Space Black

🖥️This week we’re FINALLY launching our website!!!! But before we do, we want to re-introduce ourselves. Space Black is a creative studio of Black designers, exploring alternative spatial futures for historically marginalised communities. Space Black is invertedly interested in the under-researched and under-represented and most importantly under-resourced ideas that have been neglected due to the profession's lack of diversity. Though born from a built environment context, we see our work exploring designing for diversity applicable across the whole design industry. We believe that these ideas and conversations exist outside of traditional practice environments and instead amongst communities, young people and diverse groups of professionals who have not had their perspectives on the built environment valued.

We’re incredibly excited to be spending the next 2.5 months in Stockholm, as one of 12 (local and international) residents with @iaspis.se We will be using the residency to undertake Space Black’s first speculative design project. Tapping into Rayan’s architectural practice and Heba’s engineering skillset, we will be designing a conceptual alternative music & dance space that accommodates Sudanese and East African performance. To start the documentation of our journey we wanted to reintroduce ourselves. Rayan @rayan_elnayal is a Sudanese London-based artist, designer, and educator that combines her research and architectural background to imagine futuristic spaces deeply rooted in Sudan and its diaspora. Her work serves as a speculative exploration of futuristic and fictional spaces that embraces her cultural heritages and resists harmful Euro-centric design principles. She enjoys exhibiting her work within programmes that facilitate people to discuss and draw out their own dreamscapes too. She is currently exhibiting at AlBustan Seeds in Philadelphia. As an educator, Rayan has taught BA Architecture units, as well as guest lectured for courses in multiple design fields. Heba (@tabideee ) is a DJ, researcher, and archivist exploring the critical contributions of Black communities across the continent and diaspora to electronic music. Her sound in the club channels the spiritual and political lineage of electronic music while paying tribute to its Black pioneers. Her research also traces its deep connections to rave culture and collective sonic memory. Through this, she has developed an archival practice focused on Sudanese electronic music that moves beyond traditional institutions- drawing from SoundCloud, cassette mixtapes, phone recordings, and personal fieldwork. In the wake of conflict, this practice has taken on new urgency, leading her to build a sonic archive of her own family. She has performed at Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda and across a range of venues and art spaces in Europe. 📸 credits: 1- @minaldris 4- @abdulisms 6- Loc Vo/Black Archives Sweden 7&11- @_faparra

Our projects spans across and move between: 👩🏾‍🏫Education Curating and delivering outreach programmes that increase access into the design industry, and its non traditional pathways for those from historically underrepresented backgrounds. 💭 Research & Design Conducting theoretical research and speculative designs to imagine a radical, just and positive spatial future for historically marginalised communities. 🌍 Culture Engaging with culture and community to deliver events that demystify the discourse around design

Tape memories: Presentation & Listening session with Space Black Friday 22 May 2026 7-9 pm 📍Black Archives Sweden, Falkenbergsgatan 4A, Malmö Door opens: 7 pm Event starts: 7.30 pm Join us for a presentation and listening session with Space Black, presented by Heba Tabidi, centered on the migration of cassette tapes during the 1980s and 1990s between Sudan and the UK. The session will explore the movement of music, sound, and cultural memory across borders via cassette technologies, as well as distribution and recording practices among Sudanese communities. Songs were collected, parties and gatherings recorded, mixtapes made – challenging ideas of belonging and authorship. These practices not only documented moments of collective life and the spatiality of music, but also extended them, allowing listeners in Sudan and the diaspora to share experiences of sound, atmosphere, and sociality across distance and time. About @spaceblack__ Space Black is an interdisciplinary built-environment practice that aims to imagine alternate spatial futures for historically marginalised communities. Using our design expertise alongside creative and humanitarian disciplines, we develop and deliver strategies for collaborative design, placemaking, and speculative practice that support the exploration of under-examined ideas within the spatial professions. Through Concept Design & Research, Education, and Culture, we propose a profession and approach to the built environment rooted in equity, imagination, and collective care. Space Black is led by architectural designer/visual artist/educator Rayan Elnayal, and Civil Engineer/Sound practitioner Heba Tabidi. 💫 More about Heba Tabidi coming soon! 🔗 Läs om eventet på svenska via länken i bio Graphic design: Linda Hallstan Tape Memories is supported by Riksantikvarieämbetet.

Research trip to Bucharest for an upcoming project

Presenting our practice, designs and sounds to @alfonj_scouts (A group of young Sudanese scouts) for @resolvecollective ’s co-design and build programme with @archifringe The workshops explored the intersections of the young people's cultural heritage in Sudan and local knowledge in Edinburgh. Thank you @resolvecollective for inviting us! It was wonderful seeing other creative Sudanese practitioners we respect contributing to the programme too: @carbonbasedfunk @zainab_gaafar @nour_ib_ 🖤 📷: Theodora van Duin @theodoravanduin

IASPIS Research Residency: reimagining ‘club’ spaces for Sudanese Sounds (WIP project) Space Black in Conversation with Fadlabi With the support of IASPS, we were honoured to host visual artist, curator Fadlabi in Stockholm for a collective dinner and conversation. Falabdi was invited to share his practice and the inception of the Khartoum Contemporary Art Center (KCAC), a deeply loved space in Oslo, Norway @khartoum_contemporary KCAC was a beautiful, fully flexible, self-designed and self-built space created by Fadlabi and his team. Named after Sudan’s capital, it paid tribute to Sudanese identity, its expansive arts and culture scene, and its precolonial role as a crossroads of trade and cultural exchange linking different parts of Africa. This was reflected through its design and curation; the centre facilitated artists from across the global majority and its diasporas, offering an extensive programme of exhibitions, film screenings, panel discussions, debates, book launches, reading circles, and club nights. Fadlabi generously shared archival materials documenting how KCAC was acquired and designed, and provided virtual insights contributing to our ongoing research . A huge thank you to @magnus.ericson.se and @iaspis.se for making this event possible, and Fabaldi for such a generous offering of his amazing work

IASPIS Research Residency: reimagining ‘club’ spaces for Sudanese Sounds (WIP project) East African Music Workshop With @blackarchiveussweden proving the space, we held an East African music focused workshop with our friends in Malmö, presenting our spatial analysis for feedback, facilitating discussion and a collaborative drawing exercise. These findings will help inform our design

Today marks 3 years of the Sudan War, resulting in the greatest humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. This fundraiser began as an urgent relief fund and 3 years later continues to provide on the ground support to communties across Sudan. As communties return to their homes where they can, or attempt to rebuild their lives somewhere anew, some of our fundraising efforts can now also support longer term initiatives where possible. A number of generous donations made this year, alongside a significant contribution from funds raised by the @blackarchivessweden community and additional external donations has allowed us to build a community water point and repairs the backup water storage tank. The water point has been constructed in a school in the west of Omdurman, with 700 students who previously had no running water supply and relied on on buying water and filling a Zeers — a traditional earthenware pot that cools and stores drinking water for the students. Thank you to for three years of donations and continued support. In the face of overwhelming need our collective, localised actions have allowed us to reach hundreds of people with dignity. As the conflict continues across the country and the wake of war leaves millions vulnerable, please continue donating to grassroots initiatives, campaign to hold governments accountable—to recognise the crisis and take immediate action, support Sudanese refuges in your local areas, keep informed and your eyes on Sudan. 🇸🇩❤️‍🩹

IASPIS Research Residency: reimagining ‘club’ spaces for Sudanese Sounds (WIP project) Open studios workshop Pick your favourite track, or a specific artist. Draw a space that would best facilitate this sound Where is this taking place-imagine beyond the traditional 4 walls? What is your relationship to the artist performing the track? What elements of the music or performance do you want the space to facilitate? Who else is experiencing the music with you? What is your relationship to others listening with you in the space? Sketch by @onkar.kular

IASPIS Research Residency: reimagining ‘club’ spaces for Sudanese Sounds (WIP project) Open studios in conversation with Elena Wolay The role of personal memory, and the informal sonic archive in our research. Capturing sonic subcultural moments, the spatiality of the genres, audience engagement as part of the composition through call and response patterns, the soundsystem culture, and the liveness of a community in motion.

IASPIS Research Residency: reimagining ‘club’ spaces for Sudanese Sounds (WIP project) As part of our research, we looked to map the unique spatial qualities of where Sudanese music is experienced. We conduced a spatial analysis of key genres: 1. Mohammed Wardi in Eritrea (1990’s) 2. Ibrahim Nejeery Zanig Solo (2010’s( 3. Archie footage of Agani Banat (Year Unknown) 4. Aghani O Aghani TV series (2022) 5. Sudanese Zar French Institute Documentary (Year Unknown) Drawings by @rayan_elnayal