Sumayya Vally, Founder and Director of Counterspace

Core Philosophy & Context

• Sumaya Valli posits that while most global cities are designed to be segregated, architecture can serve as a "force for good" to bring people together.
• Valli attributes her perspective to growing up in Lodium, a designated "Indian only" township in Pretoria, where apartheid planning physically separated races based on ethnicity and placed communities near toxic infrastructure.
• Her childhood included exposure to the energy of apartheid's fall and the "rush of optimism" for the new South Africa, alongside the slow reality of entrenched urban segregation.
• She spent her youth in inner-city Johannesburg, observing the collision of diverse worlds, from big banking to everyday traders, which shapes her current architectural practice.

Impact of Pandemic on Architecture

• Valli states the pandemic deepened her understanding of architecture's power, citing a "visceral disconnect" felt when unable to be in physical proximity to others.
• She hopes the post-pandemic era will see a renewed public appreciation for the human phenomenon of gathering in shared physical spaces.

Practice & Collaboration at Counterspace

• Counterspace, Valli's Johannesburg-based studio, prioritizes collaboration to address inherited global crises by enabling the translation of knowledge across different perspectives.
• The studio searches for a design language specific to Johannesburg and the African continent, focusing on "hybrid and contested identity."
• Valli notes that collaboration allows the firm to draw inspiration from other creative disciplines (sound, music, visual expression) to counter architecture's traditionally slow pace.

Folded Skies Installation

• The project is rooted in research viewing the earth as an archive, specifically examining the mining belt in Johannesburg and its layers of geological, toxic, and social history.
• Collaborating with chemical engineer Dr. Craig Sheridan, the team extracted inorganic pigments from toxic mining soil to both rehabilitate the land and create brilliantly colored materials.
• The installation uses these extracted compounds to tint iridescent mirrors, which are sited on mining buffer zones to fold perspectives of extraction, resource, and labor.
• The work aims to capture the atmospheric condition of Johannesburg's sunsets, which are scientifically attributed to iridescent mining dust.

Serpentine Pavilion

• Valli is the 20th and youngest architect commissioned to design the Serpentine Pavilion; the structure opened to the public earlier in the summer.
• The pavilion is conceived in five parts inspired by London's "waves of migration" and the small spaces (mosques, churches, markets, music venues) where marginalized communities built belonging and resistance.
• Key inspirations include specific sites like the Calypsos, the West Indian Gazette headquarters, and the Mangrove in Notting Hill, which functioned as interconnected networks rather than isolated entities.
• The design abstracts "architectural gestures of generosity" from these sites, such as surfaces unfolded onto streets or porches used for organization, creating "small islands of gathering" that face one another for larger interactions.
• The initiative aims to preserve the conversation around these vulnerable spaces, which are often erased by development and gentrification.

Sustainability & Material Strategy

• Valli views social sustainability as inextricably linked to environmental issues, extraction, and labor history, rejecting siloed approaches to eco-design.
• The Pavilion utilizes reclaimed cork from the wine industry and internal steel recovered from a contractor's previous projects.
• The structure uses sustainably sourced plywood covered in micro-cement to ensure a lightweight approach that is easily disassembled.
• Concrete components are designed to be crushed and reused as aggregate annually, preventing landfill waste.

Support Structures Network

• Valli launched the "Support Structures for Support Structure Network" in response to the vulnerabilities exposed during the pandemic regarding those who do the work of caring for communities.
• The initiative commits to supporting ten artists per year at the intersections of art, social justice, art, ecology, and art, and the archive.
• The Serpentine has committed to the network for at least three years, with plans to expand the number of supported artists annually.
• The program aims to create sustained networks that amplify work from bodies of knowledge originating in diverse and underrepresented places.