Practice Lecture: A praxis of creative re-imagination by Nabeel Essa

Date: 16 July 2024
Time: 18:00 – 19:00 SAST

Nabeel Essa is a practicing architect based in Johannesburg. He has a background in Fine Arts where he began to engage issues around identity and representation. In 1999 he graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture with distinction from the University of the Witwatersrand. His thesis looked at spatial restitution at a critical time of post-Apartheid South Africa. In 2001 he graduated with a Master’s in Landscape Urbanism at the Architectural Association, London.

He is a part-time lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Architecture and Planning. He has extensive experience as juror, examiner, critic, and speaker across South African architecture schools. He has recently written a chapter in the publication ‘In Whose Place? Confronting Vestiges of Colonialism and Apartheid’.

In 2002 he founded the interdisciplinary design and research practice OFFICE 24|7 ARCHITECTURE. The nature of the practice reflects an alternative viewpoint, one of embodied experience, of difference and otherness that is framed from the vantage of the margin. It is a space of praxis - where ideas are explored and executed. The practice critically and spatially re-imagines museum, exhibition, cultural, education and heritage projects.

In 2023 Nabeel was an Invited participant at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale. OFFICE 24|7 ARCHITECTURE are the exhibition designers for the current South African Pavilion at the Biennale de Venezia Arte 2024.