Women Who Inspire: Mariam Issoufou Kamara – Architect for social change

Mariam Issoufou Kamara is an architect in a league of her own. For all the right reasons. Her work is guided by the belief that architects have an important role to play in thinking spaces that have the power to elevate, dignify, and provide a better quality of life, reads her bio on Atelier Masōmī – an architecture and research firm she founded in 2014, which is guided by the belief that architecture is an important tool for social change.

Through Masōmī, which means the inception in Hausa, Mariam’s aim is to discover innovative ways of doing so, while maintaining an intimate dialog between architecture, people, and context. And she is doing good on her word. One only needs to look at the impressive list of her work in the architecture industry, as featured on the Atelier Masōmī website.

And her work has not gone unnoticed, garnering her several awards, including the Silver Global Lafarge Holcim Award for Sustainable Architecture. She has been named by the New York Times as one of 15 most Creative Women of Our Time. She is a founding member of architectural collective united4design, which has projects in Niger, Afghanistan and the United States, and she is also a professor of Architecture Heritage and Sustainability at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

Earlier this year, Mariam was selected to lead the design of Bët-bi museum. She said of her appointment:

“It is a great honour and a privilege to be selected to lead the design of Bët-bi. For far too long our region has been a place where cultural wealth is pillaged to profit museum collections. This project is an opportunity to design a new type of space that is inspired by the roots and spiritual legacy of the region. It is a chance to push the boundaries of what defines a museum in the 21st century.”

Bët-bi will showcase contemporary and historic African art and celebrate the cultures of sub- Saharan Africa. It will be a living and breathing institution with art as its focal point and offer a dedicated education programme with a variety of initiatives aimed at engaging local and national communities with art from all corners of the globe.

They could not have picked a better architect to breathe in those ethos.