Self-Housed: Rethinking Design Practice in a Craft-Oriented Future

Stephen Burks and Malika Leiper, partners in the interdisciplinary practice Stephen Burks Man Made, have been on the move. From communing with a remote village outside of Dakar to better understand the Earth's largest non man-made structures; to exploring the markets of Kinshasa to document an ancient textile art; to residing in a forest river valley in the Nara prefecture to manifest the spirituality of wood, Malika and Stephen have found themselves self-housed on four continents in the last 12 months.

Their lecture-cum-travelogue will consider the role of the designer in the 21st century. Namely, how does one engage with the world as a creative agent outside of the traditional studio paradigm? How can the Eurocentric ways of knowing that have informed design pedagogy and practice be challenged by shifting the focus to a majority world context? And why is collaboration a fundamental prerequisite for extending craft traditions into the future?

In addition to Kuba Sugi, The Lost Cloth Object, and In Search of Kuba—a trilogy of projects building upon their research into the raffia textile arts of the Kuba Kingdom—Malika and Stephen will also present Objects of Belonging, their contribution to the US pavilion as members of the curatorial design team for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.