AA Visiting School Khartoum: Applications Now Open

Applications for the AA Visiting School Khartoum are now open. Full and partial scholarships are available.

The AA is the abbreviation for the Architectural Association, a school based in London. Their Visiting Schools have taken place in multiple cities around the world with their first one in Khartoum set to take place in August 2021 (online) and December 2021 (on-site).

The workshop is open to current architecture and design students, PhD candidates and young professionals with knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite, Rhino (SR7 or later) and other softwares.

The Khartoum Visiting School will look at the intersection of heritage and global warming by engaging with heritage sites that are threatened by water. Part of the programme will have workshops related to material research, digital and fabrication tools, as well as design explorations which will result in a collection of drawings and prototypes. 

The School’s agenda explores the intersection of climate change and heritage whilst reflecting on new modes of representation. The continuous reshaping of the flow of rivers is both a cause and effect of human patterns of behaviour that have reshaped settlements at its shoreline throughout history. Today, the course of the Nile is being altered once more through new urban developments and climate change posing a threat to sites adjacent to its riverbed. The School studies the challenges posed by climate change through the chosen site at Meroe and the ongoing alterations of water passages. Participants will engage with invited anthropologists,
architects, artists, bioarchaeologist, community initiatives, and historians through lectures, seminars, studios and workshops.

The School’s output shall be exhibited in various galleries along the Nile: Khartoum (House of Heritage), Addis Ababa, Asmara, Bujumbura (TwoFiveSeven Arts), Cairo, Dar es Salaam (Nafasi Art Space), Juba, Kampala (Afriart Gallery), Kigali, Kinshasa, and Nairobi. Other spaces shall be announced soon.

Behind AA Visiting School Khartoum

School directors: Suha Babikir Hasan and Nuha Eltinay
Teaching assistant: Marwah Osama
Invited guests: Alexandra Riedel, Cave Bureau, Grau, Jane Humphris, Lucia Allais, Michael Mallinson, Iwona Kozieradzka-Ogunmakin, Suzan Khalil Mohamed Sayed (Nafeer), Solange Ashby, William Carruthers. Other speakers shall be announced soon.

Suha Babikir is an architect who has worked on various projects, ranging from private residences to large developments in Bahrain, Dubai, and Khartoum, and as a lecturer at University of Bahrain. She is interested in post- and pre-colonial studies of architecture and urbanism, more broadly in the global history of spatial cultures and their production through transnational and transcultural processes, specifically those across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia (MEASA). In addition, she is interested in cross-cultural artistic practice across the region, including its history and legacy. She has recently joined the United Nations Development Programme as a consultant. Suha is also the program director of the AA Visiting School Khartoum.

Nuha Eltinay is an award-winning spatial planner and a Licentiate Member of the British Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), MA holder of International Planning and Sustainable Development from University of Westminster, and PhD holder of degree on Urban Resilience from London South Bank University (LSBU), working towards the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the Arab Region. With strong experience in building Urban Resilience governance for Smart cities infrastructure, smart citizenry and smart governance, Nuha has been highly active in promoting activities at the MENA regional, national and local levels around building coherence between the 2015-2030 SDGs, the Habitat III New Urban Agenda, the Sendai Framework and 2005-2015 Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) – Making Cities Resilient projects, aimed at encouraging innovative female-run business solutions to risk management in the MENA Region.

Marwah Osama is an Architect with an interest in research related to materiality and graphic representation. She is currently working in London at Heatherwick Studio and has previously worked at Article 25 and ANARCHITECT (Dubai). She completed a Master’s in Architecture in Architectural Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL and a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Sharjah. Her work was awarded ‘Regional Winner’ in the International Undergraduate Awards and was published and exhibited namely in: Archnet-IJAR, Designboom, the Sharjah Architecture Triennial and Margaret Fletcher’s book ‘Visual Communication for Architects and Designers: Constructing the Persuasive Presentation’.

Applications will close on 30 June 2021.

For more information or to apply, visit www.aaschool.ac.uk/academicprogrammes/visitingschool/Khartoum. Find AA Visiting School Khartoum on Twitter and Instagram @aaKhartoum.