“Sumayya and the Counterspace team are in a transhistorical dialogue with the neo-classical, Grade II-listed architecture of 93 Mortimer Street. Their approach privileges fragments as a way of approaching the whole. What’s quietly radical about how Ibraaz has engaged Counterspace to transform its new home is that instead of waiting until the entire building is fully altered to welcome the public in, visitors will experience the gradual process of architectural change. Its design is sedimentation through time and space.” — Shumon Basar, Curator of Ibraaz’s Public Programming

“Because of the fever-dream speed with which the project has come into being, our approach reflects this moment—incremental and alive,” says Sumayya Vally, Architect-in-Residence of the new Ibraaz space.

“When I was approached to work on the project, and as we began to inhabit the building incrementally, I came to think of it as a gathering of gatherings—with the architectures of each space drawing from a typology of collective life: oula, maktaba, minassa, majlis. This first offering will expand and sediment with time, with the attitude of something akin to a city rather than a building—each new layer a trace of our evolving relationships and the communities that gather here.”

Ibraaz, the leading private cultural foundation dedicated to advancing critical thought and artistic practice across the Global South, has officially opened its new headquarters at 93 Mortimer Street, London.

The site, comprising 93 Mortimer Street and the adjoining 43 Portland Street, has a rich history of transformation. Originally built as the Great Synagogue between 1855 and 1870, the building spanned two storeys, featured an expansive enriched dome, and accommodated 356 seats. This era came to an end in 1870, when the synagogue relocated to what is now the Central Synagogue.

The new space has been conceptualised and designed by architect Sumayya Vally of Counterspace, whose internationally acclaimed practice is renowned for reimagining how architecture can hold memory, ritual, and community.

“I love that the spaces at Ibraaz are conceived through the language of the home — a kitchen, a majlis, a prayer room, a library. The infrastructure of these spaces is designed to host artists’ work that, at its core, is also about hosting others. Each space will carry the essence of its theme, so that the very structure of the institution becomes inherently architectural, inherently generous. I have always believed in fostering belonging within institutional spaces, and I believe this happens most powerfully when works are gently offered in formats that resonate with our communities.”—Sumayya Vally

Rather than a static building, the Ibraaz London space is envisioned as a gathering of gatherings — a living framework that evolves through the ways people inhabit it. Conceived as an incremental unfolding, the architecture embraces flexibility, with spaces designed for multiple configurations that are activated through dialogue, learning, and exchange. Over time, the building will grow and adapt in response to its community, allowing new forms of gathering to emerge.

Vally draws on typologies of gathering that have long sustained communal life across Africa and the Arab world. Each one offers continuity across places and times, allowing new forms of gathering to emerge in London today. At street level, the Maktaba (bookshop) and Oula (café) serve as open invitations to the city, creating an interactive façade that embodies Ibraaz’s ethos of openness, generosity, and dialogue. The Majlis (assembly space) on the ground floor functions as the main exhibition hall and a place of gathering. On the lower ground floor, Minassa (platform) is dedicated to screenings and musical performances. On the second floor, Iqra (library) extends the invitation to reflect, read, and engage. Two further spaces on the first and third floors will be developed and unveiled at a later stage, allowing them to evolve in response to the needs and practices of the community.

Ibraaz’s origins are rooted in Tunisia, and this new space extends those cultural lineages into London. The project brings together knowledge and craftsmanship from across the region, with collaborations between Counterspace, Blocksfinj (Beirut), and Local Industries (Bethlehem, Palestine).

Vally’s approach builds on her acclaimed Serpentine Pavilion (2021), where she mapped diasporic gathering places in London as living archives of belonging. At Ibraaz London, this inquiry continues: tracing connections between Tunisia, Africa, the Arab world, and the city.

The headquarters includes two public-facing spaces designed as open invitations to the city:

• Oula (café): developed with French-Tunisian chef Boutheina Ben Salem, this café reimagines the Oula as a shared surface for ritual and hospitality. Rooted in Tunisian matriarchal foodways, the café will centre community, family rituals, and cultural heritage.
• Maktaba (bookshop): designed as a stepped amphitheatre where books are embedded into the seating, this “living library” encourages reading, performance, and exchange. Operated by Burley Fisher Books and curated by the Palestine Festival of Literature.

Together, these spaces form an interactive façade for Ibraaz, echoing the organisation’s ethos of openness, generosity, and dialogue.

The building itself is a Grade II-listed neo-classical structure, and Counterspace’s design enters into a dialogue with its history. Instead of unveiling a fully complete transformation, Ibraaz invites visitors into a process of incremental change. Over time, the building will layer traces of its evolving community, learning from, adapting to, and building with its rhythms — much like a city sedimented with memory.

Installations such as Ibrahim Mahama’s Parliament of Ghosts animate the space, weaving together the complex cartographies of Africa, Tunisia, and London.

The opening exhibition, Parliament of Ghosts (15 October 2025 – 15 February 2026), is a site-specific adaptation of Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama’s long-term research and production project, presenting newly commissioned and previously unseen works. Known for his politically charged interventions in public space, Mahama transforms the Majlis into a site of reflection and remembrance. Through vast installations constructed from reclaimed materials, his work addresses histories of crisis, redemption, and hope, re-routing residues of colonial and postcolonial utopias into new possibilities.

Repurposing colonial-era furniture and jute sacks alongside newly crafted elements, Parliament of Ghosts offers a poignant meditation on memory, restitution, and the poetics of reuse, while narrating Ghana’s post-independence journey. Mahama’s installation also serves as an invitation to stage conversations and events that engage in myriad ways with ideas of power and histories that frame our present. Parliament of Ghosts is curated by Shumon Basar.

A Flock of Keen-Eyed and Far-Seeing Magpies (15 October 2025 – 6 September 2026) is the inaugural library-in-residence, activated by The Otolith Group, founded by artists and filmmakers Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun.

Conceived as a live artwork, the Library transforms research into public encounters. For over two decades, The Otolith Group has gathered books, journals, records, films, maps, recipes, and catalogues — the intellectual materials that fuel their art-making and thinking across Pan-African and Pan-Asian horizons. Reading groups, screenings, and listening sessions hosted in the Library, Majlis, and Minassa at Ibraaz become points of gathering and convening. Researchers, activists, and artists gather to develop new strategies for confronting our environmental and social crises.

A Flock of Keen-Eyed and Far Seeing Magpies becomes a transmission point — broadcasting alternative frequencies of knowledge, resistance, and possibility into the present moment. Designed in collaboration with Diogo Passarinho Studio + RAR.STUDIO, the space also features a commissioned wall piece by writer and map maker Moses März, tracing The Otolith Group’s history across 17 constellations orbiting the artists’ film works. Alongside the installation, their research platform, The Department of Xenogenesis (DXG), will host The Library Transmissions: a year-long series of talks, screenings, sonic events, and gatherings, creating a dynamic space for knowledge exchange.

“Ibraaz aspires to be a brave space: a place where urgent questions can be asked, where culture becomes a way of reclaiming our shared humanity; where to welcome, to share, to sit together are not metaphors but foundations; and where to live in plurality is not to be scattered, but to b e whole.” — Lina Lazaar, Founder of Ibraaz and Vice President of the Kamel Lazaar Foundation

Panellists: Ibrahim Mahama, Sumayya Vally Moderator: Dima Srouji Respondents: Muhannad Hariri, Shumon Basar, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso, Adam Broomberg, Taous Dahmani, David Velasco, Evan Ifekoya, Nadja Argyropoulou, Sam Samiee

In “The Building,” the fifth session of the Ibraaz Mission Gathering, architects and thinkers Sumayya Vally and Ibrahim Mahama unpack the layered meanings of architectural space—how existing structures carry histories of power, exclusion and labour, and how they might be re-inhabited, repaired and re-imagined as sites of belonging and collective agency. The discussion explores how architecture not only reflects social divisions and colonial legacies, but also holds the potential to act as a conduit for new forms of gathering, culture-making and social repair.

Read the full transcript.