Archinect - News

Seeking expansion, atelier masōmī rebrands to Mariam Issoufou Architects

2024-04-02T18:50:00-04:00

The ten-year-old practice known as atelier masōmī has announced it is rebranding as Mariam Issoufou Architects.

Formed by Mariam Issoufou (née Kamara) shortly after her graduation from the University of Washington, the Niger-based practice is now a widely known entity with projects featured in exhibitions worldwide and their name included as finalists for several top industry honors, such as the 2019 Prince Claus and Royal Academy Dorfman awards, 2020 Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture nomination, and 2022 Aga Khan Award shortlist.

In an announcement detailing the name change, the studio said: "We have seen a growing interest in our work and our intersectional approach to sustainability from South America, North America, Middle East and Europe. This expansion in the geographic scope of our work has presented an opportunity for us to open a design studio in New York, where our founder and principal, Mariam Issoufou, is building a team. Through her professorship at ETH Zu...

Oliver Wainwright on RIBA's '100 Women: Architects in Practice,' a new primer for industry-wide change

2024-02-29T13:40:00-05:00

We’re not there yet. In an industry where the gender pay gap has widened in recent years, where all-male panels at conferences are not unusual, and where macho culture still prevails on building sites, a book like this, sadly, still has a place.

Writing for The Guardian, critic Oliver Wainwright says he hopes RIBA’s new publication 100 Women: Architects in Practice, which we previewed in December, will encourage competition judges, academic panels, awards juries, exhibitions organizers, and rebuke “the headhunters who claim women never apply, [...] the clients who say they just can’t find women with the right experience.”

Many of the architects included in the book, namely Mariam Kamara, Suhailey Farzana, and others, are women whose practices are informed by and in service to decolonization in the developing world à la the 2023 RIBA Gold Medal winner Yasmeen Lari and 2021 Soane Medalist Marina Tabassum. (The profiles are divided into 18 geographical "sub-regions" based on the UN's geoscheme.)

The 320-page book was written by Harriet Harriss, Naomi House, Monika Parrinder, and Tom Ravenscroft, with Alison Brooks responsible for the foreword.

Plans revealed for atelier masōmī's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center in Liberia

2023-04-19T17:31:00-04:00

Details of the new Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development in Monrovia, Liberia have been revealed this week by atelier masōmī, the lead designers of an all-female project that will include exhibition designs from Counterspace’s Sumayya Vally and input from local architect Karen Richards Barnes.

The project supports the EJS Center’s mission with workshops, office spaces, exhibition galleries, a café, and a library. The center was formally established on International Women’s Day in 2020 and will now play host to the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize-winning former President’s personal and professional archives.

Image courtesy atelier masōmī

The atelier’s founder, Mariam Kamara, says: “The design is a direct response to the history, climate, cultural, and architectural heritage of Liberia. The project is an introspection on the challenges faced and on the strength and hope brought about by inspirational leaders such as Madam Sirleaf. The first woman Head of State o...

National Museums Liverpool releases new Asif Khan and Theaster Gates-led waterfront development proposals

2023-04-19T15:06:00-04:00

Weeks after the announcement that David Adjaye and Mariam Kamara would be leaving the project, National Museums Liverpool (NML) has unveiled its revised vision for the redevelopment of the city’s waterfront area co-authored by Asif Khan and Theaster Gates respectively.

Under their direction, a pair of interconnected proposals are now being advanced. The scope of the projects includes a newly-created public realm, pedestrian footbridge, and visitors’ pavilion in the place of two historic dry docks that are linked to the overhauled International Slavery Museum, Maritime Museum, and the Museum of Liverpool, which all tell their story.

Image courtesy National Museums Liverpool (NML)

The NML says it hopes the development will work to present a “prototype for a fresh new mode of co-production between community partners and museums.”

Image courtesy National Museums Liverpool (NML)

Khan says the project must in the end work to help the city recon...

David Adjaye, Mariam Kamara depart major Liverpool waterfront project

2023-03-29T17:04:00-04:00

Two big-name architects are departing from the National Museums Liverpool (NML) scheme to create a new public realm at the city’s Canning Dock, according to a report published earlier today by the Architects’ Journal.

David Adjaye and Mariam Kamara are now out of the project team for the redevelopment, which includes Asif Khan, Theaster Gates, Arup, and a host of other UK-based firms.

The team first was first announced as the winners of an international competition in October of 2021. Adjaye will reportedly remain on to finish their International Slavery Museum and Maritime Museum restorations, which are both separate projects. Neither architect has provided a statement addressing the changes at press time.

An aerial view of Canning Dock. Image: Gary W. Smith

A spokesperson from the museum told AJ simply, “Once the direction of the project was established, the collective agreed that Khan and Gates would take the project forward.”

Ultimately, the £75 million ($92.4 million) project wi...

Mariam Kamara highlights a diverse group of new faculty appointments at the ETH Zurich

2022-08-17T13:23:00-04:00

Renowned West African architect Mariam Kamara will be among twelve new professors joining the faculty of the ETH Zurich, the school announced on its website late last month.

Her appointment represents a “turning point” for the ETH, as the school’s faculty is now predominantly female for the first time in its history. She is joined by another new full-time appointment to the department, Maria Conen, who had previously been on the faculty as an adjunct professor of architecture and housing.

Kamara’s previous academic experience has included stops at Brown and the Harvard GSD, where she was the Aga Khan critic for 2021. Kamara’s practice atelier masōmī is well-regarded across the design world for her innovative work surrounding memory, the elevation of non-Western architectural traditions, vernacular design, and placemaking. Recently she was named as an honorary fellow by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

Previously on Archinect: Mariam Kamara on the higher aspirations of...

The new Bët-bi Museum by atelier masōmī will continue a shift toward cultural justice in Senegal

2022-05-17T12:32:00-04:00

A historic new museum is set to take shape in West Africa, the vision of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and designer Mariam Kamara of Niger’s atelier masōmī.

Bët-bi is said to be the first institution dedicated to the (temporary) collection and display of repatriated objects taken from their native lands in a reversal of controversial practices which have been at the heart of many Western museum operations since their beginnings in Colonialism.

Image courtesy atelier masōmī

The studio beat out four other firms based in Africa for the commission, including Rwanda’s MASS Design Group and the Moroccan firm Aziza Chaouni Projects.

Located in the Kaolack region of southern Senegal, Bët-bi (or “The Eye” in Wolof) aims to position itself as an intermediary between Western art-collecting institutions and surrounding nations in addition to serving in its functional capacity as an educational fount to the area. In this regard, its mission and scope are similar to that of the planned Ed...

Mariam Kamara on the higher aspirations of African architects

2020-08-19T14:13:00-04:00

[...] Kamara is mounting a quietly radical revolt against the “Western dictatorship over our space,” which still insists that African architects should only build clinics and rural schools, never addressing higher aspirations. For Kamara, that attitude is not just constraining, it’s an affront to the humanity of the place she comes from and the people for whom she builds. She prefers instead “to elevate lived experience,” to “dare to do something that would make someone dream.”

The New York Times in conversation with Mariam Kamara, the founder of Niger/Rhode Island-based architecture and research practice atelier masōmī.

Hikma Religious and Secular Complex in Dadaji, Niger by atelier masōmī + Studio Chahar. Photo: James Wang, Mariama Kah.

Among other distinctions, Kamara was one of the 2017 LafargeHolcim Middle East + Africa Award winners, David Adjaye's 2018-19 Rolex Arts Initiative protégée, a Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture nominee, the 2019 Prince Claus Award laureate, and more recently, announced as a participant for the 17th Architecture Biennale in Venice.