Office 24-7 Architecture and Lemon Pebble Architects

This installation is about the relationship between material erasure and historical forgetting. The act of performing salah – Islamic prayers – on the ground of a historic, racist, forced removal is an act of poetic protest.
This act of resistance and reclamation forms the catalyst for this contribution to The Laboratory of the Future. This is a story spanning the roots of colonial capitalism, land rights, environmental extraction, and exploitative labour practices. The proposed form is a ghostly ruin, broken and made of fragments. The installation is about making present erased and interrupted histories.
In this story the musallah (a space of prayer) is the architecture. It faces Mecca, it functions without boundaries, it is the worshipper praying on the grass, nomadic, diasporic. It is about a network of community; smooth space in opposition to the walls, erfs, and demarcations – the straitened space of unjust laws.

Technical collaborators
Craig Mayers, Dymeng (Pty) Ltd, MGG Productions (Pty) Ltd, 3rd World Art Crafters, Gavin Olivier, Jessy Olivier, Rebecca Elliott
Team
Office 24-7 Architecture: Samkelisiwe Kunene, Dinah Rabson, Chanél Du Toit, Alexey Rodokanakis
Lemon Pebble Architects and Urban Designers: Althea Peacock, Nicholas Coghlan, Najeeba Soobrathie, Jess-Sherita Aungunu, Aa’ishah Begg
With the additional support of
Belgotex Floorcoverings (Pty)Ltd, Africa Futures Institute, Moghul Park Masjid Jamaat, University of the Witwatersrand School of Architecture and Planning, Evan Lockhart-Barker, Edward Colle, Sajid Dawray, Khalil R Dawray, Keith Anderson, Priyan Moodley, Andrew Boyazoglu, Angelique Shippon, Talhah Thokan, Mahdiyah Thokan, Sa’ad Sharif, Ubaidullah Sharif, Sabiha Sirkhot, Widaad Mahamed, Ilhaam Mahamed, Muaaz Mahamed