Emanuel Admassu is a practicing architect, urbanist, and educator. His work explores the intersections of spatial justice and urbanism, with a special focus on the African continent and the African diaspora. He is developing a collection of essays and tapestries exploring indigenous land stewardship practices in East Africa.
Admassu is founding partner, with Jen Wood, of AD—WO, an art and architecture practice based in New York. His recent book, a coedited anthology of interviews, essays, and artworks, titled Where Is Africa, Vol. 1 (with Anita N. Bateman; CARA, 2024), is the product of a multi-year, multidisciplinary research on the histories and possible futures of African art and design.
At MacDowell, Admassu wrote the beginnings of a book on the overlaps between animist cultural practices and contemporary urban systems in Addis Ababa, Dar es Salaam, and Atlanta. This book unpacks how property regimes work to de-animate the relations people and land. Learning from indigenous and maroon spatial practices, the six essays in the book offer theoretical reflections, and collective imaginations, of a world after property.
