Public Lecture, Conversation & Reception
Hosted by the Pan-African Biennale (PAB) in collaboration with Black Females in Architecture (BFA), supported by the British Council.

In a moment defined by cultural, environmental, and geopolitical transformation, this gathering opens a critical exploration at the heart of the Pan-African Biennale’s curatorial direction. “Shifting the Center: From Fragility to Resilience” examines how Africa’s spatial, historical, and political realities—shaped by colonisation, extraction, displacement, and climate precarity—continue to structure global narratives of identity and architecture.

Rather than treating fragility as a condition to be corrected, the conversation reframes it as a site of knowledge, resistance, and creativity. The event asks how exhibitions, biennales, and cultural platforms can operate as tools capable of reframing inherited stories, unsettling dominant frameworks, and proposing new ways of seeing and making architecture. What forms of practice resist flattening and co-optation? How do we shift the center of discourse without reproducing old hierarchies? And what becomes possible when the continent’s architectural intelligence is positioned not at the margins but at the core of global conversation? The evening brings together architects, academics, and cultural practitioners for an open exchange on resilience, memory, vernacular intelligence, and the political work of representation. The lecture and panel will be followed by a reception at The Africa Centre, creating an informal space for continued dialogue and collective reflection.