SA architect takes apart past legacies to make history in London

It’s hard to imagine that the South African architect whose company was selected to create this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, which will stand on the lawn of the Kensington Gardens in London in the northern hemisphere’s summer, says her designs were not always understood and she was never among the strongest in her architecture class.

“In the educational landscape, I didn’t do pretty well. I think at that time what I was designing didn’t have an audience, and it was not very acceptable for the most part,” said Sumayya Vally.

But it was this uniqueness that prompted the University of Johannesburg’s Prof Lesley Lokko, who founded the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg, to invite Vally to lecture at the institution. That same uniqueness once again set her apart, leading to Sumayya’s company Counterspace bagging the coveted honour of designing the prestigious Serpentine Pavilion.

As I studied architecture, I realised what we were being taught and what we were seeing was just one version of history or a very singular narrative or a singular story.

—  Sumayya Vally

Vally is the first South African – and the youngest architect at 30 – to be commissioned to create the Serpentine Pavilion.

Speaking to Sunday Times Daily from her office in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, the Laudium-born and bred architect’s artistic yet elegant flare is unquestionable.

Dressed in black, her turban tied meticulously and large golden earrings glimmering in the natural light in her office, Sumayya says her surroundings intrigued her and influenced her to go into architecture.

“I visited Marabastad a lot with my dad when I was younger,” she said, referring to the marketplace in Pretoria.

“I think its urban fabric, cultural diversity and markets had a profound impact on me. I also spent much of my childhood in inner city Johannesburg – and I have memories of walking and being in the city, in Diagonal Street and the Joburg library.”

Over the years, design artists have come up with some incredible, eccentric and abstract designs of their interpretation of what the Serpentine Pavilion should look like.

Vally said her design, created alongside two of her company’s other directors, Sarah de Villiers and Amina Kaskar, was inspired by the overlooked or forgotten corners of London.

“This pavilion is inspired by forts of gathering in different migrant neighbourhoods in London. I looked in particular at spaces of everyday existence and uprising – in a political sense but also an everyday sense – so where people come together to eat or worship was very important to the design.

“I also looked at ... the Notting Hill Carnival and spaces like the Mangrove and the headquarters of the West Indian Gazette ... spaces that were maybe not recognised, were small and overlooked but became important symbols of community and people to organise in London,” she said.

The design will be made of recycled cork and brick and have small movable parts that can be disassembled. These parts will be taken to various areas of London for different events, then returned to the pavilion for the grand assembling. 

It will be the 21st year since the first Serpentine Pavilion was laid out on the Kensington greens, and many of the previous architects have gone on to have their names etched in history books as their designs are purchased by museums or stand in theme parks.

Sumayya has already done this, having being named in TIME magazine as one of top 100 people “poised to make history”.

But with creativity seemingly at her core, Sumayya said she wasn’t hesitant about what she would be doing if hadn’t pursued architecture. While it’s far from sculpting buildings, she said the two careers were quite similar.

“I have the social justice button, and I wanted to be a journalist as well,” she said.

“I am interested in stories, and I think that architecture is about telling stories, manifesting certain truths, and I think there are lots of versions of truths also, and I think as I studied architecture, I realised what we were being taught and what we were seeing was just one version of history or a very singular narrative or a singular story.

“I became interested in what it means to make architecture in SA when our landscape is so segregated; the service delivery aspect of making architecture in SA, which I think is a huge challenge; beyond that, how do we express our identity as South Africans and Africans; and how do we start telling our own stories and embodying our own cultures in architectural and design form.”

Unfortunately, the remnants of apartheid and segregation have not overlooked her industry, and Sumayya said women and architects of colour were still trying to make their mark in the SA space.

“The first nonwhite architect in SA is still alive. The first nonwhite architect to get a PhD is very young, probably about 40. It tells you that we [women and people of colour] have been left out of the system for such a long time, and so I think the way the profession is running and the way that it is set up, function in a particular way. The way the money flows and architects that have credentials and can access certain scales of work, it’s not us,” she said.

But looking for the silver lining, Sumayya said the grains of apartheid and colonialism had contributed to SA’s rich architectural landscape.

“Architecture is pretty slow and has a long lag. The buildings we have in the city were built by an entirely different generation, an entirely different set of politics, but it’s still the city we have inherited and are using,” she added.

While other nations, such as India, are far advanced in their designing and creation of incredible buildings, Sumayya said SA had much to offer.

“In terms of developing our own architectural language, for who we are and what our cultures and identities can contribute to the world, we haven’t even started looking at that. It’s not so much that we are behind in our architecture, but it’s that our ways of being and our cultures are way ahead of where anyone’s architecture is at.

“If we start to do that more, there is so much design waiting to happen in the way that our lives work, that can push architecture forward and make it totally different to anything that is out there already. Our architecture and ways of being were cut off by colonisation and apartheid, so it never really got a chance to evolve.

“If we truly started to look at who we are, our own traditions, cultures, beliefs and so on, and we transfer those into form, it would be something entirely different,” she added.