Johannesburg-based practice Counterspace, directed by the all-woman team of Sumayya Vally, Sarah de Villiers and Amina Kaskar, has been selected to design the Serpentine Pavilion 2020.

All three were born in 1990 and are the youngest ever architects to be commissioned for this internationally renowned architecture programme, now in its 20th anniversary.

Using both innovative and traditional building techniques, Counterspace’s design will be based on gathering spaces and community places around the city, folding London in to the Pavilion structure in Kensington Gardens, and extending a public programme across London.

The shapes of the Pavilion are created from a process of addition, superimposition, subtraction and splicing of architectural forms, directly transcribed from existing spaces with particular relevance to migrant and other peripheral communities in London.

On its 20th anniversary, more than ever, the Serpentine Pavilion will be a place for debate and new ideas.  A live programme running throughout the summer connects to the Serpentine’s ambitious multi-platform project Back to Earth and sets out to explore questions such as: how can architecture create a space where we are all linked, not ranked? How can architecture promote wellbeing? Can a structure evolve and change together with the environment?

The Pavilion will include moveable small parts that will be displaced to neighbourhoods across London. Following community events at these locations, the parts will be returned to the structure, completing it over the summer.
 
Employing a mix of low-tech and high-tech approaches to sustainability, the Pavilion will be constructed from a variety of materials, including custom K-Briq-modules and cork provided by Amorim. K-Briqs are made from 90% recycled construction and demolition waste and are manufactured without firing, with a tenth of the carbon emissions of normal bricks
 

“The pavilion is itself conceived as an event — the coming together of a variety of forms from across London over the course of the Pavilions sojourn. These forms are imprints of some of the places, spaces and artefacts which have made care and sustenance part of Londons identity. The breaks, gradients and distinctions in colour and texture between different parts of the Pavilion make this reconstruction and piecing together legible at a glance. As an object, experienced through movement, it has continuity and consistency, but difference and variation are embedded into the essential gesture at every turn.

Places of memory and care in Brixton, Hoxton, Hackney, Whitechapel, Edgware Road, Peckham, Ealing, North Kensington and beyond are transferred onto the Serpentine lawn. Where they intersect, they produce spaces to be together."

Sumayya Vally of Counterspace, lead architect on the project.

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Authors
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Counterspace Studio. Sumayya Vally, Sarah de Villiers and Amina Kaskar.
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Venue / Adress
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Serpentine Gallery. Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA. UK
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Dates
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11 Jun 2020 to 11 Oct 2020.
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Counterspace is a Johannesburg-based architecture and research studio led by Sumayya Vally Much of her work stems from art-based research, pedagogy, and interdisciplinary projects, undertaking predominantly architectural projects, community engagement, exhibition and installation conceptualization, and urban design and research.

Her work is influenced by ideas about inclusion, otherness, and the future, and she often works with other creative disciplines to shape innovative approaches to interesting design challenges. Counterspace is inspired by its location, Johannesburg, and aims to work with the development of design expression, particularly for Johannesburg and the mainland, through urban research, publications, installations, and architecture.

​Counterspace has been involved in a number of immersive, graphic design, and research projects with stakeholders on a national scale, including local architects and various universities in South Africa, as well as various cultural architectural projects in rural and urbanized South Africa and internationally.

Sumayya Vally has creatively shaped the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah (January 23–April 23, 2023). From the theme, concept, narrative, and creative direction of set design, with design by OMA, to the experience and identity of the subject, the contemporary commissions, and the direction and supervision of the experience and narrative in general, she is actively working to broaden and deepen the definition of Islamic arts in an effort to incorporate new discourses and manifest identities that are reflective, resonant, and generative with the philosophies and experience of Islam. She operates alongside the academy. For six years (2015–2021), she led the master's studio, Unit 12, at the University of Johannesburg Graduate School of Architecture, founded by Professor Lesley Lokko, with the intention of creating a curriculum for the African continent. She has taught and lectured extensively, most recently as the Pelli Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign School of Architecture. Vally leads a new Masters programme, Hijra, at the Royal College of Art and is an honorary professor of practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture.
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