Salim Umar
Salim Umar is a Zurich-based Afropean architect and researcher exploring Black spatial thought and fugitive presence. Across building, exhibition, and writing, he aims to develop architectures that make space for what usually cannot appear. In his master research at ETH Zurich, he developed a design for an Afropean Zunfthaus (guild house).
"I work to unsettle how belonging is scripted in Zurich. My practice rejects architecture as a tool of inclusion and instead insists on the stranger — Black, fugitive, unassimilable — as an active force that reshapes the terms of what can appear. Postcolonial responsibility for institutions means redistributing spatial power, not adding diversity and staging representation. Why Rumble? Because I like disruption."
Photo: Max Creasy, 2021
