受賞歴のある建築・研究スタジオ、カウンタースペースの共同設立者であり、代表を務めている。第20回サーペンタイン・パビリオン(2020/2021年)のデザイナーであり、国際的に有名な建築プログラムの依頼を受けた史上最年少の建築家です。彼女は、サーペンタインで開始された新しいフェローシッププログラム「Support Structures for Support Structures」の立ち上げと開発に携わっています。これは、アートと社会正義、アートとアーカイブ、アートとエコロジーが交差する場所での活動を通じて、コミュニティを支援するアーティストやコレクティブを支援するものです。2022年、スマイヤ・ヴァリーは、世界経済フォーラムによって、世界で最も有望なアーティスト、研究者、起業家、活動家、政治家のコミュニティであるヤング・グローバル・リーダーズの一人に選ばれました。
現在、ヴァーリーはアーティスティックディレクターとして、2023年にジェッダで開催される第1回イスラム芸術ビエンナーレのキュレーションに携わっています。現在、リベリアのモンロビアにある「Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development」の設計に協力しており、女性国家元首のための初の大統領図書館として、舞台装置、パビリオン、展示スペースを監督します。また、1945年にイギリスのマンチェスターで開催された第5回パンアフリカ会議を記念する庭園と集会所の設計にも携わっています。
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Sumayya Vally was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1990. Vally’s design, research, and pedagogical practice is searching for expression for hybrid identities and territory, particularly for African and Islamic conditions. Her design process is often forensic, and draws on the aural, performance and the overlooked as generative places of history and work.
She is the co-founder and principal of the award-winning architecture and research studio, Counterspace. A TIME100 Next List honouree, Sumayya Vally is named as shaping the future of the architectural canon and practice; and designer of the 20th Serpentine Pavilion (2020/2021), Vally is the youngest architect ever to be commissioned for the internationally renowned architecture programme. She has worked on initiating and developing Support Structures for Support Structures, a new fellowship programme launched at the Serpentine, which supports artists and collectives who support community through their work at the intersections of art and social justice, art and the archive, and art and ecology. In 2022 Sumayya Vally was selected by the World Economic Forum to be one of its Young Global Leaders, a community of the world’s most promising artists, researchers, entrepreneurs, activists, and political leaders.
As Artistic Director, Vally is currently working on curating the first Islamic Arts Biennale taking place in Jeddah in 2023. She is currently collaborating on the design of the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development in Monrovia, Liberia, the first presidential library dedicated to a female head of state, where she will oversee the scenography, pavilions, and exhibition spaces. She is also working on a garden and gathering place commemorating the 5th Pan-African Congress held in Manchester, UK, in 1945.
Sumayya’s practice operates adjacent to the academy. For six years she led the masters’ studio, Unit 12, at the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg—founded by Professor Lesley Lokko, with the intent to create a curriculum for the African continent. She has lectured widely, most recently as Pelli Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the School of Architecture, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.