 Hello everyone, we're going to start My name is Andres, Andres Hake, I'm the Dean of GESAP, the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University I mean for those that are here, you know this, but we have an audience, a global audience online Following either now or in the future. So I want to make sure that they know who everyone is But I'm very honored to be Celebrating and listening and and Not only welcoming because you're already part of us it'll say wolf That it's It's also teaching now here and also being connected with many of the things that that have happened in GESAP during the last years and and also connected in the In the in the work that is done here through her work and her writing and research Uh, I first knew about your work in the Chicago Biennial at the time that you presented with pamphlet Uh the platform. I know the I love the name pamphlet art architecture and staff Acknowledging that there are genius responses and formats by which architecture operates And and also art and its connection with many many other things and and their pamphlet presented summer flowers an impressive movie That was reflecting and telling the story and constructing the story of Bessie head's house rain clouds And the place in sarong that was built in sarong Botswana and that's the place where she wrote the novel a question of power, right? And and I When preparing this I was reading this this poem By Bessie had my home And there were a few lines that she removed in the second edition that were My home is a swagger and a shrug You know When you get the smack in the face and the pain the pain don't hurt You are the master And all these tensions are there in the house and not only in the house but also in the gardens that she was Working on while living in the house the community gardens or boy teco And the gardening and that's already part of your research with pamphlet The gardening project could later become a central part of her novel It was also at this time that south africa her country of origin Was undergoing the most extreme and violent destruction of historic Black neighborhoods under the racist group areas act Bessie head wrote that sees him mainly concerned with the money in which the people lost the land This is a beautiful research that is connecting the house The garden in habit in daily life the volunteer and the activist work of gardening In communal gardens and the writing and the sensitivity to what was happening in south africa at this point But this is only one of the Works that pamphlet is being doing pamphlet art architecture and stuff And I would encourage everyone that don't that have not been following pamphlet to to look at that and it was pamphlet of course, it's been Feature in all sorts of platforms crucial places for architectural discourse like the chicago architecture biennial in 2019 that i already mentioned the center for the less good idea in 2018 In chimerenga the institute of creative acts uct in 2019 perform on new york in new york in 2020 The the the performer biennial and the publishing against the grain But that's only part of the work that else has been doing And I I could keep going and going for hours. He's the author of the 2017 book Unstiching Rex two forum the story of an african factory the factory in the Dutch factory in Cape Town that became in the words of It's a Factory of identities that could classify people that could select those that could be incorporated in the modern world And and exclude others that could define gender and construct gender to the positions in which people would place to work And that was something that also relates to the making of modernity But also it became a place for alternative. It was the alternative to To work in domestic service for a big part of the population And it was also a place of liberation emancipation in many other ways and also a place of empowerment These complexities are the ones that it'll Work on and the ones that she's reading She's the co-founder of the transdisciplinary research practice open house architecture And of course the the co-director of wolf architects in cape code And the work that they've been producing in the realm of architectural design is very known probably for For most of you. I want to pay to call your attention on the the Isaac house Isaac, right? in 2011 this beautiful 1920s house that could be could could seem very humble but Through the work of wolf architects is discovered to be a place of care and the details of the architecture even if humble are incredibly Careful and they show a transmission of knowledge and of care and as they they they Narrate the first thing that the one of the first things that the client told you right is there is a terrible all building at the back Of the site, but we will break it down and you're probably was very much maintaining it and finding ways to to keep it And dedicate the efforts to other things to and one of them to to design a beautiful Garden that would become part from the mental part of the house That's one of the projects that that wolf architects have been Developing and that's an early one but there's The 66 great more art space space of higher education a beautiful beautiful transformation of a school of another school into an art space The the Somerset College library the Brandenburg hospital The cherry botter school a very sophisticated building that it's been broadly published The beautiful house je l'ai with this beautiful space on top of And the studios to the That were added to the house of magia and cahar marx and i'm only mentioning some of the works the ones that i I love most Among the entire production of wolf architects that is very very extensive The work of the practice has also been included at international exhibitions the venice architectural biennial the sense and biennial of Architectural urbanism the Luciana museum of modern art the chicago architectural biennial. It's a paulo We could go on and on It's an honor to welcome you here tonight and i'm very happy to have also mario guden and Lindy roy that are going to be responding to alfa and the work of mario Connects very deeply with the work that wolf is doing also operating across media and working in different formats and and that's also something that is Served with lindy roy and i'm i'm also very happy that To hear the the response of lindy together with mario and the lindy has been developing this whole vision of architecture as a neuronal system That is a deep understanding of ecology that is also very connected to the the work on guidance and nature that that Also, it's been operating. So I think this is going to be a very fruitful Conversation very meaningful for for g sap and for the entire field of architecture So all these two welcome elsa And to be and to be very happy that we have this opportunity to celebrate your work Well, thank you very much andres for that wonderful generous introduction and full engagement with our work from cape town We work very hard to do things with at our consequence that you know show passion But show complexity as well I must also just thank everybody for coming and Hope that you're going to Enjoy or just be engaged with the kind of stories that we will be that i'll be sharing with you tonight Thank you mario. Thank you lindy for also hosting and also I also want to say thank you to my my team at home Heinrich of all for I share the practice with he Is he's he's going to be you know Being with us from beyond the shores So this work is a combination of a lot of effort from many people and our team in cape town. So thank you very much Can I grab a glass of water? The work that i'll be sharing tonight is a few projects that are foundational to our practice um foundational meaning that It is in a way the substrate of the architectural production the the buildings the films The publications the exhibition designs the pedagogy The kind of work that we that we immerse ourselves in in cape town Andres mentioned that we did a lot of research on a factory in cape town This factory is situated very close to my My own house in sultra of a cape town and I used to drive past this factory All the time walk past it as a student and it in a way haunted me as well to think What do these buildings mean for our for the street? What do the buildings mean for As a society and what do these buildings mean for a larger conception of maternity? Obviously those were not the questions I was looking thinking when I was just you know driving past the building or looking past it But when I started reading the building as a kind of architectural social landscape It really became this these these questions really became apparent to me I just you just saw me cutting up a room in one of in a space in the in in the factory It was the tea room and the tea wheel was a very important artifact in the space because the tea wheel Would rotate and people would line up and take a cup of tea and move along to the to the next station So this was a rotating tea wheel That begins to also think about how buildings had the kind of arrogance to not only You know order people's movements in space But they were also ordering time because there wasn't a lot of time to have a cup of tea so that needed to be sped up All these ideas and thinking's Are held in a book called unstitching recs true form the story of an African factory It is a kind of narrative biography of the building and all the people that kind of Protagonists in the story. I didn't concentrate too much on the architects Even though they are a part of the story But I started to think through Other political figures of the day like for instance the seagull who was one of the key women political activists in Cape Town at the time and also had a connection with the building in many ways I interviewed the workers past and present. I looked at the The archive to try and figure out what these spaces meant for the construction of various kinds of identities So I mentioned that that project was foundational But you know a lot of the projects and a lot of the research projects in the office are continuous projects So they don't really have an end. They don't really have a kind of a neat conclusion They kind of almost bleed into each other like the kind of questions continue They go bigger. They go smaller and one of the projects that I'd like to share today is A project called a sound garden for bacy head. It's a continuity continuous project Or a continuity continuity from the work that we did at the chicago architecture by annual But it's a thinking about how do we think about homage? How do we think about? As somebody's work as a writer But how can that person Be seen or read as a spatial practitioner? So bacy head once wrote that she was mainly concerned with the manner in which people lost their land Pamphlet summer flowers is in essence a tour of observation that included the gathering of plant material the pressing of flowers From forced removal sites in Cape Town A film documenting her house in serowe And again a visual and textual handmade publication in honor of her work and her statements on land and Dispossession and thank you andres for also that description of the poem of those my home and one of the things that bacy head did was to kind of Echo the work that a previous ancestor of ours called so plucky did which was to think about How do you Move through the landscape and document exactly how people were dispossessed and You this figure of poor soul plucky He moved up and up to what was then called beshawana land and which is called today but swanna and the south african-born But swanna writer bacy found soul plucky's work When she was researching how people were dispossessed in her part of of southern africa and really finding plucky's work was a kind of a revelation for her and In such a way that she describes She describes native life as the missing link in the history of southern africa She ended up writing the forward to the to the to the republication of Of native life I'm just showing you the publication that we made in honor of bacy heads work Which documents the the plant material and a letter that we wrote to the heritage Heritage body that proclaimed a house heritage site And this is the image of soul plucky In essence writing the book native life But I got interested in bacy head by the fact that her house In serowe was declared as I mentioned before a what swanna national heritage site I found the plan of a house on the internet drawn by tom holzinger A good friend of hers and if you have read a question of power one of the characters in the novel Tom is entirely based on tom holzinger He also he also he said it's entirely based on him except one or two facts including the fact that he was never a volunteer kind of Worker for the for the u.s. government but After bacy's passing tom measured and drew up the plan of the house partly from memory And partly to supplement the heritage site application The house was bacy heads house from 1969 up until 1986 when my head is yard was used as a gathering space to host a funeral It is called rain clouds named after when rain clouds gather A novel from which she was able to make enough money To design and construct this house after living rather precariously in what swanna for nearly five years so we filmed the we filmed Me paging through the photographs of bacy's bacy heads garden And you know and we found this photo of her dressed in a yellow jersey with knee-high socks and Photos that we found in the karma Memorial museum in seroe Which itself the memorial museum in seroe is itself a kind of a shrine to to bacy heads Work and a holder of all her letters So one of the things that bacy did in addition to this vast archive of writing is to write letters and One one letter for instance to alice walker She expresses her thoughts on walker's new book revolutionary petunias Then very newly published in 1972 and i'm going to read this extract from the letter. She goes I don't know when these notes are ever going to get done as every now and then I have to stop typing and go and lie down on The floor prostrate with worship This often happens when one encounters a kindred soul and in the ordinary life is very lonely I have to spend a lot of time exhausting myself of people who say But you don't have a word to say But I don't understand a word you say when all you are really saying is that life is bigger and more beautiful than a narrow world Each individual is trapped in One would keep on saying it doesn't hurt But I have been feeling it mostly due to that novel of mine a question of power Which draws a lot of shitty comments and people who write delightfully telling me that they have aesthetic backgrounds And the source of my insanity is my rough crude slum background It is one thing to disdain to reply another to receive confirmation from some source at one's learning One's eyes are quite right in saying So these are the kinds of letters that she was writing to alice walker in a way to To react to alice's new novel but also to say i'm i'm struggling like you know, we need to build solidarity as writers So bacy's letters are really an extraordinary Extraordinary because it shows the character of a woman that is just completely bad as Completely complex and the letters give a kind of a full glimpse of the range That is bacy head But to come back to rain clouds the plan shows a very humble three room House surrounded by a generous yard populated by garden plots with several gooseberry Leading to the front door is a garden path lined with the same gooseberry bushes Photos show a simple bagged big brick finished steel windows With blue wooden door and a little lintel above the door with a handcuffed timber sign that says rain clouds And I was actually struck by the simplicity and the directness of the house The plan of rain clouds is rare is a rare encounter Perhaps even my only encounter with a space where the arrangement shows the kitchen as The first and only room from which one enters the house But i'm familiar with entering the house from the kitchen The house my grandparents were relocated to in stalinbosch and deflux Was through the kitchen But being placed at the back of the house. We always entered the house then from the back People that were familiar Family members and close friends would use the kitchen as the entrance Others like professors priests the bosses Read the white people They would enter the house from the front room, right And this room was always very formally prepared Gladiolas flowers on the table Formal portraits on the elders on the wall Brasser ornaments on the tables all signals that they're there to To display a kind of a respectability and a respectable family But what we have in besi heads house is you don't enter through a formal dining room You just enter straight into the kitchen and I perceive this is a very intriguing disruption in the conception of how we conceive space And the gestures and performances of formality and familiar familiarity This disruption the conception of space is also captured in an early poem that she wrote And this is also from the poem that you mentioned andres called come and see my home It's any place where no one gives orders But tread softly the walls breathe peace deep dark peace and the wind don't blow So her description reads like a direct yet foreboding invitation To come inside Partake in the calm and the peace yet you come with open and responsible consciousness The plan drawing the statement from besi in the poem and my own experience of entering Similar architectural structures as a child have demanded that besi head and a work as a garden and homemaker Sit squarely into not only the rethinking of our current consciousness of spatial practice But also provides possibilities of spatial practice as emancipatory From the outside the house looks very similar to any of or even the same as the 51 stroke nine houses that Were built for people that were moved to places like mannenberg Google air to ocean view and where my grandparents were moved to clufties wall But once you enter this house you realize that rain clouds is a complete new and creative disruption Of punitive apartheid council house And I mentioned earlier the impressive garden that surrounded the house And besi head from accounts that I've heard from friends and from reading a literature She was a prolific gardener and an experimental gardener There's a photo of her holding a biscuit tin With seeds and her beaming from ear to ear as she smiles into the camera She wrote letters to robber to book where the pan africanist leader And their exchange is actually only dealt on on on gardening here is this leader of the pan africanist movement He's in exile. He's in robin island. He's had all these very very traumatic experiences with the apartheid regime She has had traumatic experience as well and they write letters about gardening Which is very profound because on the one hand that this shows a kind of a connection that is beyond this kind of struggle for freedom But it also is a way to connect because at the time it was very very common for Political leaders as letters to be intercepted and to be banned So they were trying to make a connection through the spatial practice And apart from a personal garden besi was also part of a collective gardening project called the boy techo Where the principal aim was to grow food for communal use She made one of her best friends through this communal activity a woman called bocele sianana Who ended up being such a close confidant of besi heads that she organized and led besi's funeral in 1986 Meaning that according to african tradition sianana would be considered a significant family member The garden then becomes an important site where somebody like besi head who left south africa on an exit permit To settle in the strange country with a young son Can form deep friendships There exists a photo of besi and bocele as two young women in the boy techo garden The power of this image made it hard not to choose it somewhat reworked As a cover of the image for summer flowers pamphlet The garden and the home that she constructs becomes her As a refugee from apartheid A site where she begins to think from right from and where she begins to construct an archive that we are now sitting with And that we can begin to meditate on and think through the life of besi head Her gardening and her immense and her emancipatory practice The house in the garden becomes both a site of liberation for her as well as for others who follow and lead in her legacy let me just Share some of the images that I found in the archive of besi head and her mother that adopted her these were some of the Some of the collages that we were then made from the plant extracts that we Plant material that we found either at the zero warehouse or enforced removal sites in capetown and constructed another type of archive This comes from her house This is well acacia tree acacia piece and then we develop a kind of a public program with kids Well, not a public program is just a little workshop with my kids actually Sounds very lofty public program. No, we just played we played with images and we made these beautiful kids garden that the children actually made In my house and it was a way for me to transfer some of this Work that I was uncovering in the studio with my own children and their friends Learning from uwc one of the projects that we were very We were very privileged to participate in and to be Still party to is to construct or assist The university of the western cape To construct an arts school for them in the city now this sounds very simple for an american kind of context But first of all this university of the western cape is a university that was founded on the principle of separateness apartheid So this university was founded for racialized black people And which meant that they only had pedagogy and programs that would be in service for the apartheid state either as administrators or as clocks teachers and and the health care Art was not a consideration as an official pedagogy neither was music or Or or any of the kind of humanities based art practices They had humanities faculty, but this was definitely in service of training teachers High school teachers So the university of the western cape Found a building we assisted them in finding a building that could be renovated for this particular purpose and what we wanted to do as an as a kind of a As as architects as as principal agents for this project We wanted to learn from this university. What is the spatial practice despite the fact that they never had an official School of architecture was or technic on of architecture, but the practice the spatial practice was still existing and we coupled that kind of yearning for a learning of how to how to practice Within a university that was set up in those in those frames with this painting that was done in 1838 by Charles doily And it is essentially a kind of a very early depiction of the architecture of cape town Where you have the official buildings in the background The colonial buildings in the background But in the foreground you have a kind of a very unstable and precarious architecture that is around gathering people It is around some form of commerce People you need to Enter with respect and humility in this type of architecture. There's somebody that's going to give you a side eye And you know you need to build some kind of trust like the person in the middle of the of the tent is looking suspiciously At the other person and there's always people beyond this architecture So how do we think through this new school of architecture with this painting in mind the kind of a conflation of you know these various architectures and depictions of space in cape town and this is the building that was Identified for this purpose and it is a primary school building in woodstock, but the primary school was on the border of the The kind of fault line for where these group areas act was Was was kind of cordoned off So the landscape in cape town in south africa the group areas act made these borders around racialized And racialized neighborhoods and this one happened to be in the in the in the white neighborhood With the great moor street being that physical border where on the other side of the street It was demarcated for for black people So the university being a black university We really needed to disrupt this kind of apartheid geometry by first of all entering somewhere else entering You know the the entry onto great moor street was a Is a kind of a not universally friendly I know there's a lot of buildings on campus here where it's with steps and you know, there's a kind of a Crisis around how do we reconfigure these buildings to be make it universally accessible? but this building we ended up sculpting the courtyard and the foyer for this purpose of Reconfiguring this building for a arts purpose. So you can see that it's a very utilitarian building with a courtyard It is a typical sort of Facodian panopticon because the students were all separated by by gender the boys had to enter on one on one Entrance and the girls had to enter the girls and the infants had to enter on the other side So this lobby was also going to have to you know Disrupt that kind of gender roles and then the courtyard becomes a kind of a space of of subverting the panopticon This is a drawing of the of the the the situation All the buildings are more or less You know orientated towards each other And this building is very rare in that it already it orientates towards the sea and the harbor On the one side and the mountain on the other side side becomes a very rare site in in that in that in that space So what we did we spent a lot of time thinking about The approach How do we enter this building? How do we make a garden? How do we make the courtyard because the architecture is in a way already there? So the layer that we added was essentially this kind of garden element and this outdoor space And what you see on the plan is the kind of a new axis that we created to to in a way subvert the The apartheid geography of the fault line on this side So organizing people to enter into this new lobby area where you can begin to connect the great mall Street with with this new courtyard and then how do you then make this kind of big? Big gesture towards disrupting apartheid spatialities And then the the public floor is populated with exhibition space Public lecture rooms and but essentially the whole building becomes a kind of a theater space a performance space or art space So on the on the very lower level there is a big laboratory for the arts because one of the key programs that this new art school will do is to train people in kinetic objects puppetry arts and also Linking it to our one of some of our famous puppeteers the hands being puppet company would be Will be the mentors for a new puppet company called Okwanda And their role is to facilitate a new kind of arts practice so puppetry arts film and media music and and theater And we imagined this space to To be a space which is a garden which is a kind of a transparent space with this new lobby With acoustically sound and needed to kind of bring in light in a very particular way We imagined the space to be the courtyard to be weatherproof so that we can get sun in but also to keep it so that they can use it as a stage And then the lobby becomes this kind of elaborate stare in a way because the staircase was the device that actually Divided people so the lobby becomes the space where people begin to come together with a reading room That looks down onto it And then this is the kind of inside and the sort of way that this axis announces itself on the on the inside Building is currently under construction. We are on month 28 So we're supposed to be done next week And there was some very there was I'm going to share some of the sort of big moments is to put up the roof Just so you can get a sense of the kind of location This was when we were digging down and opening up the lobby And really getting into the kind of specialities of the courtyard And then you know the how the how the reading room begins to be articulated through Echoing some of the arches that were made and then I'm a mom. So this was a day when I Couldn't organize my life properly and get kids from school and drop them off and you know, so I just took everybody to site and We had to just improvise because Cape Town is a kind of a space where we have to just improvise a lot So meet my boys two of them Um, but essentially we be excited about this project because the garden is really becoming a kind of a space where It's both a reflective space. It becomes a space of repair a restoration social justice But in a very tangible You know way and we very very privileged to have worked with a very dynamic client Very dynamic program who has a lot of input in how this building has been imagined as well So the center for humanities research our flagship program in the humanities who have really imagined the space in this brief with us I'm going to quote from Bessie head Before I move into the next project She says The best way I can explain it is in the words of an industrial millionaire who used his money to conquer the interior of southern Africa His main area of conquest and he waged two wars against the people was Zimbabwe Which formerly had his name Rhodesia When he waged the last war of conquest in 1896 he said I have taken everything from them, but the air End of quote and Bessie head continues But the problem is more cute in South Africa. You look across the land as a black person and you feel choked You feel like even the air has been taken because so many vast areas Has been reserved for white occupation only. There's nothing there for black people End of quote and this is from an interview that Bessie head did in Australia in 1984 So in mid 2021 We were appointed through a public tender process by the city of Cape Town to develop a conservation management plan for Rhodes cottage The scope of the work included writing a statement of significance based on the history of the site as strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats analysis a SWAT analysis An action plan that would cover the management of the site in terms of securing public safety site conservation education and research in other words We were awarded the task of outlining how this building should be managed for public use In in order to do this task mindfully and creatively We first had to understand the building and its historic presence for ourselves We aligned our thinking with the opening epigraph of what Bessie just said the voice of Bessie head And therefore our attitude and approach towards the Rhodes Museum could definitely not be politically neutral So what we have is a building that is modest but stately and see-facing A cottage along the false way of Cape Town And functions as a house museum Dedicated to the life of Cecil John Rhodes. I don't know if anybody of you know who that is But I'll explain if for those who may not be familiar But the house in form part of Rhodes is very large estate and is state that once included the University of Cape Town Khrutiski Manor House Now the South African presidential home Boschendal farm and many other Very very big important gardens including Kirsten Bosch gardens And Rhodes acquired the house as a holiday cottage in 1899 in Musenburg in an area Which at the time consisted of a few farms and a number of fishing huts The timing of Rhodes's purchase and his use of the house coincides with the South African War that unfolded period 1899 and 1902 The war was officially began in october 1899 And in part as a consequence of the failed jemisin raid that instigated by Rhodes and his compatriots in 1885 There was also a camp during the war that was set up for people's cooperation and when the war ended in 1902 a few months after Rhodes's death and despite many Owning many more illustrious and expansive property properties in Cape Town He chose this relatively humble Humble cottage near the Atlantic Ocean Because he was ill And because of the access to fresh air Which was beneficial for him in order to recover from a lifelong medical condition He spent his final weeks in the front bedroom of the cottage with an oxygen cylinder by his bed And the gas was fed to him by a glass funnel held in the front of his face But he also requested that one of his aides Crudely knock a hole through one of the walls Of the bedrooms so that the air breeze can go through So this is a guy that took everything but the air and then he couldn't breathe so There are other details of of of roads that You know I could expand on On this death Like the fact that when he died The South African government obeyed Rhodes's request that his remains be transported by train From his house to the Matopo Hills A mass of granite hills situated south of Bulaway on Zababwe Over 2,000 kilometers away and stopping at every major city I'll come back to that but in essence You know This pilgrimage with the with the body of roads was done in order so that each major city can pay respects to road But what we don't really see in in the presentation is for instance You know the fact that you must the killer wrote this red Nowhere in the house do you find for instance the song sizzle roads Composed by you must the killer and recorded in 1976 the colonial man Or you don't find the books by Dambutsu Marashira Zimbabwean writer who grew up in Rhodesia under Ian Smith's regime And with cutting precision described the colonial situation in black sunlight In a way the museum doesn't even make mention of all the major disruptions and and and And and student student Transformative uprisings against roads and his legacy in 2015 in which the roads must full movement happen in which the The statue of roads was was was was erased was taken down So in essence what we wanted to do with this building is to find out other histories find out the history of roads because roads this history only accounts for three years of the site And we found in the archive that the oldest part of the house is thought to have been built by a fisherman We found many of the photographs of the house in the museum the house is really like a stuffy kind of museum for them But this little image of the fisherman's cottage really gave us a clue to think about the kind of Other things that could also possibly Give us light on on that. So What I wanted to also just think about is and and and include in the plan is how can we begin to think Otherwise around this history of roads With the fact that you know, they were Filipino migrants that were also working in the area There were people from Sierra Leone coming as migrants They were slave histories and all these kinds of histories plays played out on the site or surrounded And what we did with all this information we put it into our into our report And we diligently compiled it together with the kind of a maintenance plan, which is very practical about you know You'd have a painting schedule. We have this like a kind of a repair schedule But together with this very practical maintenance plan We offered the city of Cape Town this other kind of ethic this other kind of history and this other way of thinking about this space And we compiled it in our report Currently the building as I said is dominated by the history of roads the building and its site is over 200 years old And the plan proposed a broader more inclusive retelling of the history of the site This history includes that that of the enslaved persons working class black and brown immigrants And histories beyond the border of South Africa Our plan and our ethics of engagements was largely approved by the city of Cape Town They had no issue with it, but the main stakeholder the musenberg historical conservation society I've also called them the musenberg hysterical conservation society They are the museum curators they heavily opposed the plan And submitted an 11 page document undermining and contesting the plan on the grounds that its purpose is to delegitimize the property And that roads this old road and to kind of punt for the fact that we want to erase erase roads as history completely And i'll quote what they said Delegitimize the property and to that social john i mean their grammar wasn't great guys. Sorry i'm reading it As they said it to me I'll try again delegitimize the property and to that social john road should be erased completely dot dot dot Or relegated to a dark corner and thoroughly cancelled in the most brutal terms This was the Last year the feedback I got from the society And then the paragraph on the fact that we wanted to include other histories was viciously anti-white We were also told that our research on the presence of enslaved peace enslaved people's histories were emotive Finally and here is where I cannot divide deny that indeed Emotionality is emotionally provoke me when I read this phrase But they were saying that The fact that indigenous societies roamed and occupied the landscape Is irrelevant because they were mainly Exterminated by a more By a more powerful society. This is what they wrote back to me in 2021 So we were prepared for some pushback But the extent to which this would reveal certain parts of society's passion for denying historical spatial violence Was an unwelcome surprise It reinforced out our sense that A constant practice of work is required that diffuses and questions dominant histories Of place and to offer a renewed insights that are both practical conceptual and imaginative The engagement reaffirmed That we should indeed embrace Unprofessionalness because they also call us unprofessional by the way And we want to embrace our unprofessionalness And in order to construct these places of freedom So how do we return to a space of breathe breathing? Come and see my home is any place where nobody gives orders tread softly the walls breathe peace Deep dark black peace and the wind don't blow. This is what BC heads is and currently The roads cottage is in service of a museum operations in the memory of Cecil John Rhodes The history of the buildings on the side could be traced to other fishermen's Legacies enslave people's legacies The owner of the building together with operations and the management team should embrace these new versions of roads instead They push back But luckily we have the kind of authorities and the legal frameworks that support us At least in this in this instance Our idea is that this space should actually be returned to a space of breathing Because that is the one thing that is actually the core heritage of the site. So we also then Proposed that the space which is a very beautiful site in in a very beautiful part of Cape Town Should be a kind of a space of reflection Reflect our space that is opened up to people that were on the other side of this violent history and that they should be kind of space of leisure and breathing and workshop and reflection Here's us to some of the historical space And this is a just a email. I got the other day from the society. I did not subscribe to this email Link, but they're sending it to me anyway Reminding us that Rhodes's birthday is coming up and we should Do something About it. So this is an ongoing kind of, you know, practice from their side How do we think about these big issues when it comes to public infrastructure? We were very again lucky to be commissioned a public school and Very particular public school which is a a school for learners with special educational needs And these kinds of school are schools that are beyond the mainstream kind of educational framework And have very particular needs, but the clients provincial government Give you a very very ordinary brief. They give you a number of classrooms. They give you a number of Program and they give you the kind of Standard list of things that a school needs. So it's a special Educational needs school, but the brief is very ordinary So we had to also then expand the brief. We spoke to Joey van Royen the principal We were not allowed to speak to her, but we ended up just speaking to her to understand What is the requirements and the requirements firstly is that it should be in a site within a context because very often these buildings are cited Religated far into a kind of not part of a kind of a material context Which stigmatizes these schools in very particular ways. It took us two years to find a new site We came up with all kinds of excuses why the site that the government gave us was inappropriate in the end We found a very kind of practical Reason that it's going to be too costly to get rid of underground services And then they agreed that they need to find another site two years of advocacy And to get started So this is the site eventually which is in a very gentle suburban neighborhood in Cape Town I mean as a gentle slope and is integrated with a with a kind of a wider community The plan that we that we that we proposed was a very simple elaborate plan Which is how do we stack these different classrooms to form a kind of a rival court? And then to make a kind of a Arrival court that is both outside and then that is in mirrored or complimented by a big kind of interior assembly space So what you see in the plan is the kind of void here of the Of the of the arrival court here with the assembly space and then these kinds of rooms that are Are facing each other in between these rooms and this is the kind of thing that we had to almost sneak into the plan are these tall And tall corridors which becomes these Airfold spaces because one of the things that we found out in our conversations with Joey is that a lot of these children suffer from respiratory diseases Which a corridor wouldn't actually Work out Would complement and actually exasperate that problem. But at the same time We can't have these big open playgrounds, you know, because the playgrounds also cause problems of how to contain the groups and how to how to allow the teachers to organize their the The kind of groups in in in safe ways the children are very prone to overstimulation Which means that any triggers will will cause a kind of a havoc that will not allow Educate the pedagogy to flow. So these internal corridors with With light at each end becomes a kind of a playground It becomes a place a space where they can contain The the kids and it's a place where they can have easy surveillance But also it was a very limited budget the budget wasn't The budget that was given to us was the exact budget to every single school. So I think it was It is a very modest budget. So our materials had to be extremely modest Which meant that we then use all our material qualities in the kind of Lower level which is plaste and brick and then these corridors become these expressions of both kind of architectural Light and and and tectonic expression. So what you see then here is I'm sorry What you then see is these That's that is open to the to the arrival court with a big canopy and I'll show you in the photographs You have classrooms with no windows to that side with light coming from the top And then windows to these corridors and then these are all on the open on either side to allow air to flow through but also contains The playground so that the children can actually use these areas as a kind of an extension of the classroom that they are in We made multiple models the models are for us to advocate for how to How to come with in budget basically? So we these multiple models are a way to show the the the clients that We actually are stripping away. We try to see how much material we can strip away to still get the exact effect So we made these models to kind of see the effects of a simple pearl and being taken away or you know, how many you know, which members we can we can save on you know and because these corridors gets light from the southern light it creates this kind of effect of of a very gentle light but also allows Air to move through What we found is that these these corridors and these play spaces that really become part of The the playground part of the space, but it becomes an enclosed but also an open space for children to play safely The arrival court Was very Very very we were very specific about how to drop off the kids because I don't know if anybody has you must There must be people who have Experience with dropping of children at school, but it is a huge mess You know nobody follows the rules in terms of way to park way to do this. Well, I mean in our context Especially but in this case We needed to pay special attention to it because the parents have to Take the kids physically to the school and get handed over properly by the teacher Which meant that we always had to have this very efficient drop off zone Where the pavement becomes that kind of extension and kind of a stoop to the building and where you park you park and you drop off And you sort of move around in a very efficient way And this becomes a kind of the court area of the space What you see in the background is the assembly hall And the workshops next to that And the assembly hall But you can see that what we've tried to do is we've used all the money and the material into the kind of bricks Down here and then a kind of a light structure in there to to really just become to come within budget our assembly hall needed to be Both of us a space to to lift and care for the children But most importantly what we found out with our discussions with With the principle is that the people that need even more care are the teachers and the parents Because those are the people are looking after kids with these special educational needs on a daily basis And the hall becomes a kind of a homage to that work as well In the way that we've we've articulated it I think this is the last project that i'll show What we're thinking about here in and especially in the GSAP studio with our students is the idea of convoviality And it is a kind of a deal of how do we gather how do we construct the spaces that we gather? How do we consider architecture as participating in those spaces of convoviality of how do we make In plain english words friendly spaces basically But I love this kind of thinking about Fred Moten and Manolo Callahan that convoviality becomes a kind of a mechanism for social cohesion and peacekeeping so It's within that frame that I just maybe want to show you our house in observatory, which is a refurbishment of a victorian house that we We refurbished and bought nearly 20 years ago and a very very ordinary setting with ordinary neighbors But what we wanted to do is we wanted to make a space that is both convovial for our family and for our dynamics as a family But at some points we really like to make this building a public building because You know, we often have You know kind of open events. We have You know children's workshops and how do we what what are the kinds of mechanisms that we use to have your house? Which is your private space? but at some point it can actually just act in some ways as a As a public space and one of the things that made me realize That your house could operate like that is when I was started having these children's workshops children's art workshops We a friend of a friend of mine and I we started on a Wednesday having these workshops and then the parents would come to the house But they won't just drop the kids. They would sit there And do their work like it's a co-working space And have a coffee my mom would have to make coffee for people And you know it become a public space because you know these workshops are Are open, you know, so they expect it to be served as in a public space, you know in my house So it was a very interesting dynamic that suddenly yes, your house is now a a cafe a co-working space A kind of another space But the architecture is open to that and what we try to do is we needed to configure this square block as as various rooms We made this diagram long time ago because this is the extension That's a 10 by 10 cube and within the cube you have this living room the outside room We've got the existing ceilings, which are very cellular, but then what brings it all together is this kind of Rotating space, you know, so we went up into the into the into the Into the the ceiling to create more space and then there's very sort of You know curtain wall that that begins to subtly like make a kind of a boundary But the idea is that it really becomes this kind of continuous continuous space through the materials that we use the color of the of the of the walls and the The the toilet actually is becoming this disruptor On the on the left hand side you have the existing or sorry This is the plan as when we got it So this is the existing architecture with a kind of a strange little pimple of a Of a room in the courtyard and this is what we did where we Demolished that and demolished that and made this kind of big room that begins to articulate in various ways Luckily the building had a kind of a level change so we could really begin to articulate the kind of dynamics in volume together with the material and This is a section where you can imagine part of the wall just opening up so you can see into the into the space of A little modest home with a courtyard Yes in Cape Town this is Cape Town an observatory Really No, this is not New York. This is my home in Cape Town, South Africa Yeah, so yeah, this is this is the kind of result of that spatial manipulation through light color and and materials That is the courtyard on a very good day doesn't look like that And this is this is when the kids take over So this is the space where we make our art where you do the workshops it becomes this public space and This is what we did one day. It took me an hour It took me an hour to cover the courtyard with white paper. It took five minutes for the kids to fill it up With charcoal and with with all that materials And then to sort of bring it back to the installation in Chicago is that when we make these installations We also think about a kind of a domestic convivial space of engagement because that is how we can transfer information knowledge through conversation through conviviality. This was a very very Important capture at the Chicago annual where our neighbors were the Reebok foundation in the in the in the biannual And we were in conversation around the struggles in Palestine Together with the struggles in South Africa with with the Reebok leaders from the Reebok foundation And this I just put in for fun to inspire the studio that we're doing earners coal to think about ways of making publication as a kind of a meditative act and a way of um, you know Being playful, but also quite intentional and how we construct these these These radical, you know expressions of of how we can remake publications Conviviality in acts in the kind of a bigger space and bigger scale where we for one project We organized a funeral for a building that no longer is a cinema and in the funeral was part of a arts project where we engaged with a funeral Band, um, you know performers and they basically took the funeral members down the road and performed funeral songs and also music from the jazz The jazz performer that we were paying homage to called winston mong kung kung so in conclusion and in and as a way of of Of concluding and holding all these aspects of our practice I want to share with you this image of a woman called katrina majit um The house that katrina majit built in this photograph is about 31 years old this year um Paul grendan captured her building this house a ronda haze around house In a place called sundrift near steincoppe and what is today known as a northern cape what we see in this image Is her building the house from materials that she gathered from um around her And also her using a physical strength to bend the frames which would later be enshrouded with woven mats The mats will cover and shield her against harsh sun during the day and cold air at night but what we also see Are her belongings and a person maybe a family member Already inside this construction in process In other words, she is building around what she already has With what she has gathered And around what she has gathered At many traditional architecture schools We do not learn about this particular intelligence of building And if we do it is framed as a tradition of the past rather than a practice of the present When we learn to make buildings in architecture schools, the traditional curriculum Demands that we conceive of the new building as a potential new and empty space Later to be filled with things accumulated over time The idea of the tabula rasa the so-called clean slate still dominates our curriculum Empty sites vacant lots and open land is assumed and often a prerequisite There to fall with new innovative ideas held together with walls that would divide up service and service spaces Clarity in order is equated with elegance and sophistication But here we see the opposite and I think our practice is constantly in commune with Katrina Majid When we're trying to think about restorative justice spatial justice repair architecture of consequence and also the beauty of making and Our and renewing our habits of assembly. Thank you very much Well, okay, I'll start Well, first of all It's really beautiful and moving. Thank you very much. I'm incredible You said When I first saw you said storytelling And it was not only storytelling. I thought there was this level of intimacy that We rarely find Not only in in the work, but also in your presentation of the work the the personal to Taking us to your your own house Take to taking you to your own house um to this final image, which I'm Incredibly moved by and It seems to me that that intimacy actually operates across All of the scales of the work from the from the school It was also about sort of intimacy and finding intimate moments to Bessie heads Garden and I'm wondering if Maybe we can just kind of talk about intimacy for For a little bit. Yeah Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to I mean, I think intimacy is something that we shy away from many times because we are so, you know, have to be these kind of people that you know Perform in particular ways and also intimacy asked that we become vulnerable Which we don't always want to do right because we're protective and and all of that But I think I think the time is right for that now. I think the time is right to really become In commune with what we what we're doing, you know, because I think that we need to be closer to what we're doing I mean, I'm very also reminded of Somebody like Giatris Piva could talks about critical intimacy, you know critical intimacy is that Yes, I am critical and I'm a thinking person when I'm thinking about the work about the discipline But I'm it requires a kind of closeness And that is what I learned when we were doing the work on the on the factory Because on the one hand it has such a terrible history, right? And it has a kind of a very, um, you know a treacherous You know brutality towards that kind of architecture and what it's set up But how can we still, you know, learn from that and how can we actually take our discipline very seriously, right? And read those spaces in other ways and I think that is that is very important in our work, you know Just to think about critical intimacy in the way we read our work and thinking about intimacy when we commune with others and Yeah, I mean I think to to I mean for me, I'm just sort of getting my feet back underneath because I'm so intimately Familiar with so many other places that you showed um In a very different time So I One thing that's related to this question is I'm really interested. I've heard you talk about the how essential it is to develop A social imagination As a way of moving forward, can you talk a little bit about that? Of course yes, um, I um the work that we do is around Developing a social imagination, but also a collective imagination because many of the times we when we have When we look at the spaces that have been lost Yes, it is the architecture. Yes, it is the roads the the actual the actual material of these neighborhoods You know and my father was victim of that, you know, he lost his entire neighborhood. There's a parking lot now there but what's also lost is the kind of You know imagination or the kind of collective imagination and those networks that form that So people have been moved all over and these spaces hold a kind of a Hold those memories in very particular ways And the work that we do is also to build a bolder kind of a um Yeah, build a kind of a space for for people to be collective Be collectively free for moments and to be and and and commune collectively and also kind of, you know, like mourn collectively I know somebody like Oran Pamuk talks about Istanbul and kind of The hozun that the melancholy that we feel, you know, and I think every space has a kind of a particular feeling You know and to think through that that emotion and to work through that emotion is Very very very important for the social imagination So could So To tie that to We're sort of the beginning of a semester. I guess everyone's kind of involved in research and We call it sort of research phase of work. Can you talk a little bit about how research operates? In your practice in relation to the development of social imagination. Yes, and um, yeah Yeah, I mean we I mean First of all, I don't yeah, there's there's research and there's a kind of gathering of knowledge But there's also research for the gathering of wisdom, right? So we are interested in gathering wisdoms And that's why we need to be quite intimate with like what we know How we know and the ethics that are constructed around that So we don't get any like our practice doesn't get any points for publishing things in journals for instance or You know, you know, some of the some of the kind of typical things that you would get as a researcher in academic sphere, right? We we draw on the research to to be able to act ethically, you know through our practice and to enable us to To act with informed with a kind of a sense of in like we are informed about what we're doing and in that way other things come out of that But it all it seems that that I mean again the research I like the distinction between knowledge and Wisdom that you're very careful to make maybe we can talk a little bit about that as well But but your work is definitely I mean Everybody has to look at the projects that weren't presented to begin to understand sort of the incredible breadth and depth but It to me it seemed that your practice really is exemplary of a new form of research the way that research operates now in this moment of precarity, so it's not this the kind of a Prelude to The actual project it is the project. It has agency. It's able so I'm thinking of Rogoff's writing about Yeah, I can feel that palpably You're doing yeah, yeah, I mean we are engaging with edit Rogoff's work around You know how we work today and you know serious play and all those things Students are you guys must yeah? It's in the syllabus But um, yeah, so so that is definitely a kind of an extension of that thinking But I would actually argue that these this research method only just actually very old and we've forgotten them You know, um, for instance if you look at the work of somebody like so plucky Who pressed flowers when he was doing native life, you know We are kind of performing those acts again in and as a homage to his work somebody like Bessie had Basically just wrote about what she was experiencing when she was gardening So these these kinds of methodologies of research that it could seem new But I think um, they're very old the old traditions of storytelling and of thinking through and and gathering wisdoms in that way And like really questioning and I like the use the term archive, but you really fundamentally saying when we think about Research as accumulating documents and documents are things that are written But documents the term really means things that teach and so when you're Pressing flowers, you know, the geology is part of an archive and the DNA of a plant or I mean, it's it's And knowing some of the other the projects in your approach to sites it's um that that Schism between the kind of preparatory work and then the actual design work does not seem to be active Yeah, maybe uh Continuing to talk about That difference between sort of knowledge and wisdom When you said that I was reminded of a I'm not going to remember the full quote But I I think the students will because I I put it on things before tony marson writes about the difference between information data And wisdom Right and the the danger of confusing The three and it seems to me for example with the besi Head is that she was actually still speaking to you. Oh, yeah through through the writing So it wasn't you weren't extracting something, but you were listening to To her and maybe that's where the transmission some of the transmission in terms of Wisdom, yeah sort of occurs. Yeah, I mean besi head speaks to us and katrina magid through That photograph, you know, um, which are complete like You know debunking of the pedagogy actually you really take that photograph seriously You know and it talks on conceptual ways of how can we make space? A lot more communal a lot more, um, you know, you know, yeah about sustaining relationships And um, yeah So so there's these wisdoms if you I think one has to learn how to look And learn how to read and learn how to think, you know, yeah And it strikes me in particular with that Last image which I'm still taken by that I mean that was a I don't want to say a different but or an other But it was a Yeah, maybe I will use the word different a different way of knowing space. I mean it was definitely a spatial practice but it was a A way in which the body was engaged in it you talked about sort of Building around what you have Rather than kind of making something and then filling it With other things. So there was already a knowledge about what's needed. Yeah, right to kind of construct or make Enclosure around exactly. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, and that knowledge gets passed on and it's it's part of a leg It's part of a kind of a tradition or and yeah, it's part of a history. There's a history as well Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's one of the things that Strikes me about what I think is an extraordinary semester this semester with the advance six studios is that we're We are being sort of Gifted if you will by people like yourself and you know, the other critics are kind of bringing this to us that There are these other ways of of knowing and and and thinking about pedagogy Can I ask you one question about humor because I mean I the the pamphlet I I may be wrong in my sort of absorption of that it to me You are forcing people to say a word in An accent and a dialogue that is particular to Cape Town So the word pamphlet, which is linked to pamphlet architecture here Saying it as a pamphlet pamphlet that it's spelled that there must be this incredible pleasure hearing people Say the words I mean, I just wrote it the way I spelled it the way that my collaborator actually would say it or his uncle actually Um, he used to say we had okay I'll tell you the story about the name of how it came up But we were working on this publication on on the history of a cinema and we had a drink one evening And his uncle opa was now passed and his uncle is a He educates he's got a long legacy of having a school in johannesburg downtown johannesburg. We advocate Sort of activists were teaching were being taught So the school is dedicated to teaching activists and then have a kind of a pedagogy around the methodologies of activists The history of activists and teaching people how to become activists So he was listening to our project and making a little publication. He said, ah, you guys are pamphleteers That's what you are, you know So I just dedicated to that name pamphleteers because it is a very particular kind of activism Practice the urgency of getting something out And a very small modest You know booklet That gets the information in a very urgent way. There's no real kind of thinking about Editorial project, you know, there's no there's mistakes in there. You just scratch out the mistakes. You tape over the mistakes It's rough It's zeroxed and the way he said it was basically how I how we ended up. Yeah, how we ended up I'm talking about it Maybe before we open it up for questions Um, uh, can you talk a little bit more about the Rhodes Cottage? Because uh The global Africa lab of which I'm co-director along with maybe Wilson. We were doing work in in Cape Town at the time that got interrupted because of the students protest and the and roads must fall and Maybe I mean, what's it like to work on that? I mean, I'm thinking humor irony. It's Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's an absurd space. It's really an absurd surreal space And I was I never knew about that space Because it's also quite hidden. It's prominent, but it's hidden, right? So, um, they've they've the the hysterical society has they've they've succeeded in kind of having this underground but quite mainstream also Little shrine for roads people come from Zimbabwe and Zambia to come and visit it, you know And you know, they they're aware that it's not cool, but they keep going You know, and I think the Cape City of Cape Town have made this kind of project available To address it in some ways, but they were also sort of it was a public tender You know, we sort of put our name in a in a box at City of Cape Town And whichever verity to work comes up then we get a call. It's completely like we don't have any control of the projects that we get We can't say yes or no At the time we were very low on work. So we couldn't really choose what we wanted to do So we got the project in and as we we we discussed it as a team Because the archive is incredibly rich, you know, there's so much and the City of Cape Town is sitting on all this archival stuff and You know, we produce a very like simple plan because it didn't You know, it's very well maintained actually But it is all kinds of issues around safety for the for the public for the City of Cape Town They own the building, but they have this other system where they can You know, tendered out to a kind of a society to run a museum for five years So they've got hold of the space for five years after that a new organization must come in Yeah, so there is a space for that to happen over time But because I've just signed the lease in the next five years, they're going to have to just roll with that But it's yeah, I mean that's the reality of the situation You know, that's the reality of our society at that point A kind of a stubborn cling to like these material material histories And the resistance to change You know Maybe we should open it up. I'm sure there are lots of questions I just want to say that I'm proud of fellow African And uh fellow south african, uh I've grew up with Mandela and Maria Mckeva Now we have Preeti Yende at the Metropolitan, no pride, you know there Trevor Noha and I don't know about Elon Musk, but we have good south africans here, so that's a good thing I don't know him. I don't know what you want to talk about I have to question number one I grew up in Africa in Ethiopia, so we don't have any colonial Experience in Ethiopia, so I didn't see any Colonial, you know Architecture or design per se Do you look at other nations in Africa or in maybe India? That were colonized for for many years and how they were impacted Maybe Kenya or some other country and number two There's a Zimbabwean architect It's probably in his 90s now, but his name is mick pierce He He did like biomimicry. He built One in Harari and one in millboard And it mimicked Termites how they build their you know termite mud And he tried to save and he did save about 90% of energy cost and it was more of a local knowledge That he used and did you hear anything about him? And I was really fascinated by what he did So if you can say something about that, thank you You want okay, I respond to that Or can take a few maybe Do you want yeah, just go So your question is about whether I whether we look at other architecture from other African countries Yeah Yeah, yeah, I mean we do yeah, I mean So Our the reason I mean our work is very embedded in terms of you know the place and but I think the methodology is we've Gathered wisdoms from all over So, yeah, I don't really know if I'm going to answer your question properly, but And I have heard of mick price. Is it mick price, right? There's a Morgan Architect, yeah Hi, um, thank you for being here. Thank you for your presentation and thinking about the notion of prekeleving history A dealing with historical drama and how Racial operation are still deeply ingrained for example in post-colonial South Africa Can you expand on what you believe the role of architects and architecture should be in advancing towards justice? In advancing what what was that? What is the last bit of your question? Okay Can you expand on what you believe the wider role of architects and architecture should be in advancing? towards justice towards justice, yeah That's a big question I don't know if I have the answer for it, but I think we have to just be keep ourselves very informed I think we need to just educate ourselves very deeply with the issues, you know because I think I think the the kind of tradition of architectural practice is that You know You go in there and you do something You know, so how do we do with? Being attuned to the situation, you know And I think there is a there's a different role, you know, like we we have to practice we have to keep on going we have to think you know keep on thinking but I think we need to be critical also of the tradition of the way we've acted in the past and the way The discipline has been very complicit with Some of with creating some of these power structures Please don't ask difficult questions Oh, here you go. I think one of your students Hey I mean it it was like a very inspiring lecture first of all, but going back to that to the previous question um You also mentioned restorative justice in the end and one of the things that I find So powerful like in About restorative justice is the role of stories and individual narratives and and and like the importance of every individual so Can you talk a little bit more about? How the stories the individual stories are Very are influence I mean can influence, you know your work, uh because There is I don't know like since the very beginning when you say like instead of I'm going to And like showing some projects is more I'm going to tell you some stories So and also how you are always Like talking about the research, but also how your Kids for example are part of that like of your research. So I don't know like it is very Inspiring so I just want to know more about the stories and the role of the architecture Yeah, I mean storytelling is a is a kind of a very ancient technology And I think we we need to kind of train ourselves in that technology because it has all kinds of healing Properties it's got ways of how we gather, you know Stories have a particular power because if you look at the story around roads cottage There's a big story there that just dominated for no real reason, you know And people constructed that narrative and it had a spatial implication A very big spatial implication Both on a kind of a global scale But also on the scale on this little cottage about the sea and you know It had a major impact. So we need to inform ourselves of other stories And we need to inform ourselves how to how to create Stories that are immense a patriot, you know the think about restorative justice and restore some of the things that we lost, you know Do you hear me hi hi Because your practice is so interdisciplinary I was wondering How do you keep it open in terms of collaborations? Because I know you work with your husband, right? So I wonder as a future architect after this program, how do you still Kind of Stay open stay open to collaborating with other people or other disciplines in that matter I mean, I think we need other people We are we definitely we cannot do this. I can't do this alone, you know So the collaboration with with Heinrich is around Making a kind of a structure for this work to happen Being responsible for that structure because as a business we are responsible for You know making making sure that people are You know that we pay people at the end of the month decent salaries So we need to be funded we need to go out and you know as much as we construct these buildings We need to construct connections to in order to sustain our practice, you know This is not the kind of a studio where we can just do whatever we want And that's on the one end. But and also our practice remains open to kind of people that are Doing work that resonates with our work, right? But in other disciplines. So For instance, we work with people that I have a very particular reading of space through music or through Through conceptual art or through Writing, you know, so we and through the work that through our own interest You realize that there are people that are interested in plants in particular ways. There are people that are interested in For stream mobiles There are people interested in food and you make these kinds of connections through a kind of a big project like Bessie head for instance or you know this a project that we're doing in the studio now through Ernest Cole We're looking at photography in very particular ways. It's interdisciplinary But how do we make those connections that enhance our understanding of space? in different ways and I think we need those connections because I think these siloed discipline Discrete disciplinary is a is a kind of a fiction, right? It's a kind of a bizarre Way that we constructed it for ourselves, you know In the kind of a professional term, you know, yeah Then if that answered your question Yeah So I I really loved your story about putting the paper down for an hour And then the kid's filling it up in five minutes and it really annoying But it I think it speaks to I think a very common experience of You know Maybe taking three or four hours to cook a meal for you know, your friends and then Everyone eats it while it's hot and you know 15 minutes or something like that. And yet that's why we Do it, you know, that's why we we take that time And so I think that there's this this way in which like The work of the design is it it prepares the grounds eats the grounds for these moments But just like in in cooking a meal Or in marking paper You know the like you're gonna have to cook another meal the next day And the next day on the next day and so I guess I'm I'm kind of curious about How you see the architecture of the designer's role is in Kind of repeating the motion or preparing the ground over and over again Yeah, and I think that's the work because there's a difference between work that we do You know as as a kind of with discrete outcomes and work that we do as ritual or as like You know pattern or as a kind of work Work as a kind of a devotion, you know So cooking is a kind of and Haenuch has talks a lot about work Work as a kind of a devotion to others This is his idea around particularly the Bahá'í temple for instance, you know that we just constructed in the Congo, which I didn't go into but There's a kind of a you know a devotional act towards our Towards work that you could go into But the thing is I'm saying that it's annoying that the kids did that but it is a joy to that, you know There's a kind of a joy that oh, yes, of course, you know, let's just do this thing together And that is the kind of thing about conviviality. I think it's about how do we how do we work together in convivial ways where Maybe yes today you are setting the ground but tomorrow you are actually doing the drawing You know these things overlap and they change and you know, we learn from each other, you know, we learn from each other You know the kids saw me doing the the the putting the paper down so they can do it next time, right? And it's a kind of a A very motion. There's a like a mobility in that kind of work, right? And it's not so discreet and it goes back to your question around interdisciplinarity because You know, these things are not stable, you know, they move and they they interweave in interesting ways So I think we need to think about work differently as well, you know Work as as as collective work, right? Rather than, you know, this kind of individual pursuits Yeah, it seems to me that that's where the You know the constructing conviviality, right that and that it's ongoing Right that it doesn't, you know, it's not constructed. It's constructing so it's it's a continuous process It's a practice. I guess is what I would say, right? Yes, of course Yeah, I wanted to ask Regarding this concept or that is throughout your practice of creating these uh convivial spaces How you approach that in in the component of more like your curatorial practice Because it was like beautiful to see how How within the an exhibition space like the what was happening in the same last was happening in the courier was the same as what's happening in most of the Spaces that your practice Creates so so there was like in in there was happening a conversation. No, so I am so I would like to know a little bit more on how you approach the Yeah, the opportunities within the exhibitions and curatorial practices through the lenses or like what what how you see and what is the meaning That they have for you what opportunities they bring for you to expand on your own Uh approach to everything else you do Yeah, if it makes sense Yeah, no does I mean so you're asking about some of the work that we do like for instance by pianales and things like that Yeah, so the the chicago architecture by pianale was a very particular Kind of invitation because yes, so many sepache and paolo. They really worked hard to support A project, right? So they didn't ask for um, you know an exhibition of work You know, they wanted to grow something with us and at the time I said to them I'm looking at this busy head's house and you know, would you be interested? I mean, I don't even it was a very sketchy thing So they were like yes, and is it there's a kind of a trust from the curators that comes with with that Trusting a process, you know, we didn't know what we're going to put up there You know in the end it was a foam. It was a many things. It's still ongoing but those kinds of Invitations are really important for us to develop work right to develop to get the resources number one to develop work to develop our thinking and to develop a kind of a position And to develop, you know ideas around how we work. So they definitely are important not so much, you know, you know, chicago is a beautiful place, you know But it's not it's not so much being in that very like, you know Glamorous space of chicago, right? But it's about the support that you get from from from curators and from from people Curatorial work actually means to take care That is the kind of meaning of it, right? How do you take care of somebody's work somebody's thought process and they they really did that Hello, hello Since we are thinking about how to I guess work in studio convivially I guess my question Maybe goes back a little bit to lindy your point about research I I feel like there is some effortlessly visible Way methodology in which that you're navigating the space between intuition creativity and research and a rigor However, I think that as architects or architecture students these days It's quite hard to get into that mind space and creating kind of the environment or even Sort of a community in which these kind of collaborative collaborative work could happen. So I wonder What what would you say or what was your What's your opinion in terms of how to create an A space in which that today's students can actually Create become this convivial collaborative groups in some sense. This is the challenge for us as well this semester but I I wonder was What's your take on it? I think the habits need to be re-looked at because these are habits, right? These are habits. These are Some of them are bad habits that we just need to undo and learn, you know And I think we need to work together, you know to think to to kind of identify the bad habits or the habits that Are not productive anymore, you know or not kind of pushing work together and not thinking What it is and then just try and I think we you know The space of the the pedagogical space is the space of experimentation, right? And how we need to experiment these things experiment and really be quite intentional with what we what the desired outcome is so if the if the provocation is Let's work collectively. Let's work Convervially Take it seriously, you know, that's the provocation It's not something that I'd like, you know You know, it's it's like a like. Yeah, it's like, you know, I want like normally the Studios would say I'd like a model and a plan, you know And nobody would question that right because you know, that's what you do But this other thing about working convivially, can we take it seriously? Can we take it as a challenge, you know, can we think through together about that? You know, thank you It's a prerequisite Yeah Hi Thank you so much. Um, I wanted to follow up to that question actually about creating this convivial space whether it be in your home or in the studio or On a larger scale within curatorial work Part of the I think challenge is that it becomes very I'd say part of the strength is the intimacy, but also the challenge comes from this intimacy becomes It becomes very centralized upon these individualized relationships Especially if people as you say have not developed these habits yet But also part of the difficulty is that habits have a tendency to Unravel or we have regressions or we go back to our old ones. So I'm curious when you think of I don't want to say legacy, but when you think of creating this conviviality beyond Your any institution that you're a part of or any type or even beyond your house like how do you have other people Maintain this community outside of that the space that you're personally involved in So so the question is about how does one maintain these Convivial relationships Is that your question by interpreting it correctly after the after the after the studio is finished or After the project's finished. I don't I don't actually Maybe you can just clarify Yeah, how to I think how to maintain these convivial relationships over the long term But also how to ensure that I think part of the conviviality is also not just when one is involved personally in it But also among the other Groups or members of the community Even when one is absent from that group. So I'm curious how those two types of Maintenance once one in terms of the relationships that you're involved in but also Second in terms of community that you might not actively or physically Be present and yeah, I don't know. I mean it's so difficult because you know, you got to just you got to be quite like You know Yeah, kind of free that it might not you know work in the way that you wanted to but also Quite free to just go for it. You know in the best in the most serious way possible, right and also accept that maybe It might not work for everyone. I don't know, you know But it seems to me there is something You in talking about the the roads cottage you said they called you unprofessional and you said yes Sometimes you have to embrace unprofessionalism. Yes. So it may be that the expectation is after you leave this situation that you're going to somehow Then adhere to being quote-unquote professional But maybe conviviality is actually not professional or is being unprofessional. Yeah, there's a level of so kind of like, you know Unprofessionality or Intimacy is what you what I maybe think about that within the context of the roads cottage They were really expecting a very dry document that's going to tell them exactly when they must Schedule the paintwork on February 2nd 2025 and then they must do that then they must do that, you know But how can we do that like without it will just be like bizarre to act in that way And ignore everything else, you know, it's like the big elephant in the room you're ignoring Because you're trying to be professional, you know, and it's it doesn't work, you know, it doesn't work. It's awkward You know, so you have to break the mold sometimes Well Maybe that was the last question Elsa, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, thank you