Your Studio KOHLER Workspace
Your Studio KOHLER Workspace
Sumayya Vally, the founder and principal of South African architecture studio Counterspace, has been catapulted into the limelight for her design of the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion, which is centered on bringing people together in a pandemic world of isolation.
By Rashiq Fataar
Sumayya Vally, the youngest person ever to be commissioned to design the prestigious Serpentine Pavilion in London, has never hidden her love for her home city of Johannesburg and its role as a laboratory for her work. The city’s people, spaces, rituals, and contested history have formed the bedrock of her practice and Counterspace’s portfolio, which has primarily taken the form of research manifested in installations, provocations, exhibitions, films, and publications.
Vally’s tools of observation, inquiry, and what she terms “reading the city” have led to work that’s inspired by the richness and diversity of narratives found across her home city. In the perilous mine dumps of Johannesburg, for example, she found more than just the abandoned waste sites of former mines. Through a “forensic scan” of the site, tools, glass, cloth, bones, and plants were discovered — clues to the ways in which these sites have been appropriated by the rituals and activities of people past and present. The resulting work, titled Lost and Found: Phantoms of Spaces and Times, was presented in collaboration with photographer Jason Larkin at the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial.
In the Johannesburg suburb of Brixton, Counterspace redesigned a Dutch Reformed Church that had come under the custodianship of the growing Muslim community and now functions as a mosque. Responding to the community’s desire for an Islamic identity for the building, Vally’s subtle envelope comprises a series of arches and a minaret that introduces the building’s new identity while acknowledging its Christian roots. In a recent short film for Serpentine Galleries, in which she walks viewers through her home city, Vally firmly asserts the ethos of her work. “We need to ask ourselves if the world around us is being made in our image, and if it isn’t, whose image is it being made in and how do we start to make our own?”
The director of South African practice Counterspace, Vally draws inspiration from her hometown of Johannesburg to create meaningful work through observation, inquiry, and “reading the city”
The installation Folded Skies is made of a series of iridescent mirrors colored with pigments found in Johannesburg’s mine dust. Images courtesy of Counterspace
The director of South African practice Counterspace, Vally draws inspiration from her hometown of Johannesburg to create meaningful work through observation, inquiry, and “reading the city”
The installation Folded Skies is made of a series of iridescent mirrors colored with pigments found in Johannesburg’s mine dust. Images courtesy of Counterspace
Art and installation are integral features of Vally’s process and body of work. In Future Addresses, she worked with fellow architects Sarah de Villiers and Amina Kaskar to create six collages that combine drawings and drone photography with imagery of events in South Africa. In the Hands-on Maths Exhibit for Play Africa, Southern Africa’s first interactive children’s museum, she used traditional Ndebele art to help children learn about mathematics. And in Folded Skies, she recreated the polluted light of Johannesburg’s sunrises and sunsets through the tinted gradients of three mirrored sculptures.
In June 2021, Vally’s design for the Serpentine Pavilion was finally realized in London’s Hyde Park, having been delayed by a year due to the pandemic. Digging beneath the surface of Brixton, Hoxton, Peckham, and other London communities, the architect spent months studying archives and observing the areas’ current and former places of meeting, eating, organizing, and learning. In the same fashion as in her Johannesburg laboratory, the restaurants, ritual spaces, markets, and informal architectures of London’s cross-cultural communities informed the design of the pavilion, which is constructed from reclaimed steel, cork, and timber covered in micro-cement. For the first time ever, the pavilion also has four “fragments” placed with local organizations around the city.
Kohler booth at Design Shanghai 2020
Kohler booth at Design Shanghai 2020
In Vally’s pavilion, her methods of studying the physical and invisible remnants of a city’s divided history have manifested on one of the world’s most significant architectural stages. In a time of isolation and distancing, Vally and Counterspace’s commitment to reflecting the ideals of gathering and everyday ritual in their work is perfectly timed.
Please select your project location to browse our global product catalog and specify your next project.
Please select your project location to browse our global product catalog and specify your next project.
