Maxwell Mutanda (born 1983) is a Zimbabwean artist, designer, design researcher, and businessperson. He is the co-founder of the design firm Studio Tale, based out of London, Harare, and Cape Town, South Africa. Mutanda uses collage and architectural practice to make sustainable participatory design.
Early life and education
Born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1983, Mutanda studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. In 2020, he received an MSc degree in sustainable urban development and Sheehan Scholarship at the University of Oxford.
Career
Muntanda co-founded Studio Tale with his design partner, Safia Qureshi. Online magazine Design Indaba writes that Studio Tale “experiments across disciplines with a portfolio that includes architecture, urban exploration, production innovation to critical design and communications.” The firm designed vendor upgrades for Harare street vendors in 2016. The same year, It was working a way to create "pop-up churches" inspired by catholics in the Philippines holding mass in empty malls. Mutanda received a fellowship from IdeasCity New Orleans, an initiative of the New Museum in New York, the Africa’sOut! Artist-in-Residence at Denniston Hill, New York (2018), and the British Council’s ColabNowNow Residency, in Maputo, Mozambique. In 2020, he received an Eyebeam fellowship to study the "mobile data gap in sub-Saharan Africa". Also in 2020, he received a grant from the Graham Foundation for his project (In)Voluntary Mutations. In the 2020–2021 season, Mutanda was awarded a fellowship from the Akademie Schloss Solitude.
Exhibitions
Mutanda's work was featured at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, in Copenhagen, Denmark and the Arc en Rêve Centre d'Architecture, Bordeaux, France, both in 2015. In addition, the work of Studio Tale was in the Oslo Architecture Triennale in Oslo, Norway in 2019, the Biennale Architettura, Venice in 2014 and 2016, the Chicago Architecture Biennial and the London Design Festival in 2015.
References
- ^ "Maxwell Mutanda". Akademie Schloss Solitude. 28 September 2020.
- "Bartlett alumni to participate in Chicago Architecture Biennial". The Bartlett School of Architecture. 1 May 2015.
- ^ "Maxwell Mutanda". Eyebeam. Retrieved 31 December 2022.
- Hussain, Mehr (12 August 2015). "One hour with Safia Qureshi". Herald. Retrieved 31 December 2022.
- "Maxwell Mutanda: Multi-talented architect Maxwell Mutanda uses design to address real-world issues". Design Indaba.
- ^ Kuo, Lily (27 April 2016). "A Zimbabwean architect builds for the "forgotten economy" by letting people design for themselves". Quartz.
- "A cross-continental architecture studio with solutions for Harare's informal traders". Design Indaba.
- Small, Zachary (15 July 2020). "How Artists Are Trying to Solve the World's Problems". The New York Times.
- ^ "(In)Voluntary Mutations, Grantee: Maxwell Mutanda". Graham Foundation. Retrieved 31 December 2022.
- "Maxwell Mutanda". Akademie Schloss Solitude. Retrieved 31 December 2022.