Tag: Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows

SA+C & LFA: Thinking, Practising, Listening; Exploring Inclusion in Architecture | Monday, June 21, 2021 from 9:30 to 13:00 (BST)

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

This online symposium will focus on the importance to architectural practice and research of listening. To listen effectively is not just to hear: it means actively seeking perspectives from those people in society whose voices are often the least audible. In exploring a wide range of voices in architectural practice, theory and history, the symposium intersects with the themes of decolonisation and inclusion, which are embedded in the teaching and research culture of the University of Westminster.

The symposium will also focus on the role of universities in developing and promoting the practice of listening and will feature workshops and lightning presentations from students that explore reciprocal dialogue between teachers and learners within architectural education.

The keynote lecture will be delivered by Dr Huda Tayob, Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on migrant, minor and subaltern architectures, the politics of invisibility in space, and the potential of literature to respond to archival silences. She is co-curator of the open access curriculum Racespacearchitecture.org and the digital podcast series and exhibition Archive of Forgetfulness (archiveofforgetfulness.com).

Huda will be speaking on Transnational Architectures of Care, through her research on Somali malls in South Africa and the US.

09:30 Introduction and opening

Kate Jordan & Shahed Saleem

9.45 Session 1

Jane Tankard & Design Studio 3.1

A collaborative visual and verbal presentation emerging out of conversations with students over 7 years. The meetings were structured around speaking and listening to thoughts on pedagogy, studio, reciprocity and notions of home.

Christine Wall

How are architectural histories silenced? This question is explored with reference to two ongoing studies, one a 1970s architectural collaborative in London, and the other the Little Aden Cantonment, the 1960s extension of British colonial military accommodation which became the largest fully modular project in the world.

Tumpa Husna Fellows

Through her practice based research, Tumpa asks how can architecture amplify the voices of underrepresented communities to enable spatial justice and create social value in places, buildings and neighbourhoods? How can designing inclusive spaces help us respond to the climate injustice?

5 min break

11.15 Session 2

Maria Kramer

Leyton Community Hub; a description of the ongoing process of negotiating the complex mix of stakeholders in this project, from student engagement, public consultations & council requirements. How are these various needs and aspirations understood and managed through processes of listening and engaging?

Davide Deriu

‘Beautiful idea; beautiful building; beautiful materials…but I have problems with vertigo.’

Do practising architects listen to prospective users? How can different perceptions and experiences of space be accounted for? Drawing on his ongoing research on architecture and vertigo, this presentation shall discuss how embodied subjectivities are often neglected in the design process.

Through selected examples, this presentation will situate the issue of vertigo in relation to a broad understanding of spatial experience, and argue that a more inclusive approach might be developed through listening and care.

Elantha Evans & Design Studio 11

An introduction to an experimental research session to re-frame design studios with the empathic imagination in mind.

5 min break

12.15 Session 3

Introduction by Samir Pandya, Assistant Head, School of Architecture + Cities

Keynote

Huda Tayob, University of Cape Town

Transnational Architectures of Care

Conversation

Click here to register for the event via Eventbrite

Half-day Symposium: “Blueprint for Decolonisation” – Asian Architects Association in collaboration with Architecture Foundation | Tuesday, March 30, from 14:00 to 17:00 (GMT)

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The racialisation of space has its roots in colonial practices that sought to wield control over people perceived as ‘Other’. If the future of practice begins with education, how has the practice of ‘othering’ become absorbed into the structure of education?

Join us for a half-day symposium in collaboration with the recently established Asian Architects Association (AAA) exploring the steps towards a decolonised architectural education. Chaired by AAA co-founder Karl Mok, the discussion will seek to propose a blueprint for the future of architectural education, with panelists and students alike sharing their thoughts and experiences. Karl is joined by Dr Kamna Patel, Associate Professor at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, Ming Cheng, tutor at the London School of Architecture, Sanaa Shaikh, tutor at Oxford Brookes and director of Native Studio, Khensani de Klerk, founder of Matri-Archi(tecture) and researcher at Cambridge, and Shumi Bose, Senior Lecturer at Central Saint Martins.

The symposium invites an open dialogue with those who have felt oppressed now or in the past by traditional architectural curriculm.

Asian Architects Association (AAA) is an emerging forum that promotes, examines and debates the work of asian architects. The AAA was founded by Sumita Singha, Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows, Ming Cheng, Vinesh Pomal and Karl Mok.

Architecture Foundation

For more information, please visit here.

BSc Architectural Technology students collaborate with Southwark Council’s Regeneration team to empower communities and address social and environmental issues in Peckham, London

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Tumpa Fellows, Senior Lecturer of Architecture at the University of Westminster and a Southwark Council Design Review panel member, organised a collaboration between Southwark Council’s Regeneration team and students on the Architectural Technology BSc Honours course, where they are exploring the area of Peckham through various methods of community engagement, a process which ensures that communities in Peckham that will be affected by any developments have a voice in the process and can input their opinions and ideas. 

Peckham is known for being a very multicultural area, with over 70% of the population being Black or Asian, leading the students’ research to focus on underrepresented demographics in the area. In the context of racial and social inequality and climate injustice, they have been exploring research questions such as: what are the effects of gentrification in the area? In the context of health inequality, how are the communities suffering disproportionately from the coronavirus pandemic? And, how is the burden of environmental crisis disproportionately affecting the low-income communities living in high risk areas?

The students’ projects propose design interventions that respond to the communities’ needs at key civic spaces in Peckham town centre, such as Peckham Rye Station and Peckham Square, with initial research and design briefs also focusing on investigating urban infrastructures that aim to coexist with the natural and built environment.

The students’ findings from their community engagement work in Peckham has been translated to visually represent the research with architectural mapping drawings. They have also produced short films about Peckham and the current issues that communities in the area are facing during the pandemic. 

University of Westminster News

Read more here.

Featured image: Velina Drakalieva’s project in Peckham

Joint online lecture by Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows and Paolo Cascone, Tuesday, February 16 from 3.30pm GMT

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Tuesday, 16th of February at 3.30pm GMT

Blackboard link: http://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/a1f67e76494344a3ba9b0a002be29c38

The lecture is organised by Paolo Cascone, Yota Adilenidou and Maddalena Laddaga in the frame of Architecture and Environmental Design DS3A “Decolonising Performative Architecture” seminar series.

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows is a Senior Lecturer and a Course Leader for BSc Architectural Technology (Year 2) at the School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster. She’s an award winning British architect who co-founded the inter-disciplinary practice Our Building Design (in 2018), the charity Mannan Foundation Trust  (in 2012), and the two organisations that promote and support architects from the ethnic minority in the UK: FAME Collective and Asian Architects Association. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster where her teaching draws on her research methodologies on interdisciplinary approach to design. Her practice-based research focuses on community participatory methods and architectural responses to the changing climate, landscape and social practices in the UK and Bangladesh. Tumpa was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Rising Star Award in 2017 and she has received a commendation for the RIBA President’s Award for Research in 2019. For her architectural work, she received the SEED/Pacific Rim Community Design Network Award 2018 and Architecture Sans Frontieres Award 2017 (commendation). In June 2019, Tumpa was appointed to be on the Design Review Panel for the Southwark Council Planning Department in an advisory role.

Paolo Cascone was born in Italy and grew up between West Indies and East Africa. He started his research between urban ecologies, digital fabrication and self-construction during his Master’s at the AA-School in London, and continued it while accomplishing a PhD in Environmental Engineering at the University of Rome. Paolo has started to teach ecological design at ENSAP – Malaquais and ESA schools of architecture  in Paris where he founded CODESIGNLAB. His work has been exhibited widely and published in international design magazines. Paolo is a scientific director of the African Fabbers School and a Senior Lecturer in Environmental and Architectural Design at the University of Westminster.

FAME: Exposing the Barriers in Architecture | Friday, December 4, 18:00-19:30 GMT [Online event hosted by Architecture Foundation via Zoom]

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Friday, 4th of December, 6pm-7.30pm

Eventbrite link

FAME will be hosting their first event to expose the barriers female architects of minority ethnic face in the architecture industry today

About this Event

FAME: Female Architects of Minority Ethnic: founded by Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows and Tahin Khan.

FAME Collective is a research-based network founded to support women of diverse backgrounds and ethnicities in architecture and the built environment. Their aim is to raise awareness of the barriers, inequality and lack of diversity in architecture and to demand change that responds to our collective challenges. This event is part of a series of events which will be documented and shared with those in power to change and address the inequality that exists in architecture.

Join us for the launch of FAME’s first symposium ‘EXPOSING THE BARRIERS IN ARCHITECTURE’ hosted by Architecture Foundation via Zoom, and presented by Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows. Our distinguished keynote speaker Sumita Singha (recent RIBA Presidential candidate). Our panel of speakers include Annette Fisher (from Let’s BUild), Hilary Satchwell (from Tibbalds and Part W), Femi Oresanya (from HOK and the Chair of the RIBA Architects for Change Expert Advisory Group) and Anna Liu (Director of Tonkin Liu, won the 2018 Stephen Lawrence Prize for Old Shed New House).

This is a participatory event to explore the impact of racism, injustice and inequality contributing to the barriers in architecture. We want to hear about the lived experiences of practitioners, academics and students from BAME backgrounds, to unpack the grievances.

FAME is responding to an urgent need for understanding how race and gender affects established practitioners, young scholars and students, from diverse backgrounds, knowledge and practices by engaging in conversations about the barriers in architecture and the built environment. Our aim is to collectively respond and to demand change and the much-needed support to overcome barriers of racial and gender inequality both in academia and in practices. Our Q + A and participatory sessions will provide an opportunity for participants to share experiences of racial and gender inequality in architecture and the built environment.

This event is being hosted by the Architecture Foundation via Zoom.

The details for all participants will be announced soon.

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows’ article for RIBAJ: “Practical steps towards real inclusion”

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows, an architect, researcher, and the BSc Architectural Technology Year 2 leader has published an article in The RIBA Journal on how the architects can use their skills to help improve conditions for the disadvantaged and marginalised communities and members of our society.

The Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities and highlighted the urgency for community collaboration towards positive societal changes.  The pandemic has changed our lives in many ways. My family is grieving the loss of several family members and friends (of Bangladeshi origin), living in the UK.

Research issued by Public Health England reveals that you are more likely to die from Covid-19 if you are BAME than someone who is white, and people of Bangladeshi ethnicity are twice as likely to die from Covid-19 than those who are white and British. The recent global protests for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement brought to focus communities’ collective actions to rise up against racial injustice and various social and health inequalities which have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The power of community action and collective response has become urgent for communities worldwide, whether they are affected by racial injustice, health inequality or new developments in their neighbourhood (sometimes resulting in eviction) and for all those passionate to change systemic racism and inequalities.

As practitioners and architects, we could act many ways to facilitate the voices of those who have been marginalised in the society. One of these is to get involved in local planning issues: for example, by alerting the planning authority to any new development that negatively affects low-income communities in the neighbourhood through gentrification.

I am passionate about being part of the change in my area, so volunteered to be part of my borough’s design review panel. There I have the opportunity to help address some of the issues and push the design team and the developers, to hear and respond to the voices of the community. Unfortunately, in all the recent projects we have reviewed (which happened to be led by influential architects), the design decisions did not reflect local engagement (in an area with one of the largest BAME communities in London), and showed a lack of communication with the community they had designed for. Very little work had been done towards any such local engagement in the design process. […]

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows for RIBAJ, October 2020

To read the full text please go here.