A Conversation with Sumayya Vally

This event, hosted as part of the annual Kenneth Frampton Endowed Lecture series, will feature a conversation among Sumayya Vally, founder of the Johannesburg and London-based design research practice Counterspace; Mario Gooden, Professor of Professional Practice at GSAPP; and Ziad Jamaleddine, Assistant Professor at GSAPP.

Sumayya Vally’s design, research, and pedagogical practice is searching for expression for hybrid identities and territory, particularly for African and Islamic conditions. Her design process is often forensic, and draws on the aural, performance, the supernatural, and the overlooked as generative places of history and work. This is best demonstrated in the Islamic Arts Biennale, an initiative spearheaded by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, which she artistically directed.

A TIME100 Next List honouree, named as a figure who will shape the future of architectural canon and practice; and designer of the 20th Serpentine Pavilion (2020/2021), Vally is the youngest architect ever to be commissioned for the internationally renowned architecture programme. She has recently worked on initiating and developing Support Structures for Support Structures, a new fellowship programme launched at the Serpentine, which supports artists and collectives who support community through their work at the intersections of art and social justice, art and the archive and art and ecology. Sumayya has also recently been named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and serves on several boards through her interest in dynamic forms of archive and supporting new networks of knowledge in the arts.

Organized by Columbia GSAPP. This event is open to the Columbia University community. The general public must register in advance and confirm COVID-19 vaccination status in compliance with current Columbia University health requirements using this online form. This event will also be live-streamed on the GSAPP YouTube Channel.

GSAPP is committed to providing universal access to all of our events. Please contact events@arch.columbia.edu to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.

This event content is equivalent to 1 AIA/CES total learning credit, 1 total credit earned for in-person attendance. Please contact events@arch.columbia.edu for more information.

Image Credit: Islamic Arts Biennale photographed by Marco Cappalletti.

The Kenneth Frampton Endowed Lecture Series is an annual lecture given at Columbia GSAPP by a distinguished architect scholar honoring Ware Professor Emeritus Kenneth Frampton for his lifetime of teaching and research. Speakers deliver public lectures addressing some of the key issues central to Professor Frampton’s thinking about the field of architecture. The Kenneth Frampton Lecture was established in 2010 by a generous group of Columbia GSAPP alumni and friends.