Counterspace’s Sumayya Vally on her Serpentine Pavilion Counterspace’s Sumayya Vally on her Serpentine Pavilion Counterspace is the fast-emerging South African architectural practice commissioned to create the latest Serpentine Pavilion in London. Here, its founder Sumayya Vally takes artist and photographer Mikhael Subotzky on a whistle-stop tour of their adopted hometown, Johannesburg Bree Street Taxi Rank, Central Business District: Vally studied the area, an economic hub for the Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora, as part of her research on trade in Johannesburg Looking at each individual project by Sumayya Vally, it’s hard to pinpoint a ‘signature’ look or subject. There are installations, film and sound pieces, projects around food, community-focused schemes, fine art research, and traditional building works. Yet zoom out and examine her portfolio as a whole and her fascination with the ‘city’ becomes clear. Listening to her talk reveals even more: Vally is ‘obsessed with Joburg’.