News Archive

07.21
RCA Inside/Out Lecture Series: Sumayya Vally In Conversation
Inside/Out: Sumayya Vally In Conversation
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5th July 2021
19:00 BST (GMT+1)
A special Livestream of the final installment of Inside/Out 2020/21 from Royal College of Art, Interior Design
Sumayya Vally in conversation with Natalia Grabowska
Livestream link: https://youtu.be/jA5bOPrxDLI
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07.21
Sunday Times: How Joburg architect Sumayya Vally is shaping the world’s future
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In pursuing diverse identities and cultures in her design, Vally is imagining a design language and expression for Africa, which recognises its past and futures.
- Claire Keeton, Times LIVE
06.21
Brian Eno: In A Garden, Serpentine Pavilion
Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace
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Part of Back to Earth
19 Jun — 23 Jul 2021
FREE

I wanted to think of the music that I installed in the new pavilion as a sort of sonic garden – a concentrated park within the real park. – Brian Eno
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06.21
Azure Magazine: Counterspace Unveils Their Fragmented Serpentine Pavilion
Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace
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Standing more than six metres tall in Kensington Gardens, almost meeting the height of the trees surrounding it, the two-tone, open-air edifice – pale pink rendered cement mix for the interior and dark grey cork for the exterior – rises above a raised concrete platform.
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06.21
CogX Festival: Designing Impact
#CogX2021
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Designer Yves Béhar (Founder, fuseproject) and Sumayya Vally (Founder, Counterspace Studio) join Boster Group CEO, Susan Boster, to explore how creativity in design and architecture influences behaviour and, through innovative partnerships, becomes part of the solution to major global challenges.
06.21
ArtReview ‘A Deeply Satisfying Architectural Richness’
Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace
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Sumayya Vally’s summer structure is composed of humble steps, seats, doorways and railings representing migrant meeting-spaces across London.
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06.21
ICON: A tribute to ordinary London
Fragment of Counterspace’s Serpentine Pavilion for Valence Library in the Becontree estate. Photo: George Darrell
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Designed by Counterspace, the pavilion highlights places significant to London’s migrant communities, as well as the threat posed by gentrification
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06.21
Evening Standard: “an inclusive space full of ideas”
Evening Standard Sumayya Vally
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★★★★☆
By Robert Bevan
Counterspace have come up with an inclusive space full of ideas.
The youngest architect to design the annual showcase has created a structure that reaches out to London.
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06.21
Surface: Pieces of London Come Together at Counterspace’s Serpentine Pavilion
Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace
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After a year-long delay due to the pandemic, the 20th Serpentine Pavilion opens with a community-minded installation by promising young Johannesburg studio Counterspace.
06.21
The Times: “Melting pot spots inspire elegant vision”
Lead architect Sumayya Vally at the Serpentine Pavilion 2021, designed by Johannesburg-based practice Counterspace
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★★★★☆
By Jonathan Morrison
An elegant and accomplished utopian vision.
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06.21
Designboom: Interview with Sumayya Vally on the design of the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion
interview with sumayya vally of counterspace on the design of the 2021 serpentine pavilion
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By Philip Stevens
Image © Designboom
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06.21
Financial Times: “smooth, elegant – and radical”
Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace
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Serpentine Pavilion brings migrant meeting points to posh Kensington Gardens
by Edwin Heathcote
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05.21
140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth
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As part of Serpentine’s Back to Earth project and in collaboration with Penguin Press, 140 artists, scientists, architects, filmmakers and more contribute ideas to a ‘do-it-yourself’ guide on how to shape a more ecological and equitable future.
05.21
Exhibition: Liminal Identities in the Global South, JCAF
Liminal Identities in the Global South
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Opens:
29 June 2021- 29 January 2022
Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation
Exploring the political and pandemic body, through concepts of hybridity and resistance in the artistic practices of seminal women artists and architects.
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05.21
Serpentine Pavilion 11 Jun — 17 Oct 2021
Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace
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The 20th Serpentine Pavilion, designed by Johannesburg-based practice Counterspace, directed by Sumayya Vally, will open on 11 June 2021. A TIME100 Next List honoree, Vally is the youngest architect to be commissioned for this internationally renowned architecture programme.
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04.21
Wallpaper*: Sumayya Vally on her Serpentine Pavilion
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Counterspace is the fast-emerging South African architectural practice commissioned to create the latest Serpentine Pavilion in London. Here, its founder Sumayya Vally takes artist and photographer Mikhael Subotzky on a whistle-stop tour of their adopted hometown, Johannesburg
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04.21
Hour #25: Starting an Architecture Office w/ Sumayya Vally
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Join us on Thursday, April 8 at 12pm ET noon / 9am PT / 6pm SAST for an open discussion and interactive Q&A for BIPOC students and emerging designers about how Sumayya started Counterspace and her advice to those interested in architectural and spatial forms of social and political engagement.
03.21
Lesley Lokko + Sumayya Vally, Counterparts: This Fragile Condition
Lesley Lokko + Sumayya Vally, Counterparts:
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A dialogue on race, gender, identity, and difference.
March 30, 2021
03.21
e-flux Architecture: Choreography of a Procession
From behind the barricaded fence of blue dress uniforms and riot shields, they sing the Amakomanisi struggle song" Ubaba wami wayengumfana wasengadini, umama wayeyintombazane yasekhishini, yingakho ngingumKhomanisi " ("My father was a garden boy, my mother was a kitchen girl, and that’s why I am a communist!"). Sumayya Vally, Choreography of a Procession , 2021.
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Confinement is a collaborative exhibition curated by gta exhibitions and e-flux Architecture, supported by the Adrian Weiss Stiftung and the ETH Zürich Foundation.
03.21
Scarcity as a Tool to Create Narratives for/from the South with Frida Escobedo & Sumayya Vally
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02.21
The Africa2020 September Summit with Sumayya Vally, Emanuel Admassu, Ola Uduku and Ola Hassanain
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Musée Quai Branly
Sunday February 28th 2021, 6 PM

Reflecting on how Black urban practices emerge as strategies of resistance that disrupt the spatial legacies of colonial power in Africa, and how they create spaces of radical imagination within and against anti-Black environments.
02.21
Sumayya Vally to judge Dezeen Awards 2021
Interior designer Anouska Hempel and collaborators Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann will be joined by Sri Lankan designer and structural engineer Cecil Balmond and South African architect Sumayya Vally to judge Dezeen Awards 2021
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Sumayya Vally and Sri Lankan designer and structural engineer Cecil Balmond join interior designer Anouska Hempel and collaborators Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann to judge Dezeen Awards 2021.
02.21
Event: Architectural Association School of Architecture: A New Model For Listening
A New Model for Listening Sumayya Vally, Counterspace
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Watch Sumayya Vally’s ‘New Model for Listening’ Lecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London as part of their Public Programme #NewModels Series led by Manijeh Verghese
02.21
TIME100 Next List honoree, Sumayya Vally
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“There is absolutely another canon, it’s up to us to dream it.” Sumayya Vally
02.21
Contemporary Conversations: The Legacy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Contemporary Conversations: The Legacy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude
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Join Sotheby's Simon Shaw in conversation with Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artist JR and Architect Sumayya Vally, celebrating the legacy of Christo & Jeanne-Claude, and their influence on contemporary artists.
01.21
Video: The World Around Summit 2021 – Keepers of The World Around
The World Around Summit 2021 Session Two - Keepers of The World Around
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Live Town Hall with Wael Al Awar, Kabage Karanja, Débora Mesa Molina, Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, Stella Mutegi, Joar Nango, Sumayya Vally, and Beatrice Gallilee
01.21
artnet: Slow Down the Mega-Galleries, Empower Black Collectors, and 14 Other Changes…
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12.20
Video: Sumayya Vally, Ingesting Architectures – The Understory of the Understory
Yasmeen Lari in conversation with Sumayya Vally – The Understory of the Understory
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The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish: The Understory of the Understory
5th & 6th December 2020
Online at themind.fish
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12.20
Video: Serpentine Gallery Symposium: Yasmeen Lari in conversation with Sumayya Vally
Yasmeen Lari in conversation with Sumayya Vally – The Understory of the Understory
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Ecological and architectural entanglements between India-Pakistan, Sub-saharan Africa, and London. In this conversation, Sumayya Vally and Yasmeen Lari talk about Lari's life, work, and evolution as an architect, researcher, and activist.
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12.20
Artnet: ‘I want to build differently’ Sumayya Vally
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Meet Sumayya Vally, the Youngest Architect Ever to Win the Prestigious Serpentine Pavilion Commission
11.20
artnet: 25 Inspiring Women in the Art World Who Overcame Obstacles to Accomplish …
Vally is forging a new canon of African architecture that factors in social concerns as well as issues of sustainability.
External Link
10.20
Catalogue 4.5 Journal and Hans Ulrich Obrist: ‘What is your unrealised project?’
CATALOGUE 4.5, the new issue, is the magazine as a special edition. Serpentine Galleries Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, invited as Guest Editor, has asked 39 new-generation artists to share their unrealised projects.
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Summaya Vally joins 38 new-generation artists in sharing their unrealised projects for CATALOGUE 4.5, the art journal published by Cork Street Galleries, guest-edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
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10.20
25 Thought Leaders on the Esteemed A+Firm Awards Jury: Sumayya Vally
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09.20
Cooper Union Lecture: Sumayya Vally: Counterpoints
cooper.edu VISITING LECTURE | SUMAYYA VALLY, COUNTERSPACE STUDIO: COUNTERPOINTS
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09.20
Therme Art Conference: Breaking Bauhaus – Renewing its Principles 100 Years Later
BREAKING BAUHAUS – RENEWING ITS PRINCIPLES 100 YEARS LATER
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07.20
Video: Yoyo Ma x Google: Culture of Comfort with Sumayya Vally
In collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma, we asked 10 cultural leaders from around the world to share the art and culture that comforts them. Sumayya Vally tells us how she seeks comfort in the soul of a place.
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In collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma, we asked 10 cultural leaders from around the world to share the art and culture that comforts them. Sumayya Vally tells us how she seeks comfort in the soul of a place.
07.20
Unibz Conference: 5×2 Summer Conversation – A conversation with Sumayya Vally
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06.20
LFA Manifestos: Architecture for a New Generation feat. Sumayya Vally
Manifestos - Architecture for a New Generation
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"There is no neutral ground. All territories are bound." - Manifesto for Change by Sumayya Vally, Countersapce
05.20
Dezeen: Therme Art and VDF Conference – The Relationship between Art and Architecture
Therme Art and VDF present a live panel discussion on the relationship between art and architecture
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03.20
New Frame: Counterspace: Architecture should be a force for change
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01.20
Domus: Counterspace featured as one of 100+ best architecture firms
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01.20
Film: Yokohama Triennale 2020 – Ingesting Architectures: On Atmospheric Violences
This presentation was part of Episōdo 03: Chasing the Scent, an inhabitation of time convened through Yokohama Triennale 2020.
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10.19
Sam Jacob Studio: Pattern as Politics
Sumayya Vally, Hybrid 12, 2019
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Curated by Sam Jacob and Priya Khanchandani for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2019, at Culturgest, as part of What is Ornament?
01.19
Dezeen: Counterspace creates Folded Skies installation
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08.18
Chicago Architecture Biennale: Lost and Found by Counterspace
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