A New Model for Translation - Studio NYALI (Bushra Mohamed & Nana Biamah-Ofosu)

New Models is a lecture series that invites practitioners from different disciplines to discuss how their work can change the models around which society is organised. These conversations will address how we can shift power structures, socio-economic forces and structural inequalities present in society today to give us new tools to rethink the world around us.​


New Models for Translation investigates identity and narrative as it is reflected in architecture and the built environment, with reference to diasporic identities and cultures whose spatial experiences are often marginalised in the western architectural canon. This new model is interested in finding new architectural languages and tools for communication and dissemination. It is derived from the study of typology and building culture with a particular interest in compound houses, primarily in the Global South. We need new models of expression and translation, in particular models that work to fill the gaps within our architectural history, giving more agency to, and centring the other.


Studio NYALI is an interdisciplinary architecture, design and research practice founded by Nana Biamah-Ofosu and Bushra Mohamed in 2019. The practice is focused on identity, shared histories and spaces, with a strong belief that architecture must be understood as the embodiment and artefact of the human experience. We are interested in how these ideas are manifested through diasporic cultural identities, within postcolonial contexts and in relation to the future of cosmopolitan settlement.