Online Studio Session – Roundtable event

Join us online for a year long series of talks, screenings and discussions around the concerns of the Design Practice MArch; a new Masters programme at the Royal College of Art reimagining spatial practice in an age of promise for green transition, and against the backdrop of wildfire, emergent intelligence and exponentially developing technology.

Students and staff in the programme refuse to be driven to despair. We are concerned with the serious work of challenging the inherited conditions and terms of architectural practice, forging cross-disciplinary and anti-border alliances with humans, more-than-humans and sites exploited by building practices.

We give form, image and legibility to imaginaries for worlds otherwise, to allow us to build them today. We critically engage emerging technologies, tools and intelligences, contextualising them within globalised systems of production, logistics and capital, and exploring what they may offer the project of building more just, equitable worlds.

This series brings together practitioners, artists, curators and policy makers, engaging globally with guiding lights in the field.

Programme of sessions

• 11 November, 10am GMT – Caroline Till
• 19 November, 1pm GMT – Jingru (Cyan) Cheng
• 27 November, 1pm GMT – Seetal Solanki
• 9 December, 5.30pm GMT – Roundtable with Omar Degan, Myles Igwebuike, Adrian Lahoud, Huda Tayob and Thandi Loewenson

You can book onto all sessions here

9 December, 5.30pm GMT – Roundtable with Omar Degan, Myles Igwebuike, Adrian Lahoud, Huda Tayob and Thandi Loewenson

• Omar Degan is the principal of DO Architecture Group, an international architecture and research practice with offices in Mogadishu, Italy, and the USA. He specializes in addressing some of the most pressing global challenges, including post-conflict reconstruction, natural disasters, and climate adaptation. His work focuses on developing culturally and environmentally responsive architectural solutions that promote resilience and social cohesion in fragile contexts. Degan's leadership in the field has seen him collaborate with major international organizations such as UN-Habitat and IOM, making a tangible impact across the Horn of Africa, South America, and South Asia. In 2022, Degan was named an Obama Foundation African Leader, an acknowledgment of his transformative work in architecture. In 2023, he founded FragilityLab, which brings innovative architectural thinking to fragile environments, addressing the critical intersections of climate resilience and urban design. Degan is the inaugural curator of the Pan-African Architecture Biennale, to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2026.

• Myles Igwebuike is a designer, researcher, and social innovator, living and working between Enugu, Nigeria and London. He merges dynamism with craft, employing aesthetic disruption and adaptation across various mediums. Myles draws inspiration from his southeastern Nigerian roots and positions himself as a cultural bridge and custodian of heritage. He’s committed to community power and inclusive design, aiming to forge a universal language that transcends medium constraints. He is special assistant to the Governor of Anambra state on transportation, A World Economic Forum Global Shaper and sits as a design expert on Design Council, the U.K’s national strategic advisor on design. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Myles is recognized for his critical thinking and research-driven practice. He was named one of Architectural Digest’s AD100 Rising Stars to Watch for 2024 and was selected as the curator for the Nigerian Pavilion at the 2025 London Design Biennale.

• Adrian Lahoud is an architect, urban designer and researcher as well as Dean of the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, London, and co-chair of the Rights of Future Generations Working Group. Previously, he was Studio Master at Projective Cities, Architectural Association, London, and Director of the MA in Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London. Lahoud was the inaugural curator of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial (2019). His work has also been presented in exhibitions such as Let’s Talk about the Weather: Art and Ecology in a Time of Crisis, Sursock Museum, Beirut (2016); Oslo Architecture Triennale: After Belonging (2016); and Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2014).

• Huda Tayob is a South African architectural historian and architectural theorist. She 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, for which she was awarded a RIBA Commendation Award for research, with undergraduate and Masters degrees in Architecture from the University of Cape Town. She has been a Mellon Fellow on the Canadian Centre for Architecture project, Centring Africa (2020 – 2022), a Graham Foundation Grantee holder (2022; 2023) and received the Scott Opler Award for Emerging Scholars (2019). Her 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 was 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.

• Thandi Loewenson (b.1989, Harare) is an architectural designer/researcher who mobilises design, fiction and performance to stoke embers of emancipatory political thought and fires of collective action, and to feel for the contours of other, possible worlds. Using fiction as a design tool and tactic, and operating in the overlapping realms of the weird, the tender, the earthly and the airborne, Thandi engages in projects which provoke questioning of the status-quo, whilst working with communities, policy makers, unions, artists and architects towards acting on those provocations. Thandi is a Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art and Programme Lead of the MArch Design Practice. She is a co-founder of the architectural collective BREAK//LINE – an ‘act of creative solidarity’ which ‘resists definition with intent’ – formed at The Bartlett in 2018 to oppose the trespass of capital, the indifference towards inequality and the myriad frontiers of oppression present in architectural education and practice today. Thandi is also a contributor to EQUINET, the Regional Network on Equity in Health in East and Southern Africa, a co-founder of the Fiction, Feeling, Frame research collective at the Royal College of Art, and a co-curator of the open-access curriculum project Race, Space & Architecture.

How to join

• The online sessions will take place virtually on Zoom. The events are free to attend, but you will need to register to guarantee your spot and receive the Zoom link.
• To avoid any technical issues on the day, we recommend you download the latest version of Zoom in advance.
• When it’s time, come back to this page to join the event - you’ll get an email reminder on the day too to remind you of what is happening at which times.

Joining from a country where Zoom doesn't work?
Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Ukraine (Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk regions) have restricted Zoom for regulatory reasons. Please reach out to [email protected] if this affects you.

Other events at the RCA

We are continually adding to our diverse programme of events: conversations on key topics such as funding advice and portfolio development, symposia, exhibitions, open days and more. Many are free and open to the public.

Book your ticket

Book a free online ticket via this link.