Dr Huda Tayob

Huda Tayob is a South African architectural historian and architectural theorist.

Huda is currently a Senior Tutor (Research) at the Royal College of Art, and has previously taught at the University of Manchester, University of Cape Town, the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg and the Bartlett School of Architecture. She holds a PhD from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, with an undergraduate and Master's degrees in Architecture from the University of Cape Town.

She was awarded a RIBA commendation award for her PhD research, and has been a Mellon Fellow on the Canadian Centre for Architecture project, Centring Africa (2020–22), a Graham Foundation Grantee holder (2022; 2023) and received the Scott Opler Award for Emerging Scholars (2019).

School, Centre or Area

School of Communication

Expertise

More information

Research interests

Huda Tayob’s research focuses on minor, migrant and subaltern architectures, centred on the African continent and global south. She is co-curator of the open-access curriculum Race, Space & Architecture, and lead curator and project manager of the pan-African digital exhibition, Archive of Forgetfulness. She is a participant in the 18th International Architecture exhibition in Venice (2023) with a project titled Index of Edges, which traces watery archives, methods and stories along east African coastal edges from Cape Town to Port Said. In 2025–26, she is a curatorial fellow with the Hayy Jameel Jeddah, co-curating an exhibition focused on the Red Sea with Miriam Hillawi Abraham titled ‘Red Winds, Coral Worlds’.

Publications, exhibitions, other outcomes

Selected recent publications

Tayob H. & Ka Canham, H. 2025. “Ghostly Longings in the Charged Quiet of the Shoreline” Eflux Architecture (Insurgent Geologies, curated by Kathryn Yusoff, Owen Hopkins, Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi), ed. Nick Axel et al. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/insurgent-geologies/667518/ghostly-longings-in-the-charged-quiet-of-the-shoreline/

Tayob, H. 2025. “Watery Archives, Aqueous Methods” Reclaiming Colonial Architecture, (Eds.Tania Sengupta and Stuart King), London: RIBA, p.46-49.

Tayob, H. & Hall, S. 2024. “The Partial Street: Gendering the Everyday Life of Global Precarity” Elgar International Handbook on Gender and Cities, (Eds. Linda Peake, Aninditta Datta, Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin), Edward Elgar Publishing: pg. 56-64.

Tayob H, 2024. 'Fugitive Archives: 'Come Back Africa'. Architectural Review, CCA x AR Bookshelf.

Tayob, H. 2024. “Reparations as Reconstruction” In Repair, Architectural Review, February 2024, p.87-89.

Tayob, H. 2024. “Transnational Home Making in Somali Mall: Cape Town and Minneapolis” in The Urban Refugee: Space, Displacement and the new Urban Condition (eds. Bülent Batuman and Kıvanç Kılınç), pg. 159-180.

Tayob, H. 2024. 'Watery Archives' in Fieldnotes on Scarcity (eds. Tosin Oshinowo and Julie Cirelli), UK: Park Books, p. 62-63.

Exhibitions

2024. ‘Watery Archives’ in Salt Kissed: of Vessels that have sailed the Red Sea (curated by Ahmed Al-Aqra and Abed Alrahman Shabaneh), Hayy Jameel Jeddah

2023. Index of Edges, in ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, curated by Lesley Lokko, 18th International Architecture exhibition in Venice

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