Studio aki london

Àdìrẹ Cyno is a triptych…an emerging multi-tych of 2x1m cynotyoes on silk which reference the Àdìrẹ indigo dying method, traditionally carried out by women, often inscribing social and personal historiographies into fabric. These describe moments in migration histories and West African Diasporic imaginaries.

I recently took part in the PhD Research Projects, The Bartlett School of Architecture’s, annual conference and exhibition. My abiding memory of Research Projects was (in words I am borrowing from a recent conversation) “a sense of being in community”.  The process of creating the conference and exhibition was a wonderful shared experience. On, the last day of the show, I performed an extract of ‘This Architecting Life’ (Working Title), against Àdìrẹ Cyno House - A Pavilion@of Stories. The narrative is a form of ficto-criticism, a critical fabulation, exploring diasporic women’s experiences of the architecture and the city. The Pavilion - features Cyno-Type Prints, made over the last year and borrows from the Yoruba Àdìre dying method, traditionally carried out by women, often recording social and personal histories. Thanks to the lovely people who came along to watch, as ever to my supervisors Penelope Haralambidou and Fiona Zisch, and for the generous response...

#repost @womanwithacam3ra Carried by a little boy who had travelled across ‘The Black Atlantic”, from West Africa to England, to go to boarding school, this case carries a myriad of migration stories. How exactly it came into his possession is now obscured by the fog of fading memory. That little boy was my father. As part of my research, I am exploring ways of preserving such disappearing stories...trying to fill in some of the illusive gaps. The suitcase has become a testbed for process of making and drawing, both analogue and digital. Conversions from physical to virtual and back again. The remade objects will from part of a storytelling process, props in future performances. . . . ##bhm #architecturalhistory #phdlife

#repost @womanwithacam3ra Carried by a little boy who had travelled across ‘The Black Atlantic”, from West Africa to England, to go to boarding school, this case carries a myriad of migration stories. How exactly it came into his possession is now obscured by the fog of fading memory. That little boy was my father. As part of my research, I am exploring ways of preserving such disappearing stories...trying to fill in some of the illusive gaps. The suitcase has become a testbed for process of making and drawing, both analogue and digital. Conversions from physical to virtual and back again. The remade objects will from part of a storytelling process, props in future performances. . . . #bhw2025 #architecturalhistory #phdlife

#repost @womanwithacam3ra : As part of my PhD, I get the invaluable opportunity to continue my own learning. This year I did so by joining the aforementioned (previous post…) ‘Site Writing’ module, led by Jane Rendell, with Polly Gould, David Roberts and Sarah Baker. I used it to develop some work started in my wider PhD, as part of which I am making a series of artists books. Comprising, writing, drawings, cut outs…these continue the exploration of the Victorian house as a repository of migration histories and a portal to other, distant times and places… #lifelonglearning #storytelling #writing #phdlife #artistsbooks #making #architecturalhistory

#repost @womanwithacam3ra : As part of my PhD, I get the invaluable opportunity to continue my own learning. This year I did so by joining the aforementioned (previous post…) ‘Site Writing’ module, led by Jane Rendell, with Polly Gould, David Roberts and Sarah Baker. I used it to develop some work started in my wider PhD, as part of which I am making a series of artists books. Comprising, writing, drawings, cut outs…these continue the exploration of the Victorian house as a repository of migration histories and a portal to other, distant times and places… #lifelonglearning #storytelling #writing #phd #artistsbooks #architecturalhistory

#repost @womanwithacam3ra : A pleasure to take part in ‘The Festival of the Commons in Architectural Writing’, at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, as both a participant, performing extracts from my new writing, and leading a workshop with words. The workshop and performance were a playful interpretation of Stanford Meisner’s acting technique in which my partner, Ilayda Coksaygili, and I remixed words from our site writing texts. The Festival was hosted by Lidia Gasperoni, Jane Rendell and Polly Gould. It explored the idea of the commons in architecture and writing – what we have in common, and practices of commoning to be found in writing the built and unbuilt environment. The festival included staff members, current and previous students from Situated Practice MA, including participants of Critical Spatial Practice: Site-Writing module. It also included a workshop facilitated by Tumpa Fellows of FAME Collective to mark Refugee Day. Images featured here include artist books made by the student cohort as part of the Site Writing module, which were exhibited, as part of the festival. Very grateful to Jane Rendell for the invitation to take part in this delightful day.

Pleased to share the studio founder, Sarah @womanwithacam3ra has just been “upgraded”….anyone familiar with the PhD world will know that that does not mean the old one has been traded in…but that she’s transitioned from Mphil to PhD. Sarah’s PhD is a PhD by design in which she continues her multidisciplinary practice. In it she pivots the tools of architectural design to those of a storyteller. She combines them with performance to uncover and explore Black Women’s lives, in the built environment…to imagine new futures. Focusing on histories of women from the West African diaspora, the project employs the compressed space of allegory and fiction to paint the texture of women’s lives and spaces. Still is taken from an experimental performance film which plays with the idea of projected virtual sets and live performance. Made in the black box space, UCL Here East. In the world the piece creates the Victorian house becomes a portal to other places…distant lands…#performance #storytelling #architecturalhistory

Happy 2025! Image - A Hackney Street is taken from the virtual set for ‘Beyond Urban Tragedy’ From the ‘Urban Histories’ series by Studio Aki.

Last day with this year’s MS15 @rca.mediastudies ….on ‘vintage’ Polaroid. #moving

Last week one of my students asked me, ‘Sarah, what is your PhD about?’ It’s question that can strike dread into the heart of any PhD - my response was suitably vague…Still, last Tuesday I was forced to nail some colours to the mast… As part of the ‘upgrade’ from Mphill to Phd, at The Bartlett, we have the opportunity to present our work as part of the ‘Research Conversation’ series. My research, ‘Beyond Urban Tragedy’ uses fiction, visual and oral storytelling to explore architecture, gender and race. As my ‘Conversation’ I performed a new version of ‘This Architecting Life' (Working Title). The narrative is a series of stories within a story - which weaves through past, present and future. It explores multiple women’s lives, somewhere, not dissimilar to London. It touches on themes of architecture and power, the conditions of architectural production, the voids in the historical narratives which surround architecture and how they obscure women and people of colour. It considers the way the resulting built environment affects black women’s lives. It explores these everyday liives as they but up against the material of architecture - considering such things as serious mental illness, of which there is a higher incidence amoungst black populations in western cities. Perhaps this is the central ‘Tragedy’…The research and asks, not whether there is a causal link with the built environment but whether it might contribute to it, exacerbate or simply fail to provide healing spaces. The backbrop you see here, the world of the play, draws on the West African Tradition of telling stories on fabric. Here the process of using wax to expose the fabric to dye is replaced by the cynotype photographic process, which sears memory into the fabric, as it is exposed to sunlight. The performance draws on my training as an actor at Drama Centre, CSM and is influenced and inspired by my pre-#PhD #research on the @xx_aoc - which I hope will help me write the final, future facing, acts of this play, pivoting it ‘Beyond Urban Tragedy’ towards a kind of liberation. Thanks to those who came along, I was blown away by the generous feedback. #storytelling #architecturalhistory

#repost @xx_aoc (Once again) A time for Solidarity. It’s the first time in a long time many of us can remember feeling unsafe on our streets, waking up with such a sense of dread, such a sense of unease. It has been deeply troubling to see this side of this country. These are things many of us thought had been consigned to history. The country seemed to have moved on from such naked, violent expressions of racism. Last weekend I was thinking about all those I know who might be affected by these events, those who’ve come to the UK to study, people from migrant families - all those affected. How did we get here? Many will feel shocked but not surprised. This feels as though it has been building for a long time, as a far right narrative has built and been absorbed into poisonous, political rhetoric and been regurgitated by online influencers. Now the virtual hate has spilled out into the real world and onto our streets and the rhetorical words have become the chants and rallying cries of the mobs. People whom the populists have given scapegoats to blame in the face of the discontent after decades of underinvestment. This is of course nothing new. There have always been scapegoats. In the 1930s Edward Mosely’s leadership led to fascist violence against Jews and The Battle of Cable Street, in the 70s and 80s there were attacks on Black and Asian people by the National Front, following Enoch Powell’s, infamous speech and now the targets are Muslims and refugees. The current wave of xenophobia is a strand that has it roots in a particular kind of racism. Powellism - a strand of thinking that rejects the idea that we can live together in all our diversity. But we reject that. Tonight, the country rejected that. It has been heartening to see the stand against, racism, islamophobia and hate. – rather like the Battle of Cable Street, the Fascists did not win. These are our streets, and we cannot give them up to racists and Islamophobes. We cannot let our friends be intimidated as they go about their daily lives. We need to stand together. Peacefully together. Please stay safe everyone. #notoracism #notohate