 Hi everyone. Welcome. I'm Amandro, the Dean of GSAP and very excited to be speaking with Emmanuel Admasu today, who will be, who had just joined the faculty at GSAP in architecture and urban design and we're so, so excited to have him. Emmanuel is not only known for his partnership, Adwo, with Jen Wood and the amazing work that they do as a practice, but also known as a thinker, as a scholar and a researcher who's really, really dealing with issues of representation that bring together design theory, contemporary, ideas about contemporary African art, kind of questioning ideas that we have about cities, the global south, and much more at the intersection of race in the built environment and so, and a very, very talented architect as well, and an alum of GSAP. And Jen is as well. So welcome, Emmanuel. I wanted to focus the first question, really on, on your, on, you know, starting with your drawings and this question of representation and, and, you know, many in your case, I really feel like your drawings have been a tool to question issues of representation in the discipline and kind of change perspectives and kind of adopt a very different points of views to recast, you know, some of the story histories we tell ourselves about architecture. And so I wanted to start there. They are so, they are both exquisite and architectural but also very, very different. I feel like they are always populated with people and, you know, they're sort of telling their own stories about what we should be looking for when we think about architecture and cities. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a tough one to start with mostly because I think that's something we're constantly asking ourselves what the drawings are trying to do. I think both in the research and the design work. We're really interested in the ways in which conventional architectural representation fails to represent cities like Addis Ababa and spaces like Mercato and Kariko. So I think, you know, first of all, the practice as you mentioned is in partnership with Jen Wood. So we're both bringing different interests and sensibilities to the table and we usually approach things from opposite sides of the spectrum and produce something out of this juxtaposition. So this interest in frustrating the limits and failures of architectural representation happened in one of the earliest exhibitions that we participated in in 2015, where we decided to collaborate with mixed media artist Ezra Wube to produce a stop motion animation of the history of Mercato. And this was an exciting process because we were basically sending him plans, sections and axons, and he was redrawing them and animating them based on his own interest of collapsing multiple perspectives and timeframes. And I think that initial experience of finding ways to draw time and space was a formative experience for our practice. And this led to an interest in really challenging western constructions of linear time as well. So we started producing what we call timescapes, which are really trying to collapse multiple timeframes to understand the past, present and possible future simultaneously. And this interest in fluid conceptions of time and space to a large extent kind of led to a tapestry piece that we produced for Empoma Tsipa's African Mobilities exhibition. And it was also exciting to work with the museum and the production of that tapestry piece where we were beginning to understand the limits of translation, as our line works needed to be translated into threads. So we later found out that the tapestry was actually fabricated in Egypt. So it traveled across three different continents. And getting even closer, our most recent exhibition to markets, we were investigating Karyakon Dar es Salaam and Mercato Nadisawa. So, we were really interested in testing multiple representational strategies that were in conversation with the work being produced by artists in those cities, mostly painters and photographers. What we quickly realized is that these artists were producing immersive images that were kind of juxtaposing bodies with fragments of space and objects. So our drawings were really started by representing the immersive context that the buildings were situated in first and then kind of adding the building as a participant within that choreography. So we also wanted to avoid the cliche of architectural representations dealing with the African context that usually are in one of two categories, which is kind of the aerial photograph of corrugated metal roofs or a kind of incredibly dense line work, kind of a network diagram, which usually demonstrates the labor of production than a particular concept or ambiance of the space. So we established an initial constraint of really producing drawings without lines. So in essence, the drawings were color blocks that can be screen printed. And this made it relatively easy to basically produce the final objects for the exhibition, which were large scale drawings printed directly on metal with polished corrugated backing. And they were suspended in the middle of the gallery and we kind of challenged participants who walk backwards in the exhibition with us to simulate the intensity of the marketplace. So I don't know if that answered your question, but but I think it's an ongoing exploration where we're testing one as a performance like what does the drawing do and how does it begin to engage with aspects of these cities that are typically erased or removed from the architectural drawing. You know, it's amazing to hear you go into such detail in terms of the questions at every step, you know, should this drawing have lines? And what do lines mean or how have lines or excessive lines then used to sort of reduce, you know, present certain ideas about these and as a network, you know, without without form or without right or or, as you said, the aerial, right, which is like such a such a it's true a love affair of the distance and sort of God like view of a context that one, I remember when Rancoul has did his Harvard project on the city and focusing on on Lagos, you know, one of the big criticism was that he visited most of the that was the rumor, I don't know how much it was true, but he really visited through helicopter. I had, you know, these aerials and kind of never coming down under the under these infrastructures that we're being surprised. So, just to, you know, for our students, you know, just a thought process of questioning, where does a drawing sit, how does it sit what you know. And, and so I wanted to end this notion of time and space and as it ties to, you know, one of the the sort of very reductive notions that architects have still today about African cities the global south and in general is a sense of informality right that there's lack of lack of structure and it's just about people moving and networks and, you know, and I know that for urban design in particular in the program that you're coming in with fundamentally questioning these notions of informality or, you know, you don't run you you're trying to capture the life. That's what I'm hearing you're starting with the life of people in those places but but you're not kind of stepping outside of it you're then nevertheless inserting buildings and structure and kind of a built form. I mean your work still is very interested in issues of typology and the market and so it's not a, I just wanted to push a little bit on your pushing of these notions of informality. They often move us entirely away from the built and the type of logical and in your case to say no I'm holding both, both things together you can have informal setting but but you actually have very clear structures very clear technologies the market is one that you know is an incredible lens through which to get out of these binaries or that's how I'm reading your interest in the market. Yeah, I mean I think I think that's that's definitely correct but I also usually answer that question with a question, which is, you know these spaces are informal in comparison to whose formal city. And I think that dichotomy of the formal versus informal tends to assume that somehow there is a certain idea of a formal, typically European city that these African cities are moving towards. And I think, you know, we usually start off by imagining that maybe they're moving in a completely different direction. And I think that assumption of, you know, the formal versus informal as deeply flawed also because to a certain extent it's an extension of a colonial value system which tends to measure everything in comparison to Europe. And I think it is very much for us, like it's much more exciting to understand these spaces as environments that contain multiple degrees of formality. And most of these systems of relating to one another and spatial practices tend to be overlooked or dismissed as informal, because we have not been trained to see them, let alone appreciate them. So my position is to really learn how to engage the cities and environments in their own terms. And this requires us to undo the centrality and the autonomy of the building as a static object that imposes its will on the city. I'm really interested in the ways in which the city, and by that I mean, you know, different forms of spatial occupation introduced by non architects and pose themselves on the building on the sidewalk, and on the street. So I think this spatial continuum does not stop at the property line, it goes well beyond the limits of the city block. I think this is extremely important to developing new approaches to urban design because recently I've also been interested in other forms of relating to one another in the city that go beyond the limits of property. And the marketplaces we have been looking at have robust kind of social spatial compositions and ways of relating to people that are not trapped by the regime of property. And the fact that they were produced in response to different oppressive regimes makes them extremely agile. And you can even go a bit further by saying that the only thing formal about these sites is the imposition of the regime of property, that is committed to a certain idea of exclusion or marginalization. And this always fails in environments like Makato because almost every shopkeeper has a network of street hawkers that are moving through the city, distributing the goods and the merchandise. So almost every room kind of has, you know, a series of vectors moving in and out of it that are always tethered to that interior environment. There are different forms of mutual aid as well that are protecting these merchants and residents from multiple forms of surveillance and displacement. And we're interested in kind of valuing and to a certain extent even protecting these networks of mutual aid, because they also give us strategies to defend other cities, you know, cities like Providence or New York from the homogenizing forces of real estate speculation. So that brings me to two points. I really appreciate the, I mean, your practices between Melbourne and Addis Ababa and, you know, you are also now making those bridges between places and, as you mentioned, and and so my, my two questions are kind of related is one of the importance of collaboration and your collaborators. We know one of the things I really appreciated when we spoke a few months ago was your insistence that your collaborators and the community and audience you were engaging with in this research were very much architects, you know, I sort of read that there's a real, you have a really a clear position as to who's going to who are you going to partner with to be part of that place you're, you're kind of representing in different ways and or acting within. And then, and then kind of bringing that question to here and the collaboration now you have with the Black Reconstruction Collective and the upcoming show at MoMA and this, you know, amazing kind of grouping of thinking and practices coming together in this in this moment to a form of mutual support as well as architects to transform the field in urgent ways at this moment. And, you know, I think it's also somewhat, it's fair to say that, you know, part of story practices and architecture often tend to be rather performative ends up being an opportunity for a kind of photo op with community members pointing at boards and images to legitimize a series of foregone conclusions. So, in our case, most of our designer research work has been focusing on spaces in East Africa or the Horn of Africa. So very early on, we were able to understand the challenges of building and doing research on complex and, you know, ever shifting spaces from afar. So, therefore, we knew it was much more interesting to develop long term relationships with architects and researchers in those cities. So instead of, you know, an extractive practice became a long conversation between architects, artists and academics positioned in multiple cities. I would say that this has been extremely generative for our practice and it allows us to continue learning from the shifts that are happening in these cities in real time. And also think removing the hierarchy and establishing a form of collective intelligence across multiple geographies is really the ultimate ambition of our practice. These engagements and collaborations with architects in Addis Ababa and Dar Salaam are also redefining the way we approach projects here, you know, and Providence in New York City. And it's much more liberating to think of the practice as a platform to talk to people and discuss ideas across time and space. Sometimes what gets generated from those conversations is a building and sometimes it's an exhibition, a book or an art installation. And I also want to say that part of why I'm interested in these expansive forms of practices because we're engaged in different forms of building and unbuilding. In other words, the unbuilding might be about radically reinterpreting the histories of these sites. And I think that work might remain in the realm of knowledge production while the building practice requires radical imaginations of, you know, a better future, a different type of world or, you know, an anticipation of certain ideas of spatial justice, whatever that might mean in different contexts. Well, Emmanuel, we're so excited to welcome you for, you know, collaborations at GSEP students and the faculty and just kind of bringing your incredible breath of perspective but also depth of thinking about, you know, what it means to practice architecture today and how we can think about it in a different way for the future. And I know you've already, you're already inspiring so many of our students and everyone holds you in great admiration. So I can't tell you how excited we are to welcome you with, you know, your first official involvement in the summer. And hopefully at that moment we will be together and kind of build on this distance that is to learn how to engage, continue to engage different geographies and cultures in new ways. So thank you so much, Emmanuel. Thank you, Amal. And see you soon. Stay well. You too. Take care. Thank you.