 I'm incredibly happy to have Kabaage Karanga and Stella Muteghi here with us tonight. And I would say, I'm not saying welcome in them here because they are part of our gang. And they've been teaching an amazing studio last summer on the Museum of Anthropocene that was so transformative for the school, for everyone that was part of it. In 2021, at the central space of the central pavilion of the Venice Biennial, Cape Bureaux, their office, Kabaage and Stella's office, presented their installation Obsidian Rain. 1600 stones from Gingel, I wouldn't say, is that Gilgil? Okay, from Gilgil, Kenya, hanged from a timber and net structure replicating a section of the roof of them by caves where 8,000 year old human remains and a large number of Syrian artifacts from the later stone age were found. In an interview to the New York Times, Kabaage would explain that they understood caves as places for deep contemplation, for the resistance fighters to consider what the African state of the future would be as spaces of Congress. Cape Bureaux has broadly explored caves through both research and architectural design as an opportunity to understand architectural construction as a relational practice defined by the way humans negotiate their coexistence with other forms of beings to geology. But geology, for them, is neither static nor inert. Caves are animated by histories, by revelations. They are sites where violence can be observed and interrogated. Now, Stella and Kabaage, together with their office, are undertaking a monumental project to document how the architecture of caves from east to west Africa registers histories of violence and resistance that are informing disputes installed both in the past, in the present, and in the future. The research on the Simone caves of Kuali, sorry for all this accumulation probably of mispronunciation, in Kenya, just to mention one of them, brings African and Black narratives of slave men back to the surface of the Anthropocene epoch. Writing about this work, Kabaage and Stella said, the world knows quite a lot about the West African transatlantic slave trade, but very little about what took place on the East African side. Simone caves were used to hold enslaved people until their ships came to collect, or the ships came to collect them. They were transported to San Sibar, where the main slave markets took place, before shipmen to the Arabian Peninsula, where the majority of the enslaved people were designed to go, were designed to go. This reference to the Anthropocene for me is incredibly relevant and the way it's connected to histories and to the violence in the way histories are collectively produced, is for me incredibly relevant. Discussing the Anthropocene as the entire process of unfolding modernization, industrialization, and globalization as a geological age, Rossi Braidotti asked, who was the Anthro, represented by the term Anthropocene? Not me, she would say. Not all humans are here to be blamed. Requesting Braidotti to understand modernization as a process that was based on colonization, racism, and segregation imposed by certain humans on fellow humans. Since 2020, Cape Buro has been working on an Anthropocene Museum. Anthropocene Museum is an architecture, but not a building. In their words, it is an institution that is already present on a planetary scale, where humanity has embedded and continues to embed its imprint on the planet. They identify three terrains where architecture can be practiced in East Africa now. Origin, void, and made. Origin as the rural, saved by how it is abandoned by those migrating to the city. Void is the informal heart of the city, beyond municipal control, and where those migrating end up living. And the maid, the former preserve of the colonial settlers, conveniently appropriated after independence by the national bourgeoisie. If often architects uncritically see themselves exclusively catering to the maid, Kavagenstela are determined to subvert the conflicted articulation of these three architectural realms. Kavagenstela will be responded today by Professor Lola Benalon, who is also the director of the Natural Minerals Lab and the coordinator of the building tech sequence at G-SAP, and also by Lindsay Willstrom, who is also a professor here at G-SAP and founding principal of Metaforma. Please join me in re-welcoming, should be, right, or celebrating, rather, Kavagenstela tonight here in Budapest. Good evening, everyone. Hope you all well. Thank you so much, Andreas, for introducing us so well. It's nice to be back. Excuse me if I sound a bit rusty and seem a bit dazed. I'm just sort of going through a bit of a jet lag. So I'm not going to go on too much, but thank you. G-SAP, Columbia University, for inviting us here. It's really exciting to be back and to talk about our Anthropocene Museum in a bit of detail. I'm Anka Baghe Karanja. And I'm Stella Motegi. It's really good to be back here. So welcome to Africa, the second largest continent on earth, about 20% of Earth's landmass of the world, and soon to be 20% of the world's population. So in 2100, one in three people will be African. So with this trend, it's safe to say that we are all returning back to Africa. The Congo Basin forest around here absorbs about 4% of the global carbon emissions every year of setting more than the whole of the African continent's annual emissions. So Africa has registered the lowest per capita emissions of any world region every year since 1960. So this map we refer to quite a bit with the equatorial line cutting through the earth and Kenya being positioned somewhere here. It's a map we quite like because it's without borders, shows the actual grain of the topography of Africa, the great red valley cutting through like a wound straight through the land, and it is our home. The Fabian Colonial Bureau was founded in 1940 and was the first of such groups that provided the labor MPs with the research networking and publications necessary to influence the nature of British colonial rule throughout the empire. By the early 1950s though, there was a shift in British anti-colonial organizations as the opposition began forming movements to more stringently challenge Churchill's conservative government. The African Bureau established in 1952 represented significant departures from the original Fabian, excuse me, Colonial Bureau. It sought to influence the direction of colonial development policies and to expose the injustices of colonialism and bring the anachognistic form of governance to an end. That's an extract from Britain's Gulag. At Cave Bureau, we underscore this heritage but this time from a geological and indigenous perspective addressing the nihilistic permutations of colonialism that exist today. We craft strategies across rural and urban lands confronting these forces creatively with the communities that inhabit them. So we continue with this slide and quite an important reference for us is Leslie Locos' book, White Paper's Black Marks. A book that we find really critical as a sort of guiding light if you call it in our work. And most specifically with this quote in reference to an essay that was written by Araya Askedom from Ethiopia where he spoke of repetition as having beenness is the consideration of the past not as a static event not of the chronologically fixed date which we can bring to our own age by mere visual or formal invocation but of searching the possibilities that would have been in the creative work of our ancestors. The graph to the right, illustration effectively and analysis of the Anthropocene and trying to determine the point when it begins. The 1950s, a date which is very much in consensus as possibly that very time with the great acceleration kicking in lining up with the development of the atomic bomb industrial revolution and a time for us which we're absent from in defining. And so Anoka Baghe had initially invited you to Africa and I invite you to Nairobi. This is an image of an image taken from the Nairobi National Park. Nairobi is the only city in the world that has a national park at the heart of it so this is not photoshopped this is an actual giraffe in the national park with a city skyline in the background and this is the home of cave we are based in Nairobi we're a small architectural firm that Kabaghe and myself run and apart from doing your conventional architectural work where we are doing floor plans and elevations and details and everything in between yelling at contractors screaming at structural engineers for not bringing in details in good time getting upset with clients who are not paying within all that we find space to also go and spend time in our research the Anthropocene Museum. We have a small office Kabaghe and I were fired on the same day from a big firm in Nairobi and a few months later we decided to set up shop that was in 2014 and because we had work in a very big organization we really did want to keep cave bureau very small so this is a part of us there's a few people missing in the photograph but we are very particular about the kind of people that work in our office we want yes they are architectural graduates but we also want them to not just look at architecture as design and buildings but also to look at another area that architecture can take them which is the research so everybody that works in cave has to put some hours in the research as well and that's why we are particular we get people who are interested in not just the conventional architecture. So you must be wondering okay what's this about caves what are we on about there's a short extract I'll read from an essay that we wrote it's not too difficult to contemplate that our first experiences of architecture and its production in our minds was of an architecture that always existed since the birth of the earth four and a half billion years ago and indeed the universe that stretched even further back in time were vast masses of hot gas and matter rammed through space and time pulled in by gravitational forces framing spaces and cavities and indeed caves that eventually settled over millennia it was through the movement of rocky masses around the endless number of sands where tectonic shifts within planets of rock melting lava flows afforded the formation of spaces of shelter such as on earth for living things to thrive our furthest distant hominin relations that go back almost eight million years ago such as this healthanthropus very difficult name to pronounce right up to our very own quarter of a million old homocypian species experiences heritage of cave inhabitation in its rawest formation civilizations oral and recorded histories from religious revelations within caves philosophical metaphors and narratives about emergence from caves to the bedding of our cultural thoughts and values across the cave walls have formed an intrinsic part of our past present and soon to be future this one cave very close to our heart not too far from the center of Nairobi is done by cave a cave that was used by the Mao Mao freedom fighters freedom fighters who we know fought for our independence and who are remembered deeply for many of them lost their lives so these caves were used as chambers of conference and consideration to look at the future african state and in many respects they were hiding spaces spaces of creativity contemplation and deeply embedded within the natural systems of forests swamp areas and vast plains so for us it poses the biggest question okay what is architecture for us looking at the global history of architecture trying to consider where indeed caves are placed when at the bottom of the tree geology is just one of them while yet the rest of these man-made artifices are kept at the helm at the top and for us we began to question and to begin to think about placing this history deeply looking at the specific timeline within the 1950s specifically when colonialism was at its height at least in Kenya during the struggle and the emergency and that caves were in fact used architecturally and it is this very history we question terms of heights drafted my own dissertation tutor is the editor of this book and we look forward to bantering about the new writing of the 22nd edition and see how that goes so yes we are in the Anthroposy and we love this quote by Amitav Ghosh where he says let us make no mistake the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture and thus of the imagination because after all trauma resistance and healing should be at its heart in considering the deep past to consider if indeed it's the age of man there were a few men and specifically white men who defined this age and an age built on trauma of many and so the resistance that we speak about of our freedom fighters the 14 caves that inhabited these architectural dastiges are the very heart of our Yves Seham if you call it and beginning to imagine healing as a core to it all this chart because it is the science of geology to consider yes we are in the Holocene but beyond the Holocene is this precip of this new age a complex science backed up with immense fact with the increase global co2 emissions triggering global warming among other factors embedded in the biosphere the air the earth the sea and critically to the detriment of our existence on this planet Catherine Yusuf beautifully articulates this for the Anthropocene might seem to offer a dystopic future that laments the end of the world but imperialism and ongoing settler colonialism have been ending worlds for as long as they have been in existence going back to this graph the 1950s the very point and moment when we confront that anthropogenic history as our ancestors did and begin to consider this timeline so beyond just looking at it as as a scientific marker in geology we have tied to try to piece together a number of thinkers and people who have come before us and begin to set the discourse on a new trajectory from Franz Fanon Leslie Locos mentioned Catherine Yusuf among many more this a map of Kenya and in red is the sneaking railway line which piece together was defined as the lunatic express and its aim was principally to secure the source of the Nile Lake Victoria the Nile being critical at that time but for us within our country not only were people in resistance to this anthropogenic pressures we had the man-eaters of lion man-eaters of Savo sorry and the mosquitoes who'd spread malaria also in that fight that was an extract from a play by Gogi Wadiongo a very famous literary author based in Kenya and he was exiled from Kenya after writing the script of that play and it was just played actually this year and so we sort of bring it back in our narratives to look at this history of the Mao Mao a history of forests and caves and the personalities within that battle are very well known we have this lady who was referred to as the weaver bird by Gogi Wadiongo but by Deden Kemathi right here and unfortunately he passed away he was killed by the British you have the image behind which were concentration camps which are very recently being uncovered and a history that in many respects was erased and so for us museums are the heart of the problem as well as the heart of the solution this being a map of museums in the global north more defined than those of the south and this is our site if you'd call it our territory of operation where we have multiple Anthropocene museums not in building form but in programs where we engage with museums to have exhibitions installations to have talks discussing the time and the age we're in where a building is definitely not the solution to the far right our first Anthropocene museum location the Susua mountain a site which we hold dear and a location which is right at the very point of the equator that we initially highlighted right there in the middle and so you know with all that introduction I'm going to specifically what we do with the Anthropocene Museum research this is now an image close to the of the Susua mountain and that's a crater the one that you'd seen in the in the slide earlier and as Kabage says it's a very dear site to us it was one of the first caves we visited the the Susua caves and they are located in a very rich geological the area there has a very rich rock formation obviously this is in the rift valley and it's rich in resources rich in plants rich in you know flora and fauna but it's also land ancestral land for the Maasai people who are from Kenya and a bit of Tanzania and along Susua there's a lot of geothermal power that is within the earth and the Kenyan government has been very actively extracting that that energy and it's what powers Kenya we are very fortunate to to have green power to to light up our homes to use as electricity and unfortunately in as much as we would be proud to say that we use green power from these geothermal gases that are extracted from the earth the way or the process of extracting this green energy also comes with a lot of negative impact one of the biggest negative impacts is that as I mentioned earlier this is ancestral land for the Maasai people the Maasai people are largely pastronists and what they have is vast vast lands and they are able to move with their animals season to season and they go looking for green pasture and because they have so much land that's not really an issue but now when the government comes in and starts extracting this it means that these people have to be displaced they are moved away from their ancestral homes homes that they have kept for you know years and years hundreds of years and unfortunately they are taken to highlands and that completely changes their way of life they live on the plains they wander in the plains and this is the way of life they have known but once they are taken into the highlands the land reduces they get a portion small plots of land and then they are not able to keep as many animals as they do and then also because it's healy they get a lot of accidents with the animals that have been used to roaming on flatland so they lose a lot of animals in that in that regard they are not farmers so they are sort of forced to now you have this small plot of land can you start farming which of course is very difficult for them and then of course there's also the animals and the plant species that are also affected by the extraction of the geothermal this is the exhibition we had at the Cooper Hewitt and Smithsonian Design Museum in 2019 and we had a guide that was taking us around in Susua who grew up there and he told us that the bird the giant mastiff bat was a bird he used to see all the time growing up but now many years later he's about maybe in his late 40s he doesn't see them anymore so and this is just him telling us this I don't even know whether the government is aware of the effects of the animals on animals and of plant species with the geothermal extraction to the far left yeah left of your screen was a baboon within the Susua caves we have a space that is known as the baboon parliament and it's a place that these baboons have have used for many many years as a place of shelter a place where they come in the evenings after scavenging all day in the forest and they come back here to seek shelter away from leopard and that's an image of the baboon parliament and what was very interesting for us was how the shape and the architecture of the baboon parliament was so similar to Rome's pantheon extremely similar in you know size in the shape of the of the dome the skylights in there and it made us reflect and think about how much as architects we we borrow from nature I don't know whether the architect of the pantheon ever came to the baboon parliament but when you look around architecture and even for you guys who are architectural students a lot of your influence comes from nature and if a lot of your influence comes from nature then you really need to think about what what that influence and your architecture is doing to the environment so that's something we we thought was quite interesting and it's a thing we do at cave going back going back to nature going back to the caves going back to the origin and so how we do part of that going back we're going to the caves we 3d scan these caves we scan them we get drawings out of them we then 3d print them and cast molds and this is a section of them by caves the caves that kabage was speaking about earlier where the maumau used to hide and strategize on on what to do with the colonial government in kanya at that time and we take this and we see them as artifacts and and sort of referring back to artifacts that are stored in museums in the global north that have been taken away from Africa and we also looked at referencing the benign gold models and the other thing we do while we are at the caves is talk to the people who live around these caves and talk to them about what what the effects of the caves are what the caves mean to them what they were in the past what they use them for now and what they see the caves for them in the future and we do this through enactments like what you see here we have an older lady who was a small girl during the maumau struggle and she talks about what caves were to her so she used to smuggle food to her dad who was deep in the forest fighting for independence for Kenya we have the little boy who is now living now and it's many years 50 plus years after independence and what the caves are totally different for for him and then the artist who was born who was born after independence and what living in Kenya was for her it's the experience of being in a place like this where it's literally another world it's undiscovered it still goes deeper so my fascination is more to do with a force of nature that exists as a cave as an unknown and things that live here that we probably do not equate them to living things and ultimately together it creates this ecosystem that allows for other things to thrive that benefit other living things that we probably don't give a care for because humans are at the top of the table humans definitely are destroying the earth for their own things that they think are much better 50 meters I am also not for speaking for animals, so I could never kick out animals so that humans can live better. I'm all for having the baboons stay here, the bats, everything that seems to cause destruction because it's not really the animals. It's the humans who need to maybe think of other ways where they can live together with these animals. This is the bat that took us to the Shimoni Caves. Shimoni Caves are off the East African coast along the Indian Ocean. These are the caves that held slaveholding caves. Slaves were picked or people were picked from the interiors and then brought down to the coast and chained here in these caves. As they waited for a ship that came along the coast picking up people that had been captured. These people were then taken to Zanziba. Zanziba is in Tanzania. It's an island off of Tanzania but also just part of Tanzania. A lot of the spices that you eat are probably from Zanziba. The origin is probably Zanziba and many slaves were bought. It was the largest slave market. They were bought to work in the spice plantations and then also some were shipped to the Middle East to work as slaves there as well. In America, a lot of slavery that's spoken about is transatlantic West African slave trade. We also had our own share of slavery going on between the locals, the Arabs and the Portuguese. Those were the main traders in the slavery in East Africa. When we get to these caves or when we go to Shimonee, one of the things we always do, any cave we arrive, is hold barrazas. Barraza is a meeting. It's a meeting with the locals, with the elders, with the people and just talk about what these caves mean to them. That's an image of us having that barraza and it's interesting what came out of this. Down around Shimonee, there's people who believe that slave trade did not happen, unfortunately, even though there's evidence on the walls. But there's also people who strongly believe it happened. But these people must coexist with each other. There's also a group of people within these caves, around the caves rather. When the British came, they stopped the slave trade as trading of human beings. They stopped that and when they stopped, all the people that had been held from the interior were then just released and they were free. But these were people that were not Kenyan. They were people from Zambia, from Alawi, from Mozambique and they had no way of going back. In Kenya right now, we have a group of people who are not Kenyans, but are not anything else because it's many generations later. But the Kenyan government still is not able to recognize them as Kenyans. So that's one huge effect that slavery had on these people. So we talk to them, then we, of course, go back into our architectural selves, through these caves. And while we were talking to these guys, they actually mentioned to us about a tunnel that slaves used to escape through. And this tunnel connected the Shimoni Cave to another set of caves about four kilometers away called the Three Giant Sister Caves. And those who are fortunate to go through this tunnel and walk four kilometers found refuge and were able to escape that horrible experience. But over time that tunnel has silted and one of the things we really hope to do is go back and un-ath that tunnel. Have an archaeological dig and you know, we never know. We might find history of our own, what's her name, Harriet Tubman. While we do this archaeological dig, so that's something we hope to do in the future. Right now these caves are under the National Museums of Kenya, so they are taking care of them together with the community. But it's interesting about how, you know, when you talk to the community, you go there not knowing much about these caves, but you come out with such rich information, controversial information, information on plans of what they want to do with these caves, what they don't want to do. So we listen to all these things and we then sit down with stakeholders. We think would be interested in hearing or getting this information and get solutions to a lot of the problems that people living around caves face. So the Anthropocene 3.0, which we titled Obsidian Rain, we took a piece of the cave to Venice. And for us it was like an exchange, a way to look at these spaces of resistance and Congress that could be articulated in an architectural way. And this just that cave, the My Cave, which was discussed quite a bit in terms of its history and logics. And so some of the initial images we shared with the curatorial team were like this. To say this was our site of inquiry, the geometry of the cave more than expressed, but steam being critical because at the heart of it, as Stella highlighted in Anthropocene 2.0, we were looking at that troubled history of geothermal extraction, a geological act, but to the detriment of the people. So for us resistance is very often at the heart of our discussions. Drawings that we often lasers print on leather that we took to Venice, but beyond that this hanging cave, one of the main chambers of the My Cave where the Maoma of Freedom Fighters would discuss and talk about that history and look at the future. And this space, the Galileo Cine Dome in the Giardini in Venice, was a site and location we were given. Quite a beautiful space and one of the ideas was to hang the cave as though it was really light. You can't quite see it, although in a way you can, the structure laminated veneer lumber lifted up the cave about 1.6 tons of them. And we basically just took the point cloud positions and placed each rock to match the cave shape. Different views beneath which we had the bronze models of the cave at 1 to 100. And from that Anthropocene III led us to 4.0 and we tend to traverse the globe in a seemingly random way to look at these subjects in different ways. And this we were invited by Dizine to think about the future of our territory immediately being Nairobi. And one of the key things that seemed to come out was this discourse about the cow corridor. And I think when we deeply looked at that history, realizing that animal husbandry definitely dates way back beyond. And before the pyramids of Egypt, as a heritage we all share is how we came into being here. And work on cave walls depicts this reality which we seldom consider. Where after all most of the cows or at least those who eat cows, their meat comes from factories which chop them up. But in Kenya it's really interesting because it's a really visceral interaction with animal husbandry. And the history of the Maasai and a lot of indigenous peoples not only here but around the global south and the global north. Is that the relationship with cows. And our city in many respects, intermittently especially during droughts, experiences the Maasai coming in to eat. And get their cows eating the grass that's on road reserves. And so it's something at least for us was quite critical to question where we headed in that sense. And so as we do we thought, okay let's speak to a few community members outside Nairobi and specifically the National Game Park. Emily, Lang Kenua Latish, and Dorcas, Sasine. And they told us fantastic stories about their history but also looking at into their future and thinking about what life they've lived. So I still highlighted the needs for the Maasai in terms of their practice of having cows is quite complex. It requires a lot of land for them to move. And the growth of the city subdivision of land as she highlighted. It's sort of bringing an end to that life lifestyle and the livelihood. But we began to consider what if the city could consider these food paths and ways that are used. Considering that Nairobi is actually a Maasai word that refers to a place of cool waters. And when you look at the grain of the city, it is surrounded by hills. A lot of streams that bring in cool water, which is why in many respects we had the cows brought into this land. Naturally with the colonial interventions of road railway lines, eventually airport lines seen red. These then transgress the land. But still today you still have these open pockets of green pastures beside roads in parks, riparian wayleaves. And so in many respects for us we thought the cow corridor is actually real and alive. It just needs reframing. And so we began to think about the things that were spoke about, which were drought, the need for water. And we used and thought about caves as being used to store rainwater. And specifically the Shimoni Slave Cave. A structure of deep trauma that could then be transformed into a structure of healing to bring water back to the land, recharge the aquifers. And spaces when you consider what's happening in fact right now, a lot of wild animals resilient zebras to giraffes are dying because of drought. And so one of these thoughts was we look at a structure that could not only be a space of shade, but a space for the Maasai to bring their cattle to be also taken care of by veterinarians. So space that's at the intersection of a domestic husbandry of animals and also wild game, which in reality, when you look at huge game parks in the country in many parts of Africa, that interaction of the two is very common. And so we thought why can't the city think of that relationship even deeper to look at the projection of these new super highways that are being built in the city that will eventually get derelict because roads only bring more traffic. And so we threw out this proposition as a way to imagine the city growing in that direction and what the cow corridors would eventually do to this infrastructure. And just highlighting this very fact that we are in this state. These are very recent articles in the cave bureau. We always have our eye and finger on the media trigger, if you call it, thinking about what's really happening. And so the Benovalent Reparations Institute is an institute that we founded and it's an institute that would then be able to fund projects like the cow corridor. And we have thought and we have researched and we have read about how much is reparations money. And, you know, these figures that have been mentioned from 100 to 777 trillion US dollars as money that needs to be paid back to those who are affected and it's mostly people from the global south. But we look at people who inspire us. Wangari Madai, our very own Nobel laureate, she was very passionate about planting trees in Kenya and preserving forests. She's been beaten and jailed and all manner of things trying to protect these forests in Kenya and in the world. We look at people like Malcolm X. We look at Martin Luther King. There's so many people that inspire us. And in our own way from this inspiration, we thought that it would be good to form this institute where would get people putting money and would get people talking about what colonialism especially. meant to them and how it affects them today because it affects people in very different ways how it affects me in Kenya is very different from how it affects somebody in Ghana in West Africa. And so the cow corridor was one such project that we thought addresses addresses something that came about because of colonialism and we would have people presenting their projects. And we have a panel of thinkers, a panel of experts who'd sit down and listen to the different the different projects that are presented. And then from that decide on which one they think best addresses a need or best addresses an issue and probably find it or find a way to make that into a reality. I know for us for instance the cow corridor and it's a question we get asked a lot is, is it practical? And we're going to go to the Kenyan government and tell them, yeah, this highway expressway that you built, I think we need to turn it into this. So it's really, you know, getting ideas like this from across Africa and probably eventually from across the global south. And even the global north, because we can't also just sort of blanketly say everything happened in the global south. I think from our studio we did in the summer, a lot has also happened in the global north. So it's getting people from these different communities who've been affected presenting projects they think would address some of the challenges and the issues that they are facing today. So to conclude, we thought we'd just share a bit of the work we did here over the summer. Work that was surprising to us, work that we found re-energized the way we look at our practice. And we titled it the Anthropocene Museum 5.0 re-inscribing New York City. And I think students, some of who are here, took on the challenge or the presented methodology of our syllabus and really run with it in ways that we didn't imagine possible. And so in a nutshell what we had put forward was a brief to look and analyze at two specific caves. One cave in the Rambo Park, sorry, Central Park, the Rambo Cave. And the second Inwood Hill Park Cave up north, Manhattan. And we began to survey those two caves. We were looking at their history, very complicated, also like Central Park, history of suicides, crimes against women. Then you have, on the contrast, Inwood Hill Park caves, which today are still used by the Native American people, the Lenape as well as other communities. And it's a site of historical importance to them, a site where these caves were used as resting places for the ancestors, which were desecrated and remains that were spread around to different museums. So really complex histories, but looking at the geology where we went into the heart of understanding the rock, understanding sort of life around the caves. So it was fantastic to experience that. And it's just a sample of a few students' work in Eriksha to the left. And she provocatively took on the structural re-inscription of the National Museum of the American Indian, reprogramming the building through an open, repetitive process of returning stolen artifacts and desecrated remains of the Native American people. Creating both pragmatic and repetitive spaces of handover reflection. While Claire in the middle used a multi-scalar etymological study of the Lenape village names that were deeply intertwined with the varying characters and natures of the landscape. Then taking fragments of these lost meanings to inscribe a new grain intertwining city blocks and city parks. And young to the far right, delved into the cave morphology of Memorial beneath the Inwood Hill Park site, tracing the network of footpaths above ground and below that manifested in caves as contemplative spaces of traversal and healing. The last three samples, we had many who interestingly retained an interest in the material linear society of the native Lenape people while overlaying troubling topography of NYPD's harassment data across Manhattan. She focused on mapping misogynistic crime, surprisingly similar to the bedrock relationship of the old Lenape village sites. As areas with the highest levels of both historic and recent crimes against women taking place. Her work was principally representational of this poignant data while critically offering fabulative imaginary views into refuge and repair on a vast Manhattan scale. Young in the middle took the Ramble Cave site personally, walking, reading and reproducing his own more than modular man measures of being on land. In drawing and photography, his contortive movements over the site, which he actually did on many occasions, were enriched by studies into the native Lenape power dancing. He used here as a medium the power dance to both imagine a new way to see the site and society as a whole without being forced to fabulate an arbitrary building program. Yuan, to conclude from the onset, took on intricately the reading of the biospheric morphology of trees, roots, soil, water, rocks and caves as topographical compounds in harmony and symbiosis. He produced near accurate representations of these relationships as critical to the process of imagining caves beneath the interwood hill cave. That simply store in water collection for the city that is projected to experience water stress in the year 2050. These caves would then grow over time for spaces of meaning and collection of this very needed element of water. Thank you. Thank you, Kabaga and Stella. This was phenomenal. I'm so grateful to be invited to help moderate this lecture just because natural slash geological materialities are at the heart of my work and I find them intriguing. And I want to ask, well, I want to first kind of maybe say a few notes about caves as the root of architecture of your work. You say that they are the infrastructure we inhabited over the past millennia that we unconsciously transcended into our current built environment. And concrete indeed can be seen as an artificial cave or as human. Many of our materials are human made caves or formula to create an artificial cave. So how do we learn from the time spent in caves? How do we observe caves is really at the heart of your work. You talk about caves as a spiritual practice and I really see caves as spiritual, as mysterious, hidden. The lady that you interviewed said nowhere. When she was asked where does she go? Where did she go? And she was as a child taking food. No where our caves nowhere. They're non commodified, right? They're non commodified infrastructures. Can you own caves? Can you buy and sell cell caves? Caves are channels, right? There are channels into the belly of the earth, into the crest, within the land or within the mountain. Entering a cave, it's dark, it's colder, it's damp. It's a really interesting sensation similar maybe to being in the bottom of the ocean if you die, right? In the bottom of the earth, caves are isolated, protective and terrifying at the same time. Being in a cave can really, as a personal experience, be very healing or freak me out. So you challenge these conventions from biased directionality of the globe, right? North, south, up, down. You challenge the role of traditional architecture by putting research as a strong portion of your work. Weaving research, writing, anthropology, exhibition, curatorial practices. And I don't know if it's a, it's not a question, but maybe an invitation to contemplate about how you create this kind of maybe a periodic table of elements of what geological not resources, but maybe what geological aspects maybe you're looking at in AM, in the Anthropocene Museum, you look at caves as shelter, you look at caves as prison, you look at caves as animals, home or place of habitat. What are the different directionalities you look at these geological products from the shelter to the environment and how, maybe how do you also address or how do you reflect on the role of cave in healing trauma, its presence in the body and challenges of I don't want to say sustainability and privilege, but yes, the role of Anthropocene and access to resources and how they are increasingly, you know, available not available when they are needed. So, not exactly a question, but maybe an invitation to maybe categorize a catalog some of the geological cave infrastructures and roles in your five different projects presented today. Thank you for that way of looking at our presentation of caves. I think dealing on a fundamental composition perspective of caves and something we didn't express enough of each and every one of those caves have different modes of formation and you know that for us really triggers deeply to understand what's happened beneath our feet, you know. And when you look at, for example, the Susua caves, the lava caves that have been formed through immense volcanic force and heat, while in contrast to have the most slow, accretive process of the slave caves that over time come to be from the sea, from sort of limestone effect of water, running through and breaking down the cave to here in New York looking at the glacial movement of stones that over time form and create this. So there's a sort of fantastic taxonomy or sort of breakdown of how each and every one of these caves come into being and like it actually it's so deeply rich to look at it that way. And when you look at the depth of that, architecturally speaking, you see so much reference and the ability to look at the earth which is often just traded upon and then lending yourself to think that actually deeply speaking it's a very complex architecture you're dealing with and it's seldom respected. I think even the sort of the science of geology and the beauty of that, architects we don't do it justice, we don't do geology justice. I think our practice is very much about being a good architect to the geology of the earth and expressing it for what it is in terms of its formation, its history, its heritage. It's all intertwined with how we inhabited these places and vast records of which are not there but are yet to be uncovered and drawn and drafted and built upon. I did not answer your question. You raised the note of Delta T of time which I think is really interesting and really relates to it. Thank you both so much for joining us this evening. I'll share a few words and then we can also open it up to everyone who wants to also have a question to our guests here. I wanted to speak a little bit about your practice and the type of practice that you cultivate. The first thing you do is put your body into the caves as opposed to bringing the material to you. This seems like a really important paradigm shift for us to move ourselves to material as opposed to moving material to the city. That movement or change in reframing, like you said, opens up a lot of possibilities and it seems like such a great risk that you don't know what will come out of this type of practice because it's never been done before. You're charting new territories and one of the most beautiful things I think among all of the incredible work we saw is that you're charting a way forward by looking back. This is so critical to the geological timescale but also the shorter, more fleeting timescales that haven't been captured by traditional means of the 21st edition of the book or certain videos like who's there and with what technology. I think that your use of representation is also really critical to reframing or making those kinds of smaller timescales, really tangible. I was curious to hear more about your very conscious use of film in your practice and your use of collage and drawings. And then also it's kind of the obsidian project, the installation, obsidian rain, you're taking just the smallest amount possible to have the point, have it be an immersive space. So there's this act of what you kind of I imagine you had to decide should we take the material, should we build a proxy, you know how what's the, what's the most meaningful impact, and you finally decided no it has to be the material. And so these decisions I imagine will change Stella as you mentioned at the beginning of the talk, all the detailing and interior elevations and the site planning and all of the drawings that we produce, you know on a similarly regular basis you kind of have to be in between these two. So how does representation, kind of get change and evolve as you put yourself in these more risky or unpredictable environments like, like a cave but also like Venice, by any. Time's up. Yeah, it's interesting that you say that we, you know, like when we go to the caves, it's never, we've never planned, you know, with the only plan we have is that we're going and we'll meet a guide and then from there. It, it goes however it goes, we never have a script we never have, you know, you know, preconceived, this is the information that we want to have and this is going to be the conclusion. So we usually go into these caves and listen. We listen to the people, we listen to the cave, we explore the cave. And from that exploration and seeing and feeling and being part of the cave, and then talking to the community. We always come out like, wow, what is all this and nobody's talking about it, nobody is asking questions, nobody is experiencing this. And we go back to the office and have to now digest all this information and come up with, you know, if it's obsidian rain or if it's a cow corridor project or inscribing New York. But we find that film is one of the most, is the one thing that really captures sort of the essence apart from the feeling you have when you sit down and and and talk to the community members, you walk around the dark, dumb, scary cave. So that I think you're not able to express, I think we're not able to express it any other way apart from the film. So when we go back to the office and we have all this information we have found that film has a way of communicating people. The film has a way of creating interest, creating deeper thoughts about it, wondering what was this person saying. Like when we had the two ladies near the National Park, when we met them, initially we had literally no idea what they were going to tell us and what would come out of it. But you know, you sit there and listen to them speaking and you just realize, wow, it's such a, it's very hard for me to explain what what comes out of it. But talking to communities, talking to people in charge of the caves, talking to people who know the past of these caves and then digging deeper into the history of these caves, we find that explains a lot of what is happening now. And I don't think for anyone or for anything, without the history of whatever it is, it's very hard to sort of come into a situation and and sort of, you know, if it's a solution you need to come up with. Without the past, there's no solution we're going to get and and that's where the question you're asking about trauma and and healing and the resistance we talk about. There's no the trauma is historical. The healing is present and and into the future. But for healing to to happen, you have to address the history. And so that's something really important to us that we always go back to the past to understand what's happening in the present and then sort of see where the future takes us from there. I'm really curious. And I'm sure that many of our students are to learn more about how you not only work together right so so you mentioned on the website for instance that kind of the technical force and design solution making, although in your education in Australia was very design oriented right but with this kind of really understanding of the technical details and from design to construction. So how do you work together with your kind of really focus into the research and anthropological research and understanding kind of the territories. How do you work together, and then how do you look at your practice maybe if you look at these two separate streams you talk about working with contractors on structural documents, but then presentation today was on the research with the Tropocene Museum so how, how do these to go together are these streams sometimes cost path each other are they always in parallel, are they very far away very close by informed by each other they mix water. I think there's a lot of tension between the two research and the practice. And I think that's at the very heart of the whole subject and where we are as human beings on the planet, we are deeply confronted with the conundrum of what we say we do what we say we believe and how we then act and respond. And I don't think we are immune to that contradiction as architects think we we in that space where most of our research is funded to our architectural practice of producing buildings. And then our practice you know uses that significant portion of those fees to then develop the narrative of our research so in a way our practice is almost also going in reverse to a point where we intend not to build much at all. Yeah, I mean, it's a problematic and yeah, we have this, but we also need to find out our research and, yeah, right now that part of the office is allowing us to do that but we find in that the more. We, you know, we spend the research, the more, the less of the conventional architecture and yes cover dimensions we hopefully want to stop conventional architecture and concentrate on the research. But still be an architect. Yes, there's still a lot of architecture without building that, especially when we engage with the communities and when you're confronted with drought, big issues like drought, a building does not solve it. And that always poses a huge question. What are we doing. Maybe spending too much time in the cave. Not enough. That's a great question. Are there any questions from our audience? Thank you for that wonderful presentation. Kind of a twofold question about the city and rain piece of what's curious as to whether you gave consideration to other modes of kind of presenting kind of that cave and whether or not kind of the point cloud was the, I guess, most detailed kind of form of doing so. Yeah, I'm just curious if you know anything else, like some sort of surface or yeah I guess the process that arriving at that and then the second part of that question is maybe just what you thought of the setting of the cave and kind of what it's kind of looking up into as I think you mentioned it was a cathedral. Thank you. So the process is relatively simple. Once we got the point cloud scan, we meshed it. As you probably know, point cloud information is just built to crush your computer. That's his whole purpose in life. And caves more than anything. So any once you sort of stripped down too much too many points get the necessary points and you get the surface. And I think there are many parts of the cave which we thought okay we could use but I think this one was very important because it was a space we sat together and thought about our practice as well as thinking about the history. Of that case specifically. And then from there, we arrived at the stones quite randomly. We collect out of the stones in the office and dealing with the logics of thinking about how these cables formed through this immense volcanic pressure and obsidian at its heart is formed when you know, the rock cools incredibly fast forms a sort of glass. And so that the tools came together quite well to think about how the cave came into formation as well as this precious stone, which is not really precious, because it's almost everyone else. But when you touch it, you're like, why is it so special? We hung it in the Galileo Chini dome and it's not a cathedral. It's one of the exhibition spaces that you are doing. And it has a sort of art in a full fresco at the top, which, you know, it's, it looks more, it looks older than it is. You know, and I think it comes with the whole Giardini space. And so we liked the contrast between this ancient vestige of geology and this piece, which are intention, because it's a decolonial piece at its heart within arguably a relatively colonial artifice. Yeah, in a long-winded ways. It had a lot of narrative and growth within it to think about material, to think about its location, the act of transposition giving back to the global north, a cave. Yeah, thanks for the question. Yeah, thank you for that beautiful and meditative presentation. I guess maybe my question is directed at you guys as global architects, not exactly as Kenyan architects, as people are operating in Venice, New York City. Is there a larger trend that you are noticing within global architectural practice where there is disenchantment with the built environment and maybe a re-enchantment with geological formations, natural systems, et cetera? Yes, I think we've seen that. There's a lot of architects that are starting to question their role in climate change. And I would say, I don't have the statistics, so this is from my head, but I think we are at the top of the chain as architect. Because when you think about a building and you think what goes into a building, where it comes from, the steel, the stone, the, you know, all that contributes quite significantly to climate change. And I think there's been so much talk on climate change that I think people and architects at that are starting to question their role in all that. We've met very many people, or rather we've met very many architects that are starting to maybe not so much be very commercially oriented in terms of meeting developers and coming up with buildings, but now starting to think about sustainability. And, you know, your mud, your earth explorations, but also thinking about, apart from just thinking about climate change, also thinking about things that affect society. So we're seeing architects also thinking about things like trauma, things like history, things like, yeah, what is affecting society and addressing those issues with an architectural background and a lot of it is not ending up in a building, like Habaga said. But because you're an architect, I think architects are trained to think a lot more about issues, and you're able to think about different areas of society and address those, which I don't think there's any, I don't think a doctor can do that, I don't think a lawyer can do that. But an architect is able to talk to, you know, societal issues, and I think we've seen that a lot with the people who have been interacting, I don't know if I've answered your question, but yeah, they're thinking a lot more, not just design and build. Yeah. Or if they do design and build, they've considered all these other things that are not necessarily architectural. Thank you Stella and Kabagé. It's just, I wanted to just remark that it's so wonderful to have you here and that you bring such warmth into, I've gotten to see you in a few spaces now and we really appreciate that you're in this space. But I was thinking the more that I, it was really wonderful to see the sweep of the work and I've been thinking about the problematic of being architects and being concerned with design and thinking about these big horizons, ecological horizons, and the fact that, you know, you can't answer a simple question like, oh, do they design caves? No, they don't design caves. So I think my question actually over the years I've been thinking a little bit about your practice and how you maintain a rigorous practice in the ways that we all have learned being educated in architecture schools, how to be rigorous. And also, you know, as scholars who do research the way we're educated to do research rigorously, there's an inherent peer review process, a jury process where there's a kind of dialogical relationship to the work. And yet when you're working on these horizons that, you know, you don't have a lot of peers actually thinking with design and with the ecology of something as complex as the caves of Kenya and the world, as you are. I'm really very curious over the years, how have you developed a way to be rigorous about your practice? What is your methodology for reviewing your own work? You know, and not, I mean, I can see the ways that you are kind of shifting the epistemic location of knowledge that this person in the community might be the expert. That might be your interlocutor, that might be the person who is your design reviewer, but I just would love to hear from you how you've begun to think this, because I think also for a lot of students here just as a very practical lesson. Many people want to expand their practices into these areas that really don't have models, and you can't possibly have models for what you're doing. So I'm just curious to hear how you, what kinds of lessons you can give us that way. Tough question, but a nice rich one as well. I'm not sure I've been awake this lecture, but it's really good because I think it's like walking in the dark, you know, and all you have is a sort of step ahead of you. And if you look at it architecturally, it's like the simple tools that you were equipped or ill-equipped with to sort of traverse this territory of practice, tying into also what Emmanuel was talking about. The nature of global practice and considering, okay, where these bastions of knowledge and sort of direction that, for example, we had when we were studying and it's like these references are being held up and it's like, okay, wow, okay. And what's interesting is that these bastions have been now serialized, they're much smaller and doing more complex intricate things over space and time that have more importance on a vast scale because there are so many. But in a way, and it touches also on the way Stella was talking about our practice and the sort of formation of this community. Because when we were fired, one thing we kept saying to ourselves is that we have to create an environment that people want to be there. And that they are free to really question what's happening at any given time in the practice. And we've oscillated from five to 10 up and down and that's, you know, and what we've ended up doing is creating a small community of internal reference points. And there's this thing called the browser, as we highlighted in the presentation, it's a sort of forum each and every week where we go through all our project related matters. And it ties into us taking ourselves into caves where we not only just discuss what's happening in the office in the environment, but outside the environment, being honest to ourselves, being very critical. And yeah, it's literally that one step at a time where you have a very simple methodology. And I think what's great is each and every practice and individual, even at a student level, you know, you have these ways of doing things and a sort of an innate human sort of thing you develop over time. And in the architectural school is a sort of perfect ground where you develop these sort of ways of thinking and doing things, which you continue to build on over time that start to lead you in certain directions. And having the right people the right time, at least within the office is like the most important thing. And you cannot overstate it because it's at that very moment when you have a sort of, you know, if you call it a weaker moment of saying, wow, that's actually a beautiful drawing or that's actually a really clever question. And unfortunately, a lot of practices from my experience were the complete congregants and opposites of the passion to create that environment. And I feel it is as simple as that. It's like when you create a really conducive environment, and I think as architects, we then thrive. You know, and you see students doing that in the most amazing way. But then there comes the sort of pressure, sort of finance driven need to grow the practice. So follow the capitalist growth curve. Yeah, everything just falls apart. What is the right growth comes all these questions. So yeah, I don't know if I've answered your question, but there's just something in that moment of the people you're around that egg you want. You know, and it returns us back to the sort of homocipian root of how we did emerge over space and time to be here in the first place against all odds. And we've just lost track. We're just like, I don't know what we're doing. And it's like, if we can come back at least here, I think the architectural mind is perfect in doing that, you know, recent or destroying the center. And I guess just to add on, unlike you, we have no deadlines. So it just moves as we go along. Yeah. Hi. Thank you for your wonderful presentation. I feel like I learned a lot. And I was just kind of wondering when you speak about kind of this bridge that you're creating between rural and urban, and also like dealing with the tensions between what those kinds of realities mean in the landscape. How do you see your work with kind of the indigenous people, the Maasai community members that you speak to? How do you see your relationship to them? Is that more like through the architectural sense or the anthropological sense? Are you more acting as like an advocate or a witness or kind of a builder or somebody who is kind of historicizing their concerns and the issues that they're facing? And I don't know if that's kind of confusing, but I'm just kind of interested in like, how do you interact and navigate that space of kind of connecting those two worlds and what their needs might be? We're all those things that you're asking whether you advocate the witness, we're all of them. And I think once we, you know, we speak with the community and presented with an issue they are facing. For instance, the people in Susua, their big issue is the threat that government is soon coming to Susua to extract geothermal energy and means that they will be displaced. With the two ladies that you briefly saw, for them their issue is drought. And yes, we write about it, we advocate, we look for stakeholders that would address these things. But we also go a step further and that's one of the things actually that's quite notable right now, especially in Susua. Susua is also facing huge drought issues. And we are in the process of coming up with a project that's now, it's probably going to be our first practical on the ground project to address drought in that area, address the threat of the government coming to extract geothermal energy. And thus moving people, displacing people, displacing livelihoods, displacing or destroying flora and fauna. So we're still very young in this research. I would say, you know, when a baby is born, they can't do anything, then they start crawling, then they walk, then their teeth grow, and then, you know. So I would say we are crawling, but just starting to crawl. And yeah, starting to actually do something about what we have gotten. We've been getting a lot of information and storing it and recording it. But we now have an opportunity to get that information and do something about it. So that's, I don't know if I've answered your question, but that's sort of where we are. So it's not really just going to the community talking and documenting and leaving it there. We eventually will do something about all this information that we connect. Well, thank you very much for this amazing lecture. It's great to have you back here and in a way you never left and that these discussions keeps happening. I have a question that because there's something that in my opinion is incredibly valuable of your work, which is that your work is developed as a professional practice. And often we consider that the space for politics is the space of academia or the space of, let's say, independent discourse, but it's very important to acknowledge that practice, professions are spaces of activism, of dissidence, of hegemonism also, but also where they can be challenged and that's a fundamental part of the political capacity of practices like architecture. So I really admire the fact that you're operating as professionals and through practice with a form of political engagement that is as clear as you expressed today. With that, I'd like to know more about how you operate as practitioners engaged with questions that are of the realm of political ecology, of histories, of histories of segregation and colonization and coloniality. And the question comes because in my opinion the cave as an architectural, let's say side or space or terrain for architectural practice and speculation and activism is quite in the need of interventions and quite in the need of, let's say, activism. For instance, you describe the cave as a space that is harassed by tourism that is something that is thematized often that there's ecological disputes that go through the caves that are deep histories that are active in contributing to contemporary disputes. So basically the cave as a space of representation and Congress and convening and political, let's say, aggregation. For me the cave is in the way that you describe it is a space or a site that requires so much care, so much management, so much activism, so much let's say to design to retain its capacities and also to basically respond to ongoing disputes. And so it's not a question about the cave not being a site for practice, but actually in the huge need of practice and professional, let's say, care. But how to make that feasible in the way that you have to make that something that professionals can care for requires also an economy requires also kind of an ontology requires many, many other things that come with that institutions in places like for instance the European Union. For decades, there was an opportunity for many of these practices to merge because there was public funding that was put in intervening disputes. In other places, activism is well organized and can really get resources to do that and then there's a space for professional development there. But I wonder what is the way that you are thinking of this project as one that can be effective in allowing for practices to be participating in these disputes as a form of both practice with an activism in a way which is actually connected to the notion of a discipline, right. But I wonder how you are building or identifying opportunities for this to be effective as a site for practice and profession event. Great complex question. Couldn't expect more from our dean. But thank you. I think your question leads to the heart of where we feel we're going with this. We constantly are questioning institutions from the museum to break this institution of the novel and reparations. I think that that's literally the site of inquiry and critical address. And as it relates to the museum, we recently took part in a publication that's just recently got published by Andrash, and he was looking at the museum of the future. And so interviewed us to think, okay, what's this whole Anthropocene museum doing? And both Stella and I have been in discourse about, okay, this thing is doing something. You know, in terms of how it roams the world, how it's sort of free of the usual infrastructure, and that it's becoming a programmed entity, you know, in different sites of operation, where on one side it's sort of more activist addressing sort of state crimes. And on the other side, it's dealing with deep time histories of slavery. And more recently now, we've been in discussion with looking at the idea of repatriation of artifacts. The fact that museums are the heart being really opened up, you know, for question and interrogation. And they need to think about, okay, what are we doing when we say we are returning things? And where are we returning them? And what does it mean to the people, which people are affected? Where are you taking these objects? Is it back to a museum that's got a borrowed heritage and infrastructure? That is deeply colonial? Or is the object going to a different location? And so the Anthropocene museum, from advisory institutions like Smithsonian Museum, to other museums that have sort of approached us, we've begun to really deeply think about this existence, to the point where we recently received a donation, an artifact. And we are in the process of returning it. And so we've already created this narrative, which began in our minds in the cave, that has been put out in the universe, probably. And now it's coming to haunt us, you know, in a great way. But you see that question now of this object, this thing, its value, its opportunity, its sort of its charged essence, how is it coming home? And so it's fascinating that a sort of free radical direction of mode of research to question this sort of huge institution, among many others that need to be questioned, can let itself to fantastic opportunities to actually dismantle and then reconstruct the logic support the institution should do. And for us, that's the most exciting space that we're in for the moment. Where now our initial engagements with the communities who have been affected then now become the custodians and actually huge authorities to talk about these issues. And I think the oral history of the African people is in the heart of these short films we make, because we often in a lot of the time are not in control over the narrative, which is both liberating and frightening at the same time. And when we capture them, we then go into sort of fantastic post-rationalization where drawings take part in remembering what did we see and what happened, that then now become presented as methodologies of thinking about the return of these things. How should the institution work? So in a long-winded way, that's the sort of direction. Like everyone, thanks so much for an amazing presentation. I'm wondering if you might talk a little bit about what seems to be the desire of your work to embrace opacity and darkness, that which is left out of sort of banister-fletchers, you know, tree of architecture. I mean, there seems to be maybe a kind of subversive project there. I mean, even with the initial slide of inverting the orientation towards the continent, and I was reminded of, from Fanon, about the colonizer knowing the colonized, and that inversion and this embrace of, you know, if the cave is a place of the unknown or of darkness or of opacity, you know, essentially saying actually to the colonizer, you don't know me. And there's a different project, one that appears to be transparent here in Venice, but it's actually not transparent at all. I think it's our reality. Yeah, it's our reality as people who are colonized, but didn't live through colonialism, but are having to leave the effects of colonialism. And we feel it's something that needs to be talked about because there's been trauma and it needs to be addressed. I know it's sometimes a touchy feeling, I mean a touchy topic, but unless it is addressed, yeah, we still remain in the dark and everybody's in the dark. And for us, you know, even with the political inversion of the continent, in space there's no up or down, but the colonial masters put themselves on top and ruled below. It's just to really question that narrative and then address what that narrative has done to people. And also make people realize that you're like this because of colonialism. We have people, especially now, and I'll speak for Kenya because that's what I know, who are going through all manner of issues, but can't trace it back to the fact that it's because you are, you know, you're people that came before you were colonized. But then Kenya got high independence in 1963. So all these many years later, your problems are because of that. And so that's why it's really important for us to always go back to the past, go back to the past, address what was happening or what happened in the past, and then try and find a solution now that I know this is why this is happening. I am able to move forward in this direction and address that issue in that way, but it was also interesting, and this is what I highlighted in the presentation that it was surprising to us as well that when we did our summer class, the same things we're talking about are the same things that happened here because I mean America was colonized. It had Native Americans as the indigenous people. And there's all these atrocities that, you know, they went through and are sort of having challenges now because of their past. And I don't know if I'm answering your question, but yeah, it's something we really look at because it's a reality we are living in. And it's a reality we have to face. And it's a reality we need to address so that we move forward. Yeah. Hi. Your cow corridor project is essentially about rewilding. Could you speak a little to this deployment of landscape in your practice and how that relates to reparations in that project? Interesting. You said it relates to rewilding. Maybe not. Why is it that with that project, there's so much wild territory within the city of Nairobi. And it's just that it's regulated, you know. It's regulated to be green for the sake of green because the cows are passing and the tourists need to see green. And that cows should not eat it. And that cows are being disallowed to enter the city as a sort of past wastage of colonial regulation. Yes, it's to value the landscape. But I think the deeper argument is not that we are rewilding. It's that the city is already wild right now. And more so wild because things that should be left as natural as allowing cows to come into the city are not allowed. And allowed to eat grass that will eventually eat because a lot of these cows are brought in and a section of them are taken to arbitraries. It's like a deep derangement. So I think in a nutshell, I think that the cow corridor exposes that troubling reality of the city and all cities have these sort of deep madnesses in operation on different scales. And I think we exposed it by just highlighting things we already seen. Yeah. Maybe one last question. I know. I don't mean to keep you awake. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be sharing a space with you again and welcome Stella also. I just maybe I'll end with a very mundane question, but I wanted to just say how genuine your inquiry and your responses are and how that is a space that you have fomented. I'm translating it. And that you bring into architecture and that you mentioned the words of reality, but you also kind of transcend that very reality with a new framework of how to practice architecture. And my question is when you said you're trying to leave architecture, I think that you are trying to redefine architecture in so many ways, especially in this conversation and an institution that is to teach architecture. I mean, how can we reframe what architects and what architecture is in the face of such complexity and such trauma and everything, such reality in these kind of spaces of our cities that are so contradictory and so deeply. You mentioned the word. It doesn't come towards. So I just wanted to maybe it's just a comment. I mean, do you think you're leaving architecture? You think you're redefining it in some ways or you're redefining a practice of architecture? We studied for six years. We are not leaving architecture. No, we're not leaving architecture. And I think it's maybe the way you put it. It's redefining or changing the narrative that an architect doesn't necessarily have to design a building and have it constructed. And I'll just give an example of how that is actually changing and maybe touching on Emmanuel's question earlier. We were very honored to be reviewing students in Johannesburg, GSA. And a lot of the projects that we saw had nothing to do with architecture. So they would present their question and almost always you'd be like, ah, so what is your architectural proposition to this? But majority of the students and especially the black South African students, all their projects, at least for all the students I saw had something to do with apathy and to do with their culture. And because they were graduate students, so they've been through the first bit of the architectural education. But now when they got to the graduate school, they're having to grapple with their realities. But I'm an architect but then I have to think about and let me try and remember one of the students who are very interesting. I'll use her. She talked about her experience giving birth. She gave birth in a hospital but prior to that there's a whole traditional way of when a woman gives birth in her tribe, how she's taken care of throughout the nine months and how she gives birth in this traditional way. And she really questioned what happened in hospital to her because she got to hospital and then had to have an emergency C-section and that completely traumatized her because that is not what she wanted. She wanted the whole traditional process and so her project was to think about how do I, I can't remember what tribe she was, how does she as her tribe give birth that we have a great grandmother give birth and all other mothers before her give birth. How can that be brought into conventional architecture? So to sort of answer your question, I think, yeah, it's sort of redefining what traditional architecture is and thinking about issues and how those issues can then be translated into practical spaces if I could call it that. But yeah, that was something that was very profound in that whole thing that all the students were addressing an issue, an issue that affects them or has affected people before them. But they needed addressed in a sort of architectural, a lot of them didn't have an architectural proposition but it was something they were thinking about how can I then translate this trauma or this tradition into architecture? Yeah, so maybe redefine me. But also just to conclude in terms of this train of thought I have and it touches on that question about opacity and darkness that you raised. You know, an interesting thing that architects do when sort of the teaching within architecture is the ability to look at the tools that generate a problem or generate a condition and start to reimagine what those tools can do in reverse. And I think that opacity is really important and that ability to read a sort of opaqueness comes in our work when we look at the museum institution for example and the fact and the ability that it operated on a geological scale of deception where extraction was its actual main primary objective and that ability to conceal and be precise within a mode of operation where at face value it just seemingly was just a place where these artifacts were and that the public could marvel over this. And so that of that ability to operate on a global scale and how precise and decimating that innocuous institution was at that scale the reverse of that almost needs to use that same dark art in a way to begin to think of modes and abilities to really reverse the issue at hand because it's more complex than just a big building downtown that has this vast catalogs and archives of objects it's deeply insidious in terms of how its structure formed and allowed to remain that way it requires an equally complex and overt and sublime way to unpick it and unlock it says definitely at the heart of the issue is to read these systems and modes of structural failure and structural control that then can now liberate a sort of cultural consciousness that's needed for us to coexist and so the architect then now starts to read the real architecture at play you're like wow it's a real monster that you're dealing with this beyond anything built and I think when students start to grapple with that reality then their architectural tools begin to be freed up to be more combat and more directed at the problem and for us we found that's like a gold dust where for example in Kenya we are not allowed to open up a museum and call it a museum that word is protected and it's a root sign the laws that naturally date back to our colonial past and so our museum is everywhere but nowhere and I think that's like that's something we always try to be careful at what point do you ground something that it loses its potency and more importantly on the local scales I think in a way that's the territory that we're working with where the drawing doesn't quite disclose where we are what we're doing but then in a way it's very direct because the picture is clear isn't it but yet is it and so it's a perfect way to do that perfect way to conclude thank you both so very much thank you for coming coming back and for delivering this lecture in such an early morning yeah