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To make an impression is just not merely to have affect; by definition, the phrase implies forcible contact. There’s a diploma of energy constructed into the phrase. Architizer’s Influence in Design Award is a particular honor that celebrates architects and designers utilizing their abilities and passions to deal with native and world crises in collaboration with communities — environmental, social, political or financial. Their work kinds a catalyst for optimistic change, not solely by way of assembly the wants of their undertaking’s occupants but additionally by creating areas through which communities can adapt, develop, and reinvest of their livelihoods long-term. Influence in Design Award Honorees will not be solely leaders; they’re forces of change — within the business and society at massive.
The undertaking description for any of atelier masōmī’s spectacular physique of labor reads because the clear software of those rules. The Niger-based agency was a clear-cut selection for Architizer’s Influence in Design Award on the eleventh Annual A+Awards gala in Paris. Based in 2014 by Mariam Issoufou Kamara, atelier masōmī is an structure and analysis agency guided by the assumption that structure is a crucial instrument for social change. They sort out public, cultural, residential, business and concrete design initiatives all through the African continent and past. In every of atelier masōmī’s initiatives, the agency emphasizes structure’s potential to raise, give dignity and higher individuals’s high quality of life.
That is seen in initiatives like Dandaji Market, which offers a house for a rural market by referencing native adobe submit and reed roof development whereas pushing the typology ahead and imbuing customers with a way of permanence and delight. Likewise, the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Heart for Ladies and Improvement attracts on Liberia’s architectural heritage — particularly, conventional palava huts, that are characterised by towering however useful pitched roofs, which assist with the world’s heavy rainfalls and increase pure air flow — leading to a posh with low power consumption and materials waste whereas maximizing its native resonances. Such initiatives promote financial sustainability by championing native supplies and producers, in addition to builders and craftswomen.
Miriam, who was unable to simply accept her award in individual on account of journey restrictions imposed underneath the latest coup in Niger, shared an arresting video the place she mirrored on the state of our collective futures at a second of widespread mourning and devastation, and on the impression of labor, the core of which she sees as her conviction that “sustainability is as a lot about preserving individuals’s cultural heritage as it’s in regards to the local weather, and the 2 are literally intertwined.” Within the following interview, Miriam shares extra about her work — mental and constructed:
DANDAJI Market by atelier masōmī, Dandadji, Niger
Inform us a little bit about your story — how did you get began? How did your agency develop?
From a younger age, I all the time preferred to attract. I knew someplace at the back of my thoughts that I wished to pursue a profession that will merge my love of drawing with my creativity. However structure was a phrase that was alien to me. My childhood was spent dwelling in a small city in the course of the Sahara desert the place I used to be surrounded by conventional structure that dates again centuries.
For that purpose, I by no means actually understood the concept that structure may solely look one solution to be legitimate and accepted. If the Western World that had colonized us may have a conventional structure they’ve discovered a contemporary expression for, so may we. There was one thing incomprehensible — and albeit demeaning — to me about being requested to imitate others’ modernity and transpose it as the one respectable way of life within the now. After I lastly grew to become an architect, my curiosity was naturally in making structure that responds to its native context by addressing the social, ecological and financial challenges that reveal themselves within the course of.
Niamey 2000 Housing by atelier masōmī, Niamey, Niger
Trying again, which of your initiatives do you are feeling was probably the most vital to the agency’s improvement and why? [You can pick more than one!]
What a tricky query! Trying again, I believe every single considered one of my initiatives has contributed to our improvement as a agency and me as an architect. The design of our initiatives is all the time influenced by the context, local weather and the individuals for whom we’re constructing. For instance, our housing developments in Niger (Niamey 2000) and Sharjah (Hayyan), are responding to totally different wants from our purchasers. However as a result of they’re each for individuals with the same local weather and spiritual background, we had been capable of construct on the teachings we realized working in Niger so as to design the housing improvement in Sharjah.
Bët-bi Museum by atelier masōmī, Senegal
You’ve got vital initiatives in improvement in Niger, Senegal, Liberia and past. In what methods does the cultural and environmental context of those places affect your work?
Our initiatives reply on to the local weather, context and cultures of the locations through which we work. Earlier than I may even choose up a pencil to begin designing, we undergo an intensive analysis section the place we uncover clues in regards to the individuals who inhabit the locations (each traditionally and within the modern sense), we glance into the local weather and architectural histories of every place so as to produce designs which are related.
In Liberia, for instance, The Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Heart’s design is impressed by the normal Palava huts of the nation in addition to Madame Ellen Johnson Sirleaf herself, Africa’s first girl president and somebody who continues to battle for gender equality. The identical goes for Bët-bi Museum in Senegal, which is designed to kind a part of the panorama, making it a welcoming house for everybody, a public house, earlier than a museum. The galleries are sunk under the bottom, as a nod to the sacrality of the land, honoring the Serer and Mandinka individuals, whereas additionally creating an area for artwork and inventive expression.
Miriam Kamara accepting the Influence in Design award on behalf of her agency on the eleventh Annual A+Awards | Photograph by Alex Bonnemaison
What does successful Architizer’s Influence in Design Award imply to you and the agency?
We’re deeply honored to obtain the Influence Award. atelier masōmī can have been round for a decade in 2024. Working an structure agency is just not straightforward, notably working from our context. It’s fairly energizing, notably throughout difficult occasions, to be acknowledged for the work that we do.
If you happen to had one piece of recommendation to supply the following era of architects throughout Africa, what would it not be?
It’s as much as us to think about what our future seems to be like. We’ve to reclaim company over our lands and our identities. Don’t be afraid, don’t apologize, we want extra of you.
High picture: Hikma Neighborhood Complicated by atelier masōmī, Dandadji, Niger
Architizer’s twelfth Annual A+Awards are formally underway! Join key program updates and put together your submission forward of the Major Entry Deadline on December fifteenth.
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