Shumi Bose:

Hi there, and welcome to the second season of the Architectures of Planetary Well-Being podcast. The Architectures of Planetary Well-Being is a podcast exploring the interconnection of our social and ecological systems. Season two of the podcast is curated under the heading Between Us, presented by the re:arc institute and KoozArch. Between Us is a series of intimate conversations shared between two critical practitioners operating across architecture, art, curation, illustration, design, and literature. Across generational and geographical space, their discussions will move through shared aspects of practice to reach infinitely larger and more pressing issues on and around the roles of cultural practice for planetary well-being. The conversations are intended to provoke still more responses and further discussions, from micro to macro, with and led by emerging and further underrepresented communities. The guests chosen for these conversations are innovative thinkers and practitioners who we believe remain committed to the critical reframing of their disciplines and their attendant discourse.

These intimate yet wide-reaching exchanges aim to reflect the need for interdisciplinary conversation and unsiloed imagination in order to attempt the realization of a more just, caring, and restorative world.

In this episode, the Palestinian architect Noura Al Sayeh will be in conversation with architectural historian Dr. Samia Henni. You'll also hear intermittently from me. I'm Shumi Bose and I had the great pleasure of holding Samia and Noura together in conversation, and it's my pleasure to introduce them to you now.

Noura Al Sayeh-Holtrop was born in Kuwait. She's worked as an architect in major cities around the world. She's currently an advisor for heritage projects at the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, where she oversees the planning and implementation of cultural institutions and advises on urban rehabilitation and the creation of public space. In 2010, Noura was co-curator of Reclaim, Bahrain's first pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, which was awarded a Golden Lion for Best National Participation.

Samia Henni is an historian, award-winning author, educator, and exhibition maker of the built, destroyed, and imagined environment. Her research and teaching address questions of colonization, wars, extraction, deserts, forced displacement, and gender. Currently, she's an invited visiting professor at the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture (GTA) at ETH Zurich and the co-chair of the university seminar Beyond France at Columbia University. In the fall of 2024, Samia will join the faculty of McGill University's Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture in Montreal

I love that this morning when I came into the, say, the virtual room, you two are old friends already; you were talking. That was so nice to see. It’s to my own detriment that I've only known your work for the last five or six years, but I think of you as an extremely charged political historian and researcher at this time. And so as also a historian and researcher, one of the things that I admire is this continual fire, Samia. I'm just going to ask you where does that come from and how do you keep it up?

Samia Henni:

Thank you for the question. I think it's, really, the world that we are living in that keeps inspiring me in a way. I think right now, the moment we are speaking, Gaza is being bombed and we see every day and night division of the world. We are in this Manichean world and here I'm using really Francois non division of the world and we are witnessing it as we speak. How can we not all be on fire while witnessing what's happening around us? For me, this is a really key question and I see how people are really afraid and how people are censored and how people are somehow worried more about their careers and their persona than about the world we are living in. The inspiration I get every day is what I witness, what I see. And I think this promise of justice, the promise of decolonization, for me, it's a big lie and we are witnessing it again and again. That's where I get the energy.

SB:

And where did this start for you, Samia? Were you always charged up like this? Is it from your childhood? Is it something you inherited from your parents?

SH:

I think it's also where I come from and what I witnessed, also, in my life. I was born in Algeria. Stories that my grandparents and parents were telling are about the colonial world and the imperial kind of order that… Again, I think we are still in it, we're still witnessing… I don't believe that we are in a so-called post-colonial world. I think there is still a colonial order of things. So, maybe this is where… Or these are the first stories and histories that I heard first from, I think, women—and their fight, their struggle to exist as women in a colonial order—and then my parents, it was more the independence or the independent Algeria, where they also struggled as women since their fight, somehow, was not really recognized by the Algerian government, even though women played a crucial role in the independence of Algeria. And then the severe war in Algeria in the eighties, late eighties, there was really an armed conflict and bombs for me, or the sound of the bomb, the smell of the bomb, is something that I witnessed and I experienced. It's not abstract, it's a reality.

And then my education in the western world—Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, and later my academic positions in the US—you see the completely the other side of the coin, or the other side of the narratives, that I didn't hear when I was in Algeria. There was this, really, a Manichean world that I experienced between when I was born to when I was 18. And then, during my education, you just hear the opposite—like the celebration of the imperial history. I was torn between these two kind of worlds, and I tried to dedicate my life to unpacking and understanding what it means today, all this, let's say the histories of oppressions and the celebration of the imperial histories. How do you try to intersect these, and how do you take very specific case studies to understand, somehow, this Manichean world? I don't know if it makes sense, but...

SB:

I think so. And Noura, you're nodding along to a lot of that. Please feel free to join in.

Noura Al Sayeh:

No, because obviously I recognize a lot of it. I come from a similar background. Although I grew up in the Gulf, I'm Palestinian and this is the reality of a very big part of the Arab world. This is the reality that we grew up with and that we were brought up with. And I think that Samia mentioned already the essence of it, and also part of its contradiction in that we had a foot in both worlds. And that creates, I think from the start, a big contradiction in us, that I think you try to solve as you start working somehow—or at least that's where I found myself personally, because you're brought up in this not so post-colonial world, which I have to agree with very much. But at the same time, you're educated in western institutions. You're—to be honest—also encouraged to a certain extent that your success is attached to these institutions and you need to find the place yourself in how you want to deal with this, I think.

And I think this is, for me, one of the big challenges and contradictions that we've been brought up with and I think one of the… Not the struggles, but I think something that our generation also needs to understand how to deal with. How do we position ourselves within this? I think our parents' generation grew up in a very different situation than we are in. And I think that the events that have happened since October in Gaza and in the wider Middle East in general have brought this very much to the foreground, because it's made things very clear. It's made where you stand for towards these issues to the forefront. And I think it will be interesting to see how things evolve from there, how our generation in the Arab world, let's say, what direction they will take. I think things have changed a lot.

I've been lucky to be working here in Bahrain since 2008, working from a governmental position as a civil servant, which has many challenges. It's also, to be honest, not at all where—when I studied—where I thought I would be working. But it offers, also, a lot of opportunities in being very close to society, in a way, and being able to read very closely the changes that are happening. It's been now since 2008. Things have changed a lot and this younger generation that we see here is very different than we were, even more different than our parents are. And I think, for me, it's really exciting. I think that there's a possibility for a lot of change, but it also takes people like Samia and people that are out there speaking about what needs to be said, bringing things to the forefront continuously, having that fire on both ends—in the western world and here. It needs a lot of noise. It needs everyone actively working and speaking and making sure that the important things are said and that this is not a moment that passes, like many others before this, and everyone goes back to the comfort of their status quo.

SB:

Thank you, Noura, for sharing that. That was quite emotional for me to listen to. You were saying that you hadn't quite imagined that you would be working in these sorts of agencies and it is something that I was going to ask you about—this sort of particular weight or place you find yourself in, representing sometimes national identities or interests and so on. Oftentimes you're bringing these parts of the world to other audiences, and that's quite a lot. That's quite a weight to do. Tell me about that.

NAS:

It is, yeah. I mean, it's an incredible responsibility. I think that I was really lucky when I started, that I was really young and extremely naive and I did not feel or understand the weight of that responsibility so much. I mean, the first Venice Biennale that I had the opportunity to curate in 2010, I had just graduated—I was 25 I think, or 26. I did not even really understand what a curator did. I mean, I did not have that. So I ended up just doing everything everyone else seemed to not be doing, which included many things I understood later a curator does not need to do, but that's also not really coincidental. This is also very much the reality of the Gulf, that it's an incredibly young population. I mean, this is also across much of the Arab world. There are these opportunities there and you understand that then, also within a governmental framework and maybe in Bahrain, there was a very exceptional situation that there was an extremely dynamic, open, incredible minister at the time, Sheikh Al Khalifa, who also allowed and gave the opportunity for things like this to happen.

But it was really an amazing opportunity because you were able to carve out, within a governmental entity, a space for expression at an international platform where you're able to address challenging questions. I mean, this exhibition that we're talking about, which was called Reclaim, was looking at the social impacts of land reclamation in Bahrain—this was something that was happening and still happens very much across the Gulf—and really looking at how this was changing and affecting the national identity of Bahrain, which is an island nation: this loss of contact with the sea, what that meant at a social level, which was hardly ever spoken about, because most of the times people would talk about the environmental effects of that, mostly, also, because it was spoken about from a western perspective.

And this exhibition that we showed in 2010 came right after a big show that happened in Venice the previous year, in 2008, that was done by AMO, by Rem Koolhaas, entitled The Gulf, which was addressing, very much, the changes that were happening, but from a satellite-image point of view. And that was very much the way the exhibition was shown—the Google Earth image—and what that meant, which I'm not downplaying at all; of course that's also important to talk about. But for me, when I started, it was really important to understand that there are people here. There is a society; how is this affecting people on the ground? What are their reactions? How are they dealing with these things? Has anyone actually even asked them? And it touched upon a lot of things that are normally not spoken about—public participation in urban planning, all these things that we don't really speak about in this part of the world for many reasons.

And it was trying to see if you could carve out that space, actually, to start speaking about these things. And I think the exhibition, thankfully, was quite successful, which gave us a lot of impetus here in Bahrain, which was very helpful. But for me, it really showed me that you could carve out a space within these government institutions and that when you do, it's an incredible platform. And when you're able to gain that space within these institutions, and establish that platform, and start within the confines, obviously, of what you're able to say—I think you need to be also very honest about that—but that you're able to have a debate and that for me, any ground that you gain is an added value to the society. And that it's important—whatever the circumstances are, and sometimes they're extremely difficult and it's not only a line forward; you gain something sometimes, sometimes you go back many steps—but that it's important to be there at that table. And it's important within our own institutions to be present, and to open up spaces of conversation and dialogue that otherwise would not be there. And I think that although it's not at all—to get back to your question—it's not at all where I had imagined myself being when I was studying architecture, I think I quickly understood after a few months or a year into my work that it was an incredible platform, actually.

SB:

So nice to hear the story and those discoveries. I remember, distinctly, 2010 was my first visit to the Venice Biennale, and it was the first time Bahrain was exhibiting—just smashed it with the Golden Lion. I think the sensitivity of that exhibition—and you explained it so beautifully—was in allowing us to see what previously had not been. No, this objective lens that you were describing with AMO and other potentially more western gazes on certain parts of the world is somewhat, necessarily, at a distance. And you can't get in to understand that this is not just a territory from a distance on a map, but actually a place engrained with its own culture and heritage. And as I was listening to you, I was hearing in my mind, “deserts aren't empty.” I'm thinking of Samia in exactly the same lens that you've been able to share. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what you're able to open up and what responsibility that is.

SH:

I'm just thinking how to answer this question. The very first response that I got with the title, even, of the book that it was… Or I am considered as a historian, I always say, of the built, destroyed, and imagined environment. To expand a little bit the notion of architecture, that's not only what is built, it's also what is destroyed and imagined. So, since I am a historian, the title of the book is in the present, but it's also speaking about the past. I think that the response was really intriguing for me. It was clear, when the title became clear, deserts are not empty—we are speaking about the past, the present, and I would say even the future, because I don't see—unfortunately—yet transformation in thinking about territories around the world, unfortunately. There is still this really colonial narrative and even justification of considering certain territories as empty so that they can be destroyed, polluted, contaminated, filled with all kinds of environments.

So, I really want to insist on the title. It is not about the time of it; it's more about the spaces, so that it's a kind of affirmation: Deserts are not empty. And, almost, there is no negotiation. We’re not asking the permission to think deserts as places where people live, where there are all kinds of lives—not only human, but also non-human forces that are there, that they have always been there, but we cannot see them because our gazes, our ways of thinking [of] territories is always related to this extraction and capitalist way of creating profit. For me, this was really, really clear and I somehow… Not understand, but I was really intrigued by the reaction in relation to this title. Maybe that's really the first part of it.

Once we all agree—and I know that not everyone agrees that deserts are not empty, but we insist and we rehearse and we repeat the same thing over and over again, that deserts are not empty—then we have to understand, what is that regime of emptiness that was created? Then that's what, also, the introduction is saying—it's against the regime of emptiness and those regimes have been somehow implemented. It's a kind of imaginary, but it's also an idea that is injected in the beings of institutions and governments and, as a result, of people. There are still people who use the term “desert” to talk about emptiness, and say, “oh, it was a desert,” just to say it's empty. And I still hear this. The aim of the book is to say, “no, please, don't use deserts as ‘empty.’ They're not empty.” And we try to do this also through different languages—“desert” in English, in Arabic, in Spanish, Nubian. There are several languages just to understand what this term meant and means in different languages. So, bringing different voices and languages allow us also to understand, to expand, the meaning of that territory. And we also included poems. For me, that was also a very important inclusion, I would say. First to recognize the local languages of these territories, but also to remind ourselves that we are using English, it is an imperial language, and in that translation, we are losing all the meanings of those territories and those places.

We don't expect that everyone speaks other languages. But we also provided an introduction, and in the footnote, we also try to understand who are the authors, why this definition, why this kind of song or poem or oral history is also part of that territory. And it's an invitation for us to reconsider our sources as well. We can't only work with institutional archives, because most of those archives are either military or colonial or national, and in them there is a narrative that it's being somehow implemented and we should, as researchers and historians, challenge those sources and try to include other voices. So, poems, mappings, fables; we also had stories—in the case of Menna Agha, her grandmother who speaks and narrates the desert through her own experience.

So, all of these ways of approaching the land, the territory, for me are really, really important. I did, on purpose, include women because I really believe in the role of gender in telling or narrating or unfolding stories that cannot be told by other people, in a way. Also, I think, for me, age is also very important—that we have to be able to read someone who is in their seventies, but also someone who is in their thirties. I think to bring these experiences and generations in the same book means a lot to me. In a way, we're also mapping the transgenerational or the generational changes that I think Noura spoke about at the beginning when you said, “yes, I'm so hopeful that the new generation are somehow very different, or they are claiming or asking other kinds of questions.” And I think this has to be somehow demonstrated.

I think the role of imageries, as well—images and representation—was also something that was really, really important. As historians, we tend to work only about the past, and my question was, How do we understand the present and influence the impact of the past in the present? How do we do this through text and images? How do we try to challenge this linearity of time—past, present, and future—and try to complexify, a bit, the experiences of people on those territories, on deserts, hot and cold deserts? And that was a little bit the challenge. And I think from what I read, from conversations I had with some people, I think it worked quite well because of the variety of the approaches. You can't really capture, you cannot say, “okay, this is the desert.” And that's what the book is doing is—to really provide a range of approaches, of interpretations, of existences or even coexistences in the same book. And the book is going to be translated into Italian, and we are adding also one contribution on the fascist, colonial, Italian transformation of the desert in Libya. I think it's nice to continue and to expand and to try, really, to bring all these approaches together.

SB:

I could listen to both of you forever. I wanted to address—before we get too late into the recording—some of the difficulties, some of the hazards that we feel, or some of the exposures. For instance, Noura, you're a Palestinian. This is not always an easy thing to be. I'm speaking from London, where I think things are getting harder for people to be open. Okay, it's not as Samia might be experiencing in Germany; I must be grateful for that. But it is hard to be a part of the global majority here sometimes, and I can't imagine how much more exacerbated that would be if I was Palestinian. And Samia, I don't want to remind you, but it's a reality that your work has put you at risk, let's say. And if I can invite you to share as much as you're comfortable.

NAS:

It's not only challenging. I have to say these past few months have been just really emotional, extremely emotional in the way that I had not realized, I think, how much unprocessed pain and trauma we were all carrying as Palestinians—and it makes me emotional now—until I started seeing these images on TV again. There's a lot of talk about generational trauma, but I think you don't understand these words, or the weight of these words, until you experience them firsthand. Having been brought up by parents, my father went through the first Nakba; my mother was 16 in Nablus when Nablus became occupied by Israel. And these are things, you know, they carried their whole life and that, also, they never really talked about—not in the sense that they didn't talk about Palestine. On the contrary, they talked only about Palestine. But never about the emotions associated with it.

And I think a lot of it has to do in that… No Palestinian is in a post-trauma situation. We are still continuously always living this trauma. So, the pain of it and the emotions of it are not something our parents talk to us about, because they just had to find ways to go through life and to get on with us, raise us, find a way in this world, and so on. And I think this happening now, somehow, has brought all of this emotion once again to the foreground. And I find it really amazing. I have two young children—one that's five and one that's six, nearly seven now. We speak a lot about Palestine, but I never speak to them directly about what's happening. And yet they both somehow feel it so strongly, as strongly as I did when I was young and my parents also never directly spoke about it.

But I have to say, for me, it’s been… I feel incredibly lucky to be Palestinian. And I think that it's given me a very strong moral compass since I was really young. And it's really guided everything I've done in my life since. And it's given me extreme clarity as to why I do things, what's the general motivation—in the same way that I hear Samia speak. And I think that we're extremely lucky to have this clarity in our lives. You have moral values and a higher motivation in life that are so clear. And this is what gives you the fuel to continue doing it. I think—and this was not coincidental—the reason to stay in the Arab world, and work in the Arab world, and work within an Arab government, and to be able to do the work that you do to a large extent on your own terms and to not have to be indebted or to have to abide by the values… I don't want to generalize, but the values of the western world, which you don't necessarily abide by.

And I think I realized it now, in these past months, how important it is for us to take ownership of our own institutions and to build them and to reinforce them. Because you see when moments in history happen like this, how important it is to be able to have these platforms that are strong and to continue the work of doing it. I think for me, in the past 12 years that I've been working here, it's also been so encouraging and so rewarding to have younger architects from different parts of the Arab world that are excited to come work here, that are excited that there's interesting initiatives happening, that it's something that they can also be a part of, that they can claim ownership of. And I think that if we all invested a bit more in this, wherever we can, the change will happen. And you know, I think that we need to all continue believing in this, because we are many. You say it's definitely difficult being a Palestinian, but it’s also… There are many, many people that are incredibly sympathetic and supportive of the Palestinian cause. I think many more than we think. But the current power structures are such that these are not the dominant voices that you probably hear. But I think that there is a lot of ground to gain. And I think especially when you're working in the cultural field, it's an incredible platform to be able to gain more ground, more understanding on these issues.

SB:

Thank you, Noura. I hope you know how much it means to many other Palestinians and young Arab people around the world to see you and the work that you are doing—to those, particularly, who are not able to have that voice, the fact that you're there doing it and you're of this generation and that you're taking that place, taking that ownership, is incredibly meaningful. Samia, you've often been in the position of representing, also, certain concerns or causes or things that have somehow not been easy for other people to digest. You want to talk about that at all?

SH:

Yes, absolutely. We should keep talking about these things. It's very important.

NAS:

Should only talk about these things actually.

SH:

Absolutely, absolutely. No, I think it's really important because what institutions like—love— to do is to not talk about these things, in a way. And I think it's, for me, another kind of confirmation that the so-called democratic institutions are imperial and colonial by nature and by definition. Because what do you expect from someone who is trying to back colonial and military measures and operations that are happening, really, around the world? We can't choose which part of the world we should include when we talk about colonialism. We cannot choose. It's unacceptable. We have to include all imperial and colonial and military measures around the world—cannot just say, yes this, but not that. Yes, this place, but no, not Palestine. Yes, you can speak about Indigenous or you can speak about slavery in the US—but not about the Israeli killing of Palestinians. This is just unacceptable.

For me, it's, again… Institutions are very opportunistic in, let's say, allowing certain geographies to be discussed. And that's, for me, something that I think I will and I fought in the past and I am fighting and I will keep fighting. So, it's really important. I'm not saying that it was solved. I think it's now very clear what is the position of certain institutions. And, if I may say, the majority of institutions behave in that way. There is an imposed kind of… I would call it amnesia, an imposed silencing. And there is a selective approach to colonial and military stories and histories. And that's something that we really need to oppose and we have to keep doing the work and trying to understand this imperial and colonial and military operations in a comparative manner so that we can make these policies and measures very clear.

I'm not saying we are there. It takes an army to do that. And the army exists, and I'm using this military term on purpose, to really use it to say that, yes, we have to get more organized and we have to make sure that this work continues. And I think—as Noura said—I think what's really beautiful what's happening today, it's this network of solidarities around the world. And we also see the so-called Global South—or I would say the formerly colonized territories—and people are very clear about what's happening and very eloquent about what is not happening, as well. I think for me, this is really an important moment to learn from and with and to try to create stages for those who would like to speak and are oppressed. I think we have to support them. And there are many around the world, unfortunately. So I'm also like Noura—very hopeful.

SB:

That's so wonderful to hear you both being so optimistic. Well, both of you have in various ways been at a frontline or a real intersection of things. I mean, Samia, just to be explicit, your office has been vandalized in one of the institutions that you've worked at, and you're now operating in an environment or a country in which certain things are not permitted to be said. And so again, your optimism in the face of this—I think it's incredible.

You've both mentioned inheritances that you bring into your practice from your families, from your backgrounds, and so on. Some of the aspects of joy that I'm enjoying in my teaching is really encouraging my students to bring themselves into the classroom and validate some of the things that have been informative to their position, to their critical position, and that can also inform the rest of the group as well. I'm keen on asking about inheritances, but also resonances that you'd like to leave behind in your practice. It's very early days to say that to both of you, but I don't know if you're thinking about what you'd like to see emerge in the future. I suppose it's a question of how you orient yourselves from where you're from to wherever you're going. And let's say the goal for all of us is some kind of liberation.

NAS:

Maybe just to bounce off what you were saying, Shumi, the question of liberation, I think, is a really crucial one—especially liberation of the mind. I remember when I was working on an exhibition in 2014 with George Arbid and Bernard Khoury on modernism across the Arab world, and George told me something—this saying that was said by a Lebanese author, I can't remember his name now, but really stayed with me. And it was specifically on the context of Lebanon, but it applies more broadly. And he was saying that this person said that in Lebanon, the colonizers left, but the colonized stayed. And that is something that really stayed with me because it's true. There is… The colonization might have left, but this attitude and this thinking of your mind being colonized really takes a concerted effort to overcome. And from that moment on, I became very conscious about that in myself, in my work, and I constantly tried to reframe what I did to really think about it from the perspective and the context that I was in now, and not thinking about, maybe, how it's perceived elsewhere or will it be relevant elsewhere.

And it joins, also, what Edward Said would often speak about—about the right to narrate. And I think what comes up through this conversation, and what also makes the work of Samia so important, it's that… Because Samia is where she is, and she decides about what it is she wants to talk about, new things come to the foreground that would not have otherwise. I remember when I first started working on this exhibition in 2010, I had asked, I spoke to a lot of people, telling them, “What do you think is important to talk about?” And it was really striking for me to notice that everyone that I spoke to here in Bahrain, their immediate reaction was to say something like, “You need to show them that we have culture” or “you need to show them that it's not like this.” But it was always responding to the western perspective. It was never someone just saying, “to me, here, this is what was important to say.” And this is for us here, specifically, something really important that we need to overcome—this mentality of the colonized—and start taking more action for ourselves, from the context that we're in. I don't want to say that… It's not always easy, but it's something that I think is really important to be conscious about, and to make sure that you're speaking and narrating about the things that are important to you and not only constantly being reactionary or responsive to what it is that's being said, let's say, in the general academic and institutional circles.

SB:

Noura, I grew up in India personally, and my God, if a place has a strange hangover from its colonial past… Because as a child moving there, I knew and was very conscious of how I could manipulate responses towards me by modulating my accent. When I spoke in an English accent, the teachers at school would be nicer to me. And when I dropped it, and let's say spoke in a more assimilated way, there would not be that much kindness from my teachers. And it's a deeply sort of ingrained mindset of this, almost, defensiveness that you mentioned. You got to show them. And if I want to look at the extremely toxic nationalism that overtakes India right now, I think it's still coming from this insecurity complex of having to prove that you're big enough to be considered. And it's such a shame, as you say, the confidence that we might grow within us to talk about ourselves more honestly. Well, as an individual, sometimes that takes years of therapy, so let's see how we are as a society.

SH:

Yeah. I really love this response. Noura, I think what you just mentioned—this is really expectations. We are expected to—there are always these expectations from institutions, maybe sometimes from students, and from the environments we move within. Yeah, always have to respond to or react against or for. I think that’s, really… Yeah, I think it's very… an important point. And here, maybe I would like to really address all those, I would say, women of color, young generation women of color who, sometimes… They write to me, and they are really struggling a lot because of the institutions they are studying at, and they can’t do their work, and they are told that this is not scientific, this is not a methodology they can use. This is not a topic that's architectural enough. What is architecture and all of that. This is really happening very, very often, and I do respond to that. Despite the workload, I always try to respond and meet, even, sometimes 10, 20 minutes, and try to tell them to try to challenge those expectations and to try to see their struggle as a form of liberation and not as a form of suffering.

This is really important because you struggle, I would say, every day, unfortunately. Noura didn't say that it's not easy. I like to say it. I would say it's not easy. Nothing is given, nothing is given. This is really important—that we create the spaces we believe in. We see the struggle as a form of liberation, and we allow others to believe that this is possible. I think in a way that's what I am understanding in the last few years, that my work is seen as—by women of color—as a form or a possibility to exist within that world. But on the other side, I also have a lot of enemies. That kind of liberation is not appreciated. I did apply to a number of European institutions and the answer is always, “yes, fantastic curriculum, but you're going to politicize our students.” And the question for me is, “okay, what do you mean? What do you teach? Do you indoctrinate your students?” Politics is the world we live in. We are all political subjects and your students are politicized because they live in the 21st century and they see everything every day. No one is there to tell them. The question is, “What are the tools that we have to understand that world and to try to play a role or make a difference to allow ourselves and others to write, exhibit, design and think this world, otherwise?” and not always through the expectations. I mean, it's not easy. That's why one has to disobey, I would say. Once we know the mechanism, once we understand how they operate, and what are the challenges, and what are the shortcomings and the absences in those tools, we should challenge them and disobey and show that there are other ways of creating knowledge, of mapping the world, and of being together.

I think for me that's, in a way… I need to do it. It's not that I have to think why I'm doing it. I have to do it, that's it. But I think that others—at least those who reach out to me—are really afraid because of these mechanisms of oppression. Sometimes they are implicit, sometimes they are explicit. There are lots of gatekeepers; there are lots of people who say, Yes, we have been successful and we are one of the best schools in the world, so let's keep doing the work we have been doing. And you cannot do this anymore because you have a generation, as Noura mentioned before, that is not happy with those mechanisms, those tools. They need to experiment even with their own backgrounds, with their own tools, with their own voices, and with their own struggles. I think we have to—as institutions and as educators and also as creators, in the case of Noura—we have to allow those spaces to exist and maybe sometimes we realize that we made mistakes and that's also fine. Part of our life and part of our practices is also to allow those mistakes to happen and learn from them. I think, for me, that's really crucial.

I do have a question to Noura about exhibition-making. Because I think, again, in institutions here… I'm thinking of education, but also architects. Yes, we design, yes, we map the world, yes, we write, but I think exhibition is also, for me at least, a form of research—a form of allowing or creating a space that's not a text; that's not, let’s say, a design project; that's not an image, but it's a multiplicity of media. And I wonder, Noura, what are your maybe advices to young generations who would like to use or think of exhibitions also as a form of conveying meanings and telling stories?

NAS:

Yeah. I mean, I think this it's something that's often underlooked and underappreciated in architectural education. I do many different things, of which I've also thankfully built one building, but still—but in all these things that I do, I really do them from the spectrum of being an architect. I really consider myself primarily to be an architect, and I think that it's also really important for architects and architecture to be in these positions. I have a really big appreciation and understanding for building, but I think that it comes back again to this question of belief and morals. And for me, if it's an exhibition or if it's a building or if it's book or if it's a text, it's just a change of scale and medium. But the issues that you want to address and the way that you want to talk about them—I think this is something that you really learn about in architecture.

And I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of different architects, and you really see it in people that produce, let's say, challenging architecture or architecture that has something to say in the same way that a good exhibition would, or a good book would. It's really about having a clear and strong point of view on something. And that point of view also really comes from having—I come back to it again, but it's somehow, in these days, it's become more apparent also having a very clear moral compass on why you're doing something. A lot of times the problem that's missing, and the problem that's maybe not brought forward enough in architecture, is this question of the point of view that you have and the opinion that you want to bring forward. And that's why it goes back to what you were saying when they tell you that “this is too political,” but that is probably specifically the problem with architecture nowadays—is that it wants to pretend that it is not concerned or outside of all these issues, or that it addresses it in a incredibly superficial kind of way, in the way that we talk about sustainability today or in the way that we talk about morally correct architecture without actually ever going into the essence of why these things are incorrect.

You really see in architecture that it's strong, that it's bold. It's also the architects that produce this kind of architecture are also architects that have a very strong point of view, first of all, but also a very strong idea of on how society should be. And I think this is something that today we've kind of removed from the realm, or from the discussion, of architecture. Architecture has become, in the way that we teach it nowadays, a bit corporate. You're giving a service to a certain extent—also referring to what you were saying, Shumi, you don't need to bring yourself, let's say, to what it is that you're doing fully. And it's become somehow something that anyone can do, first of all—which I also believe is not really the case—and something that should be with soft edges, let's say, that doesn't annoy anyone too much, that's morally very correct, that's sourced correctly, but without actually ever going to the contentious part of all these discussions of, actually, how are resources actually sourced? What labor is producing these buildings and what conditions? What is the chain of resources? What is…

Sorry, I took a really big turn to talk to you about exhibition, but I think producing a good exhibition is actually about actually knowing what it is that you want to talk about—being very honest about that—and then showing it in the best way that you can, in showing an exhibition. But I would say the same thing also applies to a building, to understand what it is, actually, that we're trying to build. Why is it that we're trying to build this? And then, what is the best way we can do this? I consider myself really lucky to be able to move across these different mediums—whether it is making a book, an exhibition, commissioning a building, sometimes making a building myself. Probably the advice to young students is to be clear about why it is you are doing something and how is the best way to do it.

I always feel an incredible amount of pressure when we're doing an exhibition catalog, or if it is doing an exhibition or introducing another building—of saying, there's so many buildings, books, exhibitions out there. Why is it that you're bringing a new one? And really understanding, do you have something new to say of all this? Will this change anything? Are we talking about something that will alter or bring in something new to the discussion? And I think that's really important. I know whenever I work on an exhibition or something thematic, I often talk about it with my mother or people that are outside of the world of architecture. And whenever it makes them feel uncomfortable, I think, okay, then we've hit something interesting here. This is worth talking about. And I think it's important to continuously try to push these boundaries—of scratching the surface of the topics that are maybe still uncomfortable for us all to talk about.

SB:

Couldn't agree more, Noura, with all of that. That productive discomfort is oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes the key that you need to know that you're forging something new, that you're at least pushing something that needs to be pushed. And exactly that core of why am I doing this, who am I doing this for, is often a good discipline to maintain. Thank you so much, both of you, for your incredible generosity. We've been speaking for an hour already, and I could happily go on, but I know that you've both got things to do. So thank you for your honesty, your generosity, your emotions. And yeah, we'll wrap it there. Thank you both.

NAS:

Thanks so much for this, Shumi. It was really a pleasure and an honor. And it's so nice to finally meet you, although through a screen, Samia.

SH:

It was also my pleasure, really.

NAS:

Thank you so much for your inspiring work.

SH:

Thank you. Thank you for your inspiring work too. And thank you also, Shumi, for bringing us together. I think it was really a wonderful, fabulous conversation.

NAS:

It was.

SB:

I loved it. I cried twice, but yes, I loved it.Alright. We hope you enjoyed that phenomenal exchange between architect Noura Al Sayeh and architectural historian and academic Samia Henni. Of course, you can find more information on both speakers and the rest of the series in the show notes on the re:arc institute website and on the digital platform KoozArch. All episodes of the podcast, all equally insightful, can be found through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to yours. I'm Shumi Bose. You've been listening to Between Us, the second season of the Architectures of Planetary Well-being Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us and stay hopeful, happy, soft, and strong.

COVER FEATURING PHOTOGRAPHY BY Bruno Barrillot (LEFT) & Marco Cappelletti (RIGHT)