Image: Public Acts: What does Mai Mai mean?

I am the co-founder of 1to1 – Agency of Engagement, a Unit Tutor for Unit 2: Systems of Exchange at the Bartlett School of Architecture and  enrolled as an Architectural Design doctoral candidate in the TACK / Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing Network.

My practice-led research interests are driven by issues of inclusive design-practice, spatial justice, critical positionality, and urban planning in South African cities.  Through my doctoral studies I am busy developing a body of work and a theoretical framework on ideas of Southern Urbanism and design-based research. These inquiries are largely reflective, design-based, and critically speculative around concepts of positionality, ethics-in-action, and spatial design practice.

In the last few years I have shifted from my position as co-director of 1to1 – Agency of Engagement, a non-profit entity that undertakes design based collaborative projects often positioned between various grass-roots organisations, professional entities, academia and government. This role was held in conjunction with a research position within the DSD Desis Lab at the University of Johannesburg’s Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA), as well as various teaching positions in the faculty at UJ, amongst others locally.

The diverse nature of my work allowed me to manage an array of tactically built projects, local and international teaching roles as well as several multidisciplinary action-research projects in the field of urban development and participatory design. I have used teaching as a grounded form of praxis that has allowed me a sustainable means to operate 1to1, while fostering an important space to write, publish and ask critical questions through action-research and reflective learning in design-research. This has led me into work with various departments of the South Africa government,  local and international research institutes and universities including include Harvard’s GSD, (USA), CEPT’s Faculty of Architecture (India) and the University of Sheffield’s Masters in Urban Design, UK. Most recently, I have taken a position as Unit Tutor for the BSc Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Having been professionally trained in Durban (my home town), Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria; I was awarded a master’s degree in architecture with distinction in 2012. In 2016 I completed a summer programme on leadership and social impact through policy hosted by the UC Berkeley’s Goldman School for Public Policy during my Young African Leadership (YALI), Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF). But, it was during my experience as a student with the 2010 Slovo Park Project; a student and community led research, co-design initiative, that I developed a critical stance in regard to the role of design in the fluid and dynamic re-developing city areas of South Africa.

To see my collection of written/published work, please access my Research Gate profile. For my C.V please contact me directly or see my LinkedIn