About this Event
Join us for a conversation about spatial justice, community resilience, and the future of affordable housing in South Africa. With a history of colonial and apartheid race based land dispossession, an ever increasing national housing backlog, millions of working-class families continue to be priced out of well-located urban areas or left waiting for top-down government assistance. In response, everyday citizens, working people, architects, and activists are taking matters into their own hands to secure dignity, shelter, and the right to the city.
This event brings together frontline voices actively fighting spatial apartheid and pioneering decentralised solutions. From an actvists reclaiming the city through occupations exemplified by Cissie Gool House that resist inner city gentrification, to 1,600-kilometre trek highlighting financial exclusion on tribal lands, to the documentary filmmaking that captures these grassroots struggles, we will explore how community-led solutions can create longer lasting, more just solutions to the crisis.
This conversation is particularly pertinent at a time when we in New York face similar challenges. Whether you are an urban planner, a housing activist, or a concerned citizen, this panel will offer fresh, radical perspectives on people driven solutions.
Speakers
Uncle Bevil Lucas
Bevil Lucas is one of Reclaim the City’s elected leaders and is a resident of Cissie Gool House. Bevil is a long-standing union organiser, anti-apartheid and housing activist. He was involved in the formation of COSATU and served in various positions in the trade union movement for many years, including early democratic housing experiments by unions. He holds a postgraduate diploma in Heritage and Museum Studies from the University of the Western Cape and is currently furthering his studies in Adult Education through the University of Cape Town. He serves on the Board of the International Labour Research Information Group. He initiated and led the CGH co-design process, the early iteration of the redevelopment process and has been elected by the house as one of two CGH representatives on the occupation’s new CGH Land Trust, which is tasked as the future custodian of the CGH land and buildings.
Wandile Mthiyane
Wandile Mthiyane is a design engineer and architect working at the intersection of affordable housing, technology, finance, and spatial justice. He founded and leads Ubuntu Design Group, where he develops technology-enabled solutions to help first-time homebuilders design, finance, and build homes. He is currently pursuing a Master's in Design Engineering at Harvard University, exploring how design, engineering, and technology can address complex challenges in housing. He is an Obama Foundation Leader and TEDx Fellow.
Annie Nisenson
Annie Nisenson is a documentary filmmaker based in New York City. She works across documentary modes to create creative and impactful nonfiction. Her work has screened at film festivals, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Sheffield DocFest and DOK Leipzig. Annie's most recent film is an immersive documentary titled No Place But Here (co-directed with Dylan Valley). She is also a founding member and Executive Director of The Visiting Room Project, the world's largest living archive of filmed interviews with people serving life without parole (also known as death by incarceration). Much of her work is done collaboratively in process and practice. Prior to working in documentary and oral history, Annie spent over a decade as a public defense investigator and life historian on death penalty cases. She holds a Masters in Documentary Arts from the University of Cape Town and a BA in History from the University of California, Berkeley.
Moderated by Keller Easterling
Keller Easterling is a designer, writer and the Enid Storm Dwyer Professor of Architecture at Yale. Her forthcoming book, Your Land tells the story of land activism in the US after the Civil Rights Movement. Other books include, Medium Design (Verso 2021), Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), Subtraction (Sternberg, 2014), Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005) and Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America (MIT, 1999). Easterling is also the co-author (with Richard Prelinger) of Call it Home, a laserdisc/DVD history of US suburbia from 1934-1960.Easterling lectures and exhibits internationally. Her research and writing was included in the 2014 and 2018 Venice Biennales. Easterling is a 2019 United States Artist in Architecture and Design and the 2026 recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture.
Event venue & nearby stays
238 E 6th St, 238 East 6th Street, New York, United States
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