention to analysing metrics but now it’s become quite important.
JS: Keeping accurate data on your audience is not going to improve your situation and standing because contemporary culture is not a problem of optimisation. It’s not a factory production line. You need (in the sector) to bring propositions about, in the words of Real Review, ‘what it means to live today’. You need a different risk appetite. Taking large amounts of data to understand why people behave a certain way is part of a de-risking process. But to be successful in contemporary culture you must be prepared to take a large number of high risks and test what people respond to.
DR: You seem quite positive about capitalising on the scraps of cultural capital that you have accumulated when one could easily be cynical.
JS: On the contrary, I’m entirely cynical about it. I’m writing a text at the moment, which I hope will come out in Real Review 17. I’ve become interested in studying the period between 2010–2020, trying to understand what the social norms,
assumptions and conventions of that period were if you had a career in the arts or creative sectors. I won’t go into the full reason I believe this, but effectively there were four main typologies of career that you could choose, and they were based on certain values that millennials have. Millennials are extremely cynical towards capitalism, post-2011. That’s where the current ridiculing of millennials for their anti-capitalist sentiment comes from. On the other hand, they’re extremely sincere, which is also why millennials are ridiculed. They believe they can reshape the world and build new societies, partly because they grew up during a time of social disruption and new technologies; but mainly through the arrival of venture capital, which created companies whose purpose was to destroy existing industries. They also had a particular attitude towards cultural production. Millennials believed that true cultural production had to be non-commercial and that any form of commercialised production was in its nature compromised through that financial relationship. So you get those four axes: cynical, sincere, commercial and authentic.
These words create four quadrants which are as follows:
The cynical commercial attitude is what I call smash and grab, typified by Virgil Abloh, who recognised that social mobility was not possible through traditional means of education and job access anymore. You had to do it through cultural speculation. Buying a hoodie at $50, putting a logo on it and convincing some rich kids to buy it at $250. Then, there’s the sincere and commercial attitude: the Trojan horse. These people engage with institutions – companies or galleries
or museums – not because they were great places to work, but with the intent to change them from within. Being inside the system was somehow more advantageous than being in opposition to it.
Then you have where my career has existed, which is in the cynical and non-commercial: a Robin Hood strategy. I don’t care how I make my money. I do it through any means possible with the sole view of maximising my returns, and using that surplus time and money to pursue non-commercial culture. This is, for me, the most authentic part of my life, where my identity sits.
The fourth category I call the real world. They always tell you that they’re the only ones who know what the real world is. Sincere and non-commercial, they are a combination of people who are unable or unwilling to engage with other quadrants. So they can’t monetise themselves, promote themselves, exploit themselves in the ways that are necessary to be part of those other models. These were the options available to you between 2010 and 2020. The macroeconomic conditions that enabled this, which were underpinned by the rise of massproduced luxury fashion, are gone. Those models no longer function. If there is a time in which you are going to cash in your chips, the back half of this decade is probably a good time to think about how to do that.
DR: Could you expand upon this Robin Hood strategy and how you’ve come to build the Real institution?
JS: Oh, my story? Firstly, cautionary tale. My career should not be emulated in any way.
One of the big assumptions that underpins millennial attitudes towards work is that you should follow your passions, but also that
the world is ready to be disrupted. It wasn’t difficult for someone in the 2010s to look at the success of things like Uber and Airbnb which were founded by disruptors and say, why couldn't property and ownership be disrupted too?
For ten years my core career strategy has been that if you hustle enough, produce enough attractive imagery and enough convincing sales pitches, eventually, you will attract venture capital that will allow you to create post-capitalist housing. That was naive and misguided but just one part of my story.
When I was at the AA, I discovered that Bedford Press had a risograph machine they weren’t using, and I started printing Fulcrum on it. I bought the paper myself and I started. Eventually, the school tried to normalise this, but they didn’t want to create a new budget line because it required a vote by the student body. I’m not here to make a democratic publication. This is my project. So in the end, I was given money out of the tea and coffee budget of the director’s office for paper.
We ran 100 issues. I had co-editors at different times, Aram Mooradian and Graham Baldwin. We ran from the beginning of the Arab Spring, 11 January 2011, to sometime in 2014. Fulcrum was an attempt to try and raise issues both within and without architecture to an audience of architects. Ironically, although we printed 400 every week, we got five or six times more downloads outside the school than we ever did inside. No one spoke to me about Fulcrum. I could see people were taking them but there was no feedback. When it stopped, everyone was surprised and upset. I wish I had had that encouragement while it was running. Later, I did two master’s degrees simultaneously.
One in macroeconomics and one in philosophy. I was interested in macroeconomics and risk, and in concepts of freedom within society. When I came back to the AA, I was interested in the idea of housing as a means to overturn capitalism. At that time there was only one unit that was doing housing, which was taught by Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria Shéhérazade Giudici.
The project, The Ingot, became the subject of a small book called Real Estates: Life Without Debt. I almost failed my fourth year as the project was considered too far outside the realm of what architects should do. What I designed was not a building but a series of financial relationships and algorithms which generated a type of building according to the site. It had a social purpose, to produce low cost housing in the centre of London.
After I graduated, I looked at the kind of precedent of OMA/AMO, the idea that you can design any type of organisational structure. So I designed a foundation, which caused huge problems because everyone assumed we were funded by someone and not that we were a voluntary not-for-profit. In the end, Real Foundation became half of a Robin Hood strategy where I went out and sold my services however I could. I effectively subsidised the Real Foundation to produce various cultural works, mostly exhibitions and books.
AA: You’ve worked with different companies such as JP Morgan and the Royal Bank of Scotland, but also with more cultural institutions such as Prada and Balenciaga. Is there a balance between the social side of wanting to better the system, but also working within a capitalist market?
JS: They’re entirely divorced from each other, and I try to keep the commercial work as distant from the
non-commercial work as I can. The commercial work is me cosplaying as a capitalist. The non-commercial work is where I actually want to be. The thing about free markets is that the market may be free, but participation in the market is mandatory. You cannot have food, water, shelter or clothing unless you participate in capitalism. Otherwise, you die.
At the moment, my possibilities are few. My intellectual and creative autonomy is extremely constrained, but I am constantly looking for opportunities. And much like a rat trapped in a cage, as soon as I see even the faintest glimmer of an escape, I will be gone.
AA: Currently there is a reactionary attitude driven by the desire to be taken seriously, emphasising architecture as a highly rigorous profession. Creative and cultural industries seem receptive to architects. How has your experience been on the other side, working with banks and institutions?
JS: Yeah, I think of this as professional arbitrage. Being an architect has more value outside of architecture than it does inside because it’s recognisable. If you say architect, people have a clear sense of what that stands for, even if they have old-fashioned views of what it actually means. This gives you a lot of elasticity.
When I work with financial institutions I say I have a degree in macroeconomics, but at my core, I’m an architect. They tend to ask why that’s relevant and I say because an architect is a designer who integrates many complex forms of information into a synthesis.
It’s extremely challenging within those spheres of information to generate something that has meaningful improvement in the world. That’s the value of architecture and what makes us different. We take
a messy reality and turn it into a clear proposition. This is also embedded within a highly problematic history of the Renaissance concept of the design project.
DR: So in the current saturated image economy, have you seen a progressive change in the impact speculative projects have had? Or was this offset perhaps by your trajectory as a public figure?
JS: Listen, you’ve got to hustle, right? You’ve got to look for opportunities. It’s a pragmatic reflection on a horrific reality. I have great aspirations to do some very specific and expensive things. So my macro assumption was if I can build cultural capital, I should be able to parlay it into actual capital. This also was a mistake because the cultural capital I was amassing was incompatible with the type of capital I wanted to raise. Fundamentally, venture capitalists or JP Morgan don’t give a shit about your Instagram followers. Not that I was particularly concerned by Instagram followers. If you’ve curated the British Pavilion in Venice, they couldn’t give a shit. The strategy was very straightforward: how am I going to distinguish myself? I made case studies of distinguished architect careers, and one pattern I noticed was that from Palladio to Le Corbusier through to Rem Koolhaas, all of them had produced a series of books and exhibitions early in their career. They then used that as the launchpad to start producing house designs. Unless you do a private house, no one thinks you’re an architect. That then becomes the lever for doing larger scale projects down the line. I needed to do a book and an exhibition. I looked at all the Biennale and Triennale that existed, of which I applied to five. I won three but it’s pure luck. You can’t control the luck, but what you can do is control the spread of luck.
I did the same with books. I researched as many topics that I felt would have mass market appeal, but which had been overlooked by the general public and by architecture. That’s how I came across this project by Mies van der Rohe, which had never been published. I had to win the trust of an elderly lord, dress up in a suit and roleplay in order to get the access and trust needed to do this book. Then I had to mobilise capital out of my social following in order to kickstart this thing.
I’m speaking very cynically in this sense. On the other hand, I should say that I’m compelled to do these things. This is also where I find my great autonomy, and creative and intellectual freedom. I want to make books. I want to publish. I want to know what I think about things.
DR: What you’ve been very successful at is understanding the condition of late capitalism and being analytical and strategic in the way you navigate through that.
JS: I want to be clear about that. I’m not hypothesising from a position of intellectual removal. To complete my degree at the AA, I needed to work at least three jobs simultaneously. This meant that I became addicted to amphetamines for almost seven years so that I could work sixteen hours a day, seven days a week all year round. This form of selfexploitation is inhuman. I say it from having experienced late capitalism. I have only been interested in trying to maximise my own freedom and maximise the freedom of others. I understand that freedom is created through collective and reciprocal forms of community. That’s how you are free. I really think for me it comes down to this: I’m not interested in telling anyone else how to live their life, or what to do, or what they should do, or how to struggle for their own autonomy. I don’t want to write a manifesto. I don’t want to proselytise. It’s really just a personal practice.
POSTBOX GHANA: A GHANA TIME MACHINE
Aude Tollo
Postbox Ghana is a research practice that works closely with the archive, opening it up thoughtfully and critically. Their focus begins with post-Independence Ghana, a moment in time marked by ambition, transformation and unresolved memory.
The practice is composed of three friends: Manuela Nebuloni, Nana Ofosu Adjei and Courage Dzidula Kpodo. Nebuloni is based at Politecnico di Milano, with experience in archival photography, curation and work on Africa-focused projects; Adjei is a creative director and cultural practitioner; and Kpodo is a Ghanaian architect and MIT graduate. Each coming from a different discipline, they share a common interest in unpacking the narratives embedded in vintage postcards and stamps from Ghana. It is a collection of visual references and an exploration of collective memory.
The time of independence throughout Africa reminds us of a period when the future seemed limitless and opportunities were bountiful. It is this particular moment Postbox Ghana seeks to unearth through a focus on postcards sent after 1957. The practice works to make more of these archives and postcards available, but always in a way that is critical and considered.
Their curatorial work carefully layers state imagery with personal experience, as the postcards often present a view of the ‘modern’ state captured through official buildings, public infrastructure and carefully framed scenes. On the reverse, in handwriting, appear more intimate stories, movement, affection, daily life. By reading both sides together, Postbox Ghana draws
out the tension between what was imagined and what was lived.
Fiction and personal memory become equally important to how we understand history.
This approach first took shape through their work on Ghana’s markets. In the 1970s, a state-led response to food shortages encouraged individual food production, a policy which led to a new market infrastructure and a rise in stamp and postcard imagery depicting markets, often with women in view. These images reflected a moment when market women were seen as central figures of economic resilience; but gradually, they began to disappear, replaced by more formal, controlled imagery. This shift reveals how visual culture can be reshaped by political power.
At the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, a reflective moment for the trio, they presented a research project examining how everyday spaces like Makola market in Accra and a concrete grain silo in Tamale hold traces of memory, use and adaptation. These sites, like the postcards, carry fragments of a time when the nation imagined itself anew. The exhibition explored how buildings, once tied to national ambition, have been redefined through improvisation and daily life. The contrast between the official image and the personal message continues to shape their work.
In his own research, Kpodo reflects on this space through the Newbouldia laevis, the boundary tree. In a conversation with his father, he learned how these trees are planted to mark land. They hold meaning.
Postcard of the Meridian Hotel in Tema, Ghana.
Postcard of The House of Parliament in Accra, Ghana. Photo by J. Appiah-Kusi.
For those who know, they signal where something begins. Like a postcard that carries more on its back than its face, the tree reminds us that what endures is not always what is written, but what is rooted. Postbox Ghana works within that logic, creating space for how the future might take shape, while doing the necessary work of tending to Ghana’s archive. In sharing their process generously, they offer something we can all learn from, an approach that invites young Africans to reflect, remember and imagine otherwise.
Postcard of a 'market scene' in Ghana. Photo by Kwaku Bonsu.
BEYOND THE ARCHITECT: DK-CM ON POLICY, PUBLISHING AND THE FUTURE OF PRACTICE
AArchitecture (AA) engages in conversation with David Knight (DK) and Cristina Monteiro (CM) of London-based practice DK-CM, exploring their work in policymaking, publishing and the evolving landscape of architectural practice.
AA: Firms like yours are expanding beyond traditional practice and into policymaking, research and activism, an approach that seeks to deeply understand communities and intervene with care and more consideration. Does this shift acknowledge that architecture can no longer exist in isolation, confined to aesthetics, efficiency and function? Should direct community engagement become the standard future of architectural practices?
CM: It’s important to place us. I’d say we are maybe the third wave of practices that have been focused on the broader realms of the discipline. David and I worked in such practices before: I worked at muf architecture/ art and David worked at General Public Agency, which are both women-led feminist practices that have very much influenced the way we think about architecture and the way we practice. We think about the practice of architecture in its political status and political form. That was my first feeling – that we’re not pioneers.
DK: It’s definitely a multi-generational shift. The other way of looking at it, is that architecture has never existed in isolation and we feel part of a group or a lineage that is
interested in the lack of isolation. If you look at the development of Regent Street or something in the 18th or 19th century, you can trace it to what’s rumoured to have been an affair between John Nash’s wife and the Prince Regent – Britain’s greatest town planning moment according to many books is also a story of cuckolding and sexual liaisons. Architectural culture found it convenient for various reasons over the centuries to create an isolationist logic of history, style and heroic individuals, one that is an abstraction from the reality of practice. What we’re seeing in our work, and in the work of lots of others too, is not only an acknowledgement of that, but also saying that it’s an interesting space and a place of creativity.
CM: The question ends on authorship and the future of architectural practice. We feel that practice with a single author is definitely a 19th century model – it wasn’t even a 20th century model. A collaborative and co-copyrighted way of working is very much the 21st century future of practice. You don’t just see it in architectural practice, you see it in the broader practice of creative activities.
We understand practice as something that’s done collectively. Architectural practice should be evolving or is evolving to become that of a facilitator rather than of an author. I’m not sure that the legal landscape in which we operate, insurance and the way we communicate on site are there yet. But you will see, especially with the emergence of technology such as AI, that the complexities inherent in authorship and copyright are going to lead us towards a role which is more of a facilitator.
AA: Today as corporate, driven and automated design processes increasingly dominate and corner the profession, architectural practices are expanding their reach. More firms like yours and b+, with their works in HouseEurope!, are actively shaping the rules, frameworks and regulations that govern the field. Conversations with peers and fellow architects suggest that the shift is widely celebrated within the architectural community, but how has it been received beyond that? How have developers, politicians and financiers responded to this approach?
DK: I started thinking very seriously about that wider reach through some really early collaborations with Finn Williams, cofounder of Public Practice and now a City Architect of Malmö. We did an exhibition together for the Architecture Foundation in 2008, The Rule of Regulations, and then the book SUB-PLAN (2009) was the next collaboration. Both came out of working together at a public agency and having conversations where Finn had been asked to do an exhibition about housing and what the new generation was doing with it. It was the third in a series of old guys, middle-aged guys and young guys. We were the young guys.
What I’m interested in is the current context of housing, which is an increasingly regulated, predefined and a kind of market-friendly product. So we collaborated on The Rule of Regulations exhibition and then SUB-PLAN too, which were both in different ways about wider regulatory frameworks. Again, there’s always been those things around, but we turned the gaze onto them and said these are sites of creativity.
CM: What was refreshing at that time was the way David and Finn were looking at something that was not tangible: they were looking with a creative mind and spatial mind at regulations that are often written by lawyers and people who are not visual. The testing and precision with which they operated as they dissected these two documents was incredible. Those two projects were received very well from the architectural world, but not so well from the planners and legislators initially. I remember being at a presentation in a rooftop garden in Southwark and some planners had reservations about SUB-PLAN, because I think it represented a different perspective on their domain. And those productive tensions continue to evolve.
A few years later Finn and Pooja Agrawal set up an incredible organisation: Public Practice, which brings more architects and people with built environment training into local authorities. Public Practice leads to substantial change in the way commissioning happens, just by having more diversity. This collaborative approach demonstrates how bridging professional silos creates better outcomes. Quite often, local authorities and government can be quite siloed organisations.
DK: I think the question around how it is
being received beyond that by developers and politicians is, like the previous answer in that the isolated architectural practitioner is a bit of a fiction anyway. I’ve seen the narrative become more isolating over the years – we’ve seen changes in how buildings are made, how this has nudged the architect to a smaller and smaller place. And sometimes that’s been celebrated in some ways, and sometimes it’s been fought against. It’s an increasing marginalisation of architectural skill. But there are multiple examples, again, from history and from notso-ancient history of architects and related practitioners working in a much more interdisciplinary way. We are all basically in the same boat of trying to make a good built environment. It’s okay if it has social impacts, it’s okay if it makes someone some money, it’s okay if it meets some political criteria. We’re all guarding particular values in that process, but we are ultimately doing the same thing, and we need to be developing tactics for sharing and working across those boundaries.
CM: It’s acknowledging that, there are many different specialisations within the discipline, and that continuing to be the general practitioner is more difficult. The reality is that there is also an exponential diversification of the discipline, and with that also comes a pool of different specialisations, which is quite exciting.
AA: DK-CM’s publications such as Public House and SUB-PLAN stand out for being accessible and engaging. They break away from the often dense and academic approach that many architectural books deploy. How intentional is this approach? Why is it important to communicate architectural ideas in a way that resonates with the general public? And how do you see the role of
architectural publishing evolving?
DK: It’s very deliberate as a strategy. Every instance of it in our history feels like it’s fulfilling a different purpose. But when you then look back on it, there was a desire to achieve new audiences for certain subjects or to use different forms of publishing to affect spatial change. We did an exciting competition for Porto’s waterfront, something like five kilometres of the waterfront on both sides, for a comprehensive public space masterplan. It was before we had the practice. We had a really fun time with Alaistair Steele, Aoife Donnelly and Helena Reis coming up with a proposal. We developed a masterplan through talking to local people, so this was an early version of a similar approach.
CM: It was based on the principle of ‘six degrees of separation’. We were trying to dissect the issues associated with these spaces through oral history. We started by interviewing someone in my local café in London who was from Porto and asked her to recommend the next person and so on. It was the first time we collaborated in that way, in which the method of research was oral history. It’s important to say that oral history was in our practice right at the beginning.
DK: We learned an immense amount about this waterfront, and the different ways it was perceived. We mapped the arguments people had across different kinds of spaces and buildings, developing a sense of what was valued and loved, what wasn’t and what was problematic. An amazing process, but we got nowhere with the competition.
CM: We didn’t even get shortlisted for the exhibition.
DK: We had all this new, very nuanced knowledge and we had no way
of plugging that into the kind of powers and forces that could actually effect positive change in this place. It felt like oh fuck, EasyJet are coming, the Euro football championships are coming, there are billionaires’ stadiums, loads of concrete flying around everywhere. This whole city could completely flip and all this knowledge and potential gets swept away.
CM: It’s worth saying that, in parallel, people were starting to go to Porto. I would get a lot of people asking about it because there wasn’t an English guidebook to Porto. David and I were like, maybe we could write a guidebook, and it felt like writing something as mainstream as a Wallpaper* City Guide was a good way of tapping into the legislators and the people that were reshaping the city with money for the tourism industry.
DK: It relates to the thing about how you talk to politicians and money people. Because we could publish a book about this knowledge and some architect would think it’s really nice or we could try and find the actual audiences that are going to affect change.
We bought the Wallpaper* City Guide to London for a friend who was moving to London, looked at it before we gave it away, and the upcoming list on the back cover was Porto. We were like, we have to do this, and it will be an opportunity to make these points, and to contribute to the conversation around how a city might more positively change itself in relation to international tourism. I rang up Wallpaper* and asked, ‘have you got a writer for the Porto one?’ and they said no. We hassled them until they let us do it. I wrote for a solid week before I had the voice right –I’m not a natural Wallpaper* writer.
CM: It was great, it was such a nice process trying to see whether the language matched the language of Wallpaper*
DK: They got a really good photographer, a guy called Roger Casas, to do all the shots. So I suddenly realised that if I said this ruined fridge factory was a lost modernist relic, because it’s not a history book, it’s a Wallpaper* guide, Roger would then take this incredibly beautiful photograph of it and it’s now a four-star hotel.
CM: There were a number of buildings that were in poor condition at that time and there were pressures to demolish them. We think the book empowered the local authority to have a counter argument to the developers. It’s a tiny little pocketbook but it somehow helped give the right tools to the policy makers and the local authority workers to make a case for the protection of, I think, three buildings.
DK: It’s like guerrilla tactics, isn’t it? Every shop and bar in there happens to be a really intelligent reuse of an old building.
CM: It’s also UNESCO protected, and there are many factors, but I think this was a lovely Trojan horse. It helped many people make a case for some things that might have otherwise disappeared. It reinforced some things, and the book was a real pleasure to make. David was completely outside his comfort zone visiting five-star hotels and going to fancy restaurants.
DK: I was out of my comfort zone writing about fancy restaurants rather than going to them! In terms of the future of publishing, it’s important that architects, architectural theorists, thinkers, educators and cultural historians write books for each other. We’re fascinated and surrounded by books like that. The difference is when there’s a
spatial idea or social justice idea, which you’re trying to impact upon – architectural publishing is not necessarily the space for that. You’ve got to find other languages, a medium for the audience where you’re going to achieve some purchase. In order to impact Porto’s tourism industry, we had to write a Wallpaper* guide.
DK: I’m not sure what that says for architectural publishing, but it’s still important that the self-referential and cultural side to architecture are celebrated. There has been a tendency to build up specialist language in esoteric ways of writing as a sort of defence mechanism and whilst that’s understandable, I think it’s more interesting to be using architectural skills to speak more broadly and in other spaces.
CM: It’s important to recognise that while there is room for the fanzine, there’s room for activism. What we mustn’t forget is that there’s also a responsibility to talk to the wider public and to educate, because otherwise, we’re in an industry where we have a huge amount of impact on the environment. Let us not be isolationists and let us use again the infrastructure and the frameworks that are there. I think in our case we are chameleons, and I enjoy that, I think we adapt our set of skills and our voice to bring more equitable and meaningful spatial change that matters beyond our profession.
ITINERARY OF STRANGERS: THE ENCHANTED ENCOUNTER ON PILGRIM’S WAY
Oscar Ssu Kuo Lo
Old Way is a passage from Southampton and Winchelsea to Canterbury Cathedral in Kent. For centuries, the faithful have walked this route of over 100 miles to detach from the structures of everyday life. It offers a chance to glimpse beyond present realities. Along the way, spaces, dreams and myths merge with the movement of individuals. As the journey unfolds, the familiar and the ordinary are transformed – rendered strange and surreal. Here, one becomes a stranger, exploring the alternative realities.
Scattered along the route are mundane infrastructural points that can be reimagined to be part of this fantastic journey, to peer beyond its banal purpose and take on new roles. Perhaps an encounter with a humble bus stop is also a place to meet other travellers for a meal. A communal kitchen extends out of the bus stop, blurring the boundaries between public infrastructure and personal ritual. Or maybe further down the path, a disused railway tunnel can become a communal shower. Steam fills the tunnel once again, though for a different reason. These encounters form a tapestry of an altered reality. The pilgrimage transforms both the sojourner and the architecture, challenging the expected and offering a glimpse of hidden possibilities.
Top: Patrixbourne Railway Tunnel. Bottom: Elham Bus Stop
courtesy of author.
UNFOLDING 21ST-CENTURY LONDON
Monzie Tan with Olly Wainwright
Like Italo Calvino’s continuous cities, London relentlessly reinvents itself, endlessly shaped by visible and invisible forces. In a map recently published by Blue Crow Media, Olly Wainwright highlighted 50 buildings in London constructed since 2000. Each of these buildings contribute to different episodes in the capital city – from millennium fever to the return of bricks as a dominant construction material, these projects reflect broader social, cultural and economic shifts. AArchitecture student editor Monzie Tan sat down with Wainwright to trace London’s evolution over the last 25 years. The following is a series of reflections from their conversations.
TACTICAL INITIATIVES
There was a real energy in the 2000s, in the wake of the global financial crisis, for practices doing self-initiated projects. In 2009, Practice Architecture built Frank’s Café on the roof of a car park in Peckham. A year later, Assemble transformed a disused petrol station on Clerkenwell Road into the Cineroleum cinema. That same year, muf planted a garden on a former railway site in Dalston. Initially, it was a temporary intervention, beginning as a piece of research initiated by the architects and an installation commissioned by the Barbican. It eventually developed into what is now the incredibly popular Dalston Eastern Curve community garden. Another project by muf at that time was Barking Town Square where they built a folly of fake ruin that alluded to a mythical history of Barking. Placed in the middle of a generic town centre redevelopment, it rethought public space outside of the
typical paving slabs and benches. There is a fence with a regular metal frame, but one of the elements is a cast of a tree trunk; a quirky detail to make you look again and question what is actually going on. These projects were agile and clever, often using cheap materials and done very quickly. These tactical initiatives were mostly carried out by a young, provocative generation of architects, showing that it was possible to graduate and do all kinds of community-led projects. The 2000s were a time of reviving narrative, mischief and historical reference in architecture. Although those things seemed more possible then than they do now, it’s a small dose of optimism.
ADAPTIVE REUSE
While reuse is currently a popular topic in practice and discourse, some offices in London have experimented with the idea since the early 2000s. The Young Vic by Haworth Tompkins is an example. It was an existing 1970s theatre that, at the time, was supposed to be temporary, but became permanent over the years. Similarly in Battersea Arts Centre, Haworth Tompkins did a clever adaptation and intervention. In 2015, a devastating fire had destroyed the roof and left the interiors charred. The architects retained the soot on the walls, like the scars of the fire, but added a decorative ceiling structure using CNC milled timber. Another adaptive reuse example is The Standard at King’s Cross, which is now a luxury hotel. It was the former Camden Town Hall Annexe, an icon of brutalism that most people in the borough hated. In 2019, Orms transformed the building into a
boutique hotel, which might not be the best use, but it shows that such architecture can be desirable. These examples set strong precedents for changing the general public’s perception on how obsolete or unpopular buildings can be valued and given a new lease of life. Here, these projects illustrate an increasingly expanding dimension of architectural transformation, as well as new ways to imagine the life of buildings past the point of near destruction or obsolescence.
COUNCILS ARE BUILDING HOUSING AGAIN!
Since The Housing Act of 1980 under Margaret Thatcher, which reduced the abilities for London councils to build new homes, there has been a resurgence of council house building. A couple of notable projects are Matthew Lloyd’s sensitive extension to the Edwardian Bourne Estate and Peter Barber’s McGrath Road Estate, which brings sunny echoes of a north African casbah to east London. However, one of the most radical projects that London has seen in the last 25 years is A House for Artists by Apparata Architects. It was commissioned by Barking Council with Create, an arts charity. The building does away with the usual system of having a windowless corridor with front doors on either side, which is quite a soulless way to come home. Instead, exterior circulation is introduced, offering wide decks as shared balconies. Inside the flats, rather than having a narrow hallway with doors into individual small rooms, the architects introduced moveable partitions for flexible interior layouts. The only room that has fully fixed walls is the bathroom, everything else can be configured according to needs. One of the floors also has openable doors between apartments to create communal living spaces, such as a gigantic dining room. As the issue of housing shortage persists, such experiments in council housing show that challenging conventional norms can produce feasible alternative ways of living.
THE OLYMPIC LEGACY
Preparing for the 2012 Olympics involved one of the biggest regeneration schemes
that London has ever seen. Around 226ha of the Lower Lea Valley was transformed into areas for sports, cultural and housing developments. Hopkins’ Velodrome was a lean example of sports architecture. The building envelope was almost shrinkwrapped around the track, using the bare minimum amount of steel to hold up its structure. The exact opposite is seen in the Aquatics Centre which has a huge amount of steel and concrete while covering a similar footprint to the Velodrome. Beyond sports, the legacy promised a cultural quarter, ‘Olympicopolis’ as it was dubbed (recalling ‘Albertopolis’ in South Kensington). The former Olympic site now features Sadler’s Wells East Theatre and V&A East, which is currently under construction. Both of these buildings were designed by O’Donnell and Tuomey. The faceted form of V&A East is said to be inspired by a Balenciaga dress the architects found in the V&A's collection. The new cultural hub has filled the East End with excitement. However, the housing legacy of the Olympics regeneration is a failure. The 9,000 new homes originally promised to be built on public land, with 50% consisting of affordable housing, has fallen extremely short. Only 200 of the new homes built were actually affordable for local people upon completion. The failure to deliver the muchneeded homes highlights competing private and public interests. The regeneration of east London carries huge promise, yet it also leaves a lingering question about who truly benefits from such large-scale redevelopments.
On this journey through smallscale architectural interventions to sweeping urban transformations, we find a city that is evolving continuously. These four narrative strands overlap, intersect and diverge, resisting a singular reading of London. In fact, they remind us that London is always in flux and authored by many hands. We find ourselves at the living ends of these narratives, where the city’s reinvention is not just something to observe but something to shape, to challenge and to continue.
A LINE MADE BY DISTRACTIONS
Haoming Zheng
Unlike a motorist, a walker is present in their body. Forever required to think about the blisters on their feet, the subtle shifts in weather and in the energy of the streets. The walker is endlessly lured by distractions and has the possibility of taking detours. Detours are often unexpected occurrences, disruptive of any linear pattern or path. An old route of the Roman road, the A10 neatly carves through the ground in a straight line. It begins in the City of London and continues for over 90 miles until it reaches King’s Lynn in Norfolk. However, walking along the A10 in Hackney proved far from being a linear route.
In front of Shoreditch Church, I began my walk along the A10. I passed by Geffrye Court where some youths were playing a game of Jenga and filming a YouTube video. A car drives past and then reverses to check out the commotion. Down the road, I enter a local diner selling pie and mash to find a hearty meal in front of me moments later. Sat with the owners of the establishment, an elderly resident and a tourist, we chat for some time.
Back on the A10, in front of St Leonard’s Hospital in Hoxton, an elderly man pauses in front of every storefront to peer in. He pauses so frequently that I overtake him and walk ahead.
Next to a carpark near De Beauvoir, two children dance around a box of spilled chips. From a distance, I see a police officer photographing an illegally modified car. The owner of the car argues heatedly and, in that moment, passers-by and cyclists turn to look.
As I continue down the A10 to Dalston, a section of it is closed due to police investigations. Police tape cordons off the road and I have to go around the block. At the bus stop nearby, a Tanzanian traveller stops me and pulls out at the bus stop nearby. They pull out a tiny red notebook with Chinese letterings and we chat briefly.
My journey ends in Stamford Hill after 5.6km of walking and multiple detours. But these detours were intertwined with discovery. In Henry Miller’s words from Black Spring, he writes, ‘nothing of what is called “adventure” ever approaches the flavour of the street’.1 The A10 directs traffic along a clear course yet life unfolds along its edges.
1 Henry Miller, Black Spring (Grove Press, 1963), p 3.
Notations made by the author while walking along the A10.
VALERIIA CHEMERISOVA is an architectural designer and researcher whose work explores innovative approaches to preservation within urban contexts. Chemerisova’s approach to architecture combines technical precision with an understanding of how cities evolve over time. Previously working for Hopkins Architects, she is currently a Diploma student at the AA. By blending memory, history and transformation, Chemerisova envisions a city where time and space coexist, avoiding the extremes of efficiency or disintegration.
POSTBOX GHANA is a research project by Manuela Nebuloni, Courage Dzidula Kpodo and Nana Ofosu Adjei. Nebuloni has a background in contemporary art and is currently exploring African photographic archives as a learning device. Kpodo is an MIT architecture graduate and researcher based between Ghana and the US. His work has been shown in several exhibitions, installations, screenings and talks globally, including the BBC and the 2023 La Biennale di Venezia. Adjei is an architect, writer and researcher. She is the director of YAA Projects, a London based architecture, design and research practice dedicated to exploring diasporic culture, material and history through making, speaking and writing architecture. Adjei has taught at the AA since 2020 and is currently Diploma 5 Unit Tutor.
NAINA GUPTA is a writer, design tutor and lecturer in architectural history and theory, and technology studies. Her doctoral research looks at an alternative history of internationalism predicated on social reform, due to be published in 2025. Since 2021, Gupta’s research has investigated swimming pools in different registers and she has authored a book on the topic due to be published in Spring 2025.
MICHAEL HO, born in Arnhem, Netherlands in 1991, now lives and works in London. Ho graduated from the AA in 2019. As a second generation immigrant from China, Ho’s works investigate notions of the Chinese diaspora, cultural mismatch and subsequently cultural rediscovery through his painting practice. Ho’s critical engagement with orientalist images and tropes is multifold: from the playful to the political and from the erotic to the domestic. From 2020 to 2022, Ho worked with Chiyan Ho (1993–2022) as an artist duo.
NOOR IBRAHIM is an aspiring Sudanese architect and contemporary artist based in London, specialising in Sudanese portraits and calligraphy. Ibrahim focuses on themes of diasporic Sudanese identities, and their metaphysical conservation and archiving. Her work explores the subaltern spaces formed by displaced and marginalised communities worldwide, capturing the fluid interplay between memory, place and cultural preservation.
DAVID KNIGHT is an architect, author and codirector of DK-CM. He is a Module Leader at the London School of Architecture, and previously taught at the University of Brighton, the Royal College of Art and Kingston School of Art. Knight lectures and writes internationally, is an external examiner at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, has been a trustee of the Architecture Foundation and is a volunteer member of the Woodcraft Folk.
OSCAR SSU KUO LO is a Diploma student at the AA with a keen interest in architectural history, urban theory and architectural design. His work explores the limits and boundaries of architecture, questioning its definitions, roles and possibilities within contemporary contexts.
SAAMIA MAKHARIA is an architectural designer exploring the spatial legacies of colonial power and its socio-political implications on contemporary Indian identities. While a Diploma student at the AA, Saamia’s work has been recognised for the RIBA Bronze Medal, Architects’ Journal Prize, and Spatial Practices Award from Central Saint Martins. Her research spans alternative domesticity, infrastructure inequality and territorial reclamation, challenging urban narratives.
JABIR MOHAMED is a researcher, architectural designer and heritage preservationist focused on saving at risk heritage in the Somali Peninsula. As founder of RAAD RAAC Foundation and Studio, he leads restoration projects impacted by war, neglect and climate change, currently leading heritage skills training in Berbera with the Commonwealth Heritage Forum.
MAGDALENE MONZIE TAN is a Diploma student and editor of AArchitecture
CRISTINA MONTEIRO is an architect, author and codirector of DK-CM. Her work focuses on adaptive reuse and retrofit projects, ensuring buildings remain resilient and sustainable. She has taught at Kingston University and Central Saint Martins and has been a visiting lecturer and critic at the AA, Cambridge University, Syracuse University and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
JACK SELF is an architect and writer based in London. He is director of the Real Foundation and Editor-in-Chief of the Real Review. In 2016, Self curated the British Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia. Self's architectural design focuses on alternative models of ownership, contemporary forms of labour and the formation of socio-economic power relationships in space.
SHAFIKA TALIB is an Intermediate student, editor of AArchitecture and works as an assistant at the art gallery Hauser & Wirth.
AUDE TOLLO is an architectural designer, researcher and writer. She is currently completing her Diploma in architecture at the AA. She is part of Matri-Architecture and PATCH, a collective founded by the 2020–21 cohort of the New Architecture Writers (N.A.W.) in London. Her personal practice considers non-canonical ways of knowing and archiving through earth architecture, representation and speculation.
OLLY WAINWRIGHT is an architecture and design critic at The Guardian. In February 2025, he published the London Contemporary Architecture Map with Blue Crow Media highlighting 50 significant projects in London built since 2000.
HAOMING ZHENG is a Diploma student at the AA, interested in the perception and realisation of space.
Noor Ibrahim recalls Sudanese diasporic memories in Dhikr (PAGE 4). Aude Tollo delves into the works of bell hooks and the architecture of Gurunsi earth structures (PAGE 6). Saamia Makharia unsettles the Muddy Waters of Mumbai’s coastline (PAGE 10). Valeriia Chemerisova begins to map Tempelhof Airport in Berlin by asking the question How to Circle Forward in Time? (PAGE 12). Naina Gupta reconsiders swimming through a Frog’s Eye View (PAGE 16). AArchitecture and Michael Ho explore an exhibition and reflect on career transitions, the future and the role of painting (PAGE 18). Jabir Mohamed uncovers Somali building techniques with Studio RAAD RAAC (PAGE 24). Shafika Talib, Deri Russell and Jack Self discuss Cultural Capital and the Hustle (PAGE 28). Aude Tollo and Postbox Ghana unpack narratives embedded in vintage postcards and stamps from Ghana (PAGE 33). AArchitecture meet with Londonbased practice DK-CM to examine the evolving landscape of architecture practice (PAGE 37). Oscar Ssu Kuo Lo proposes an Itinerary of Strangers on a path from Southampton to Canterbury (PAGE 42). Monzie Tan and Olly Wainwright are Unfolding 21st-Century London through its architecture (PAGE 44). Haoming Zheng finds detours from walking A Line Made by Distractions (PAGE 46).
