The collaborative studio, Counterspace, situated in Fox street, Johannesburg CBD comprises of three architecture graduates who predominantly work on research projects aiming to push rabble-rousing thought around perceptions of the Johannesburg CBD.
Amina Kaskar, Sarah de Villiers and Sumayya Vally established Counterspace in 2014. Their projects take the form of competition work, public events, urban insurgence and exhibition design. The studio is mainly concerned with notions relating to otherness and the future. Space and ideas about the city are deconstructed and reconstructed with picture and narrative.
Counterspace was brought into actualization at the end of the team’s Masters year in Architecture school. In Vally’s own words, “we wanted to find a way to keep the creative spirit and energy we shared together without becoming jaded when we went into ‘real’ architectural practice. At first it was a hobby, but after our first few projects we realized we had a fully fledged business idea.’’
Numerous artistic and spatial modes of exploration were used by De Villiers in her Masters of Architecture thesis, Idea Bank: From Watt Street to Wall Street, Wynberg Johannesburg (University of the Witwatersrand). In her thesis she travelled around fantastical heterotopias of cash spaces and their supremacy in the city, and offered re-imaginings of forms of social exchange.
Kaskar gives indispensable swiftness in managing symbolic analyses of urban fabric and decoding. Her interest is rooted in the semantic and textual understanding of a city’s layering. The myths and stories of Doornfontein in Johannesburg are reimagined into digital inner city story narrating. Her thesis completed in 2014 exemplifies this swiftness.
Vally has a precise fixation with future ruin and fictional future space against arising and disappearing images of Johannesburg that can be seen through her digital collage and forensic methodological approach to space. Unmasking parts of the city, which are mostly invisible with satellite imagery or a microscope is a specific curiosity of hers.
In 2015 and 2016 Counterspace worked on the Auret Street Recycling Building Regeneration Project in collaboration with 1to1 Agency for Engagement and Jabulani Khwela. This was a research-based project in which the collaborative studio engaged with re-claimers/recyclers through workshops. The group mapped out the use of the Auret Street building as a space for shuffling through waste as well as a territory in which the re-claimers reside. The idea with this project was to remedy unsafe areas in the building as well as facilitate an arts and culture project engaging with the urban redevelopment of the area. Social media platforms were used as a means of crafting awareness as a mode of land activism thereby bringing over the sensitivity of this experimental project.
Currently Counterspace is working on research projects for ASM Architects on an Urban Development Framework for Fleurhof in addition to Local Studio – at Wits’ Braamfontein and Parktown campuses. These opportunities came into actualization because of the studio’s keen focus on research in their practice.
Another focus for the collaborative studio is on projects exploring how children occupy space. These spaces range from exhibitions, furniture, events and installations. This new focus and idea is being explored in collaboration with Play Africa, Skateistan, Museum of Childhood, and the Imbeleko Foundation.
In addition to the current projects already mentioned, Vally has said that the studio is working on a variety of projects with an Air bnb focus (in South Africa, London and Croatia). The group finds this exceptionally fascinating as it demonstrates the way in which architecture is influenced by that model.