Somali born architect chosen to represent the UK

Questions:

Q1. Please tell us the story of Rashid Ali and the key moments that shaped your career path?

A1. I was born in Somalia in 1978 where I received early elementary schooling in Hargeisa and briefly lived in Mogadishu before leaving for England with my family in 1989. I guess the earliest reference to my current preoccupations and professional background, goes back to those school days. During a time when exercise books were scarce, we had to do our best to absorb information in the short time books were made available to the class.

It was the ease with which I was able to copy scientific diagrams from the books that I came to appreciate an artistic potential. After arriving in England there was never any question about pursuing higher education because there was still very much the old seafarer's idea of being in your host country as a Somali either to make money or take advantage of the education system.

Being of a young age, it was the latter in my case and I was constantly reminded of the fact that I was going to be an engineer in order to build Somalia. Although engineering seemed appealing at the time I was more interested an area or fields of study that would allow me to expand on my other interests such as history and popular culture.

Instead, I enrolled an undergraduate degree in architecture at the University of Greenwich, followed by a Masters at University College London. This, in retrospect turned out to be the best decision I made as an adult. I don't say this because of my profession as an architect but rather that these studies have allowed me to explore lots of other things, related and unrelated, which are of great interest to me.

Q2. What is the history of the MA Projects?

A2. After a number of years spent working for other practices I decided to seek new challenges that would allow me to undertake more research and develop my own ideas and interests. In 2006 I set up Rashid Ali Projects; a collaborative research studio pursuing areas and issues of interest through teaching, competitions and building.

This involved a considerable amount of teaching at a number of universities, entries to design competitions and collaborations on small scale projects with other architects and designers. One of the regular collaborators was a friend named Ed McCann whom I have worked with in previous practices.

After working together sporadically and having lots of conversations about many things, we decided to formalise our relationship into MA (McCannAli) Projects in 2009.


Q3. What is your vision for the MA projects?

A3. We were recently asked this question at our talk at the Lisbon Architecture Trienale. It's the kind of question that most practitioners of any profession naturally ponder on when starting out as we are, but architects can be a little secretive about answering.

Our thought at the time and still is that we want to be in control and particularly in creative control of what we are doing. Architecture is an unpredictable profession dictated by market forces whereby its common to be overloaded with work one day and to have nothing the next day.

We are beginning to be talked about not because of buildings we have built (which we haven't done much of yet!) but because of the ideas we developing for individual buildings and cities, and we would like to maintain those ideas irrespective what scale we are going to work in the future


Q4. What are some of the challenges and opportunities that MA mandate?

A4. We work in a profession whereby a forty five year old architect is often described as 'young architect' and some of the most famous of whom did not get reasonable sized building commissions until they were approaching their pension, so even though we have considerable building experience we still have to battle hard to convince clients that we can deliver. On the other hand we have a smaller number of other clients that are more educated about the value of good design, and that come to us knowing what we do and want to work with us regardless of our age. We are also have an averse building codes in the UK that dictate what can be built and where, which often make it very difficult to do anything out of the ordinary


Q5. What impact do you intend your leadership to have on MA in general and Somalia in particular?

A5. I don't envisage MA projects to become a prolific operation although one's aspiration can change over time, hence we would ideally prefer to make a small number of quality buildings and public spaces
that improve peoples lives, experience of the city and hopefully add a little debate to the wider architectural discourse. To say that there is a lot to be done in every field in Somalia would be an understatement. I have a particular interest in the urbanisation process and its impact on people and very much look forward to finding the opportunity to carry out research on our rapid transformation from
a nomadic to an urban society and its social, economic and environmental implications. Apart from that it would also be wonderful at some point to pass on knowledge and teach, the same way I have been doing in the UK

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MA Projects have been selected by the Architecture Foundation (UK) and Ordem Dos Arquitectos (Portugal) to participate in the New Architects Portugal/UK exchange programme as part of the 2010 Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

The aim of the programme is to identify, exchange and promote the best new architects from countries around the world through developing networks, dialogue and cultural exchange that allow for the sharing of information, ideas and new thinking.

MA Projects along with two other UK architects and three practices from Portugal have been identified by the partners as exciting emerging architects who will act as ambassadors for the architectural scenes in their respective countries, taking part in reciprocal programmes to each country with a schedule of co-ordinated activities including public lectures, studio visits and site tours. MA Projects is young London based architecture and design practice, set up in 2009 by partners Rashid Ali and Ed McCann after working together collaboratively for a number of years.

Through their interest and readings of contemporary cultural and social issues, art, architecture and urbanism, MA Projects have developed architectural and landscape projects that expand on ways one experiences and inhabit spaces at macro and micro scales. Rashid Ali BA(Hons), DipArch, MSc was born in Somalia in 1978.

He studied architecture at the University of Greenwich and the Bartlett school, UCL and City Design and Social Science at the London School of Economics. Prior to co-founding MA Projects he worked at Adjaye   Associates in London where he was involved in the development and building of a number of high profile public projects such as the Ideas Store libraries, London, Nobel Peace Centre, Oslo and the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Denver, as well as running arts projects that included collaborations with artists Chris Ofili and Olafur Eliasson. Alongside practice he teaches architecture at the Oxford Brooks University. He has lectured and taught widely in the UK including the Welsh School of Architecture, UCL, University of Nottingham and Manchester School of Architecture.

In 2008 Rashid was nominated for the Building Design Young Architect of the Year Award (YAYA). For more details please see;

http://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk 

For interview contact: rashid@rashidali.eu