Tuliza Sindi
Tuliza Sindi is a Burundian-South African architect, educator, researcher, and curator whose work challenges conventional understandings of land, property, and spatial politics. She founded Unit 19, a graduate design-research studio at the University of Johannesburg’s Graduate School of Architecture (2020-2022), fostering innovative design methodologies. She was recently awarded the Ann Kalla Professorship at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture (2023-2025), where she now serves as Curator of Public Programs and Director of Publications. Her work in architectural education extends internationally, having lectured and reviewed at institutions such as Yale, Columbia, and Iowa State Universities, U.S., the University of Sheffield, U.K., and the International Program in Design and Architecture (INDA), Thailand.
In 2022, Sindi co-founded the cross-disciplinary collective room19isaFactory., that works to build an intellectual and practice vocabulary around what they term “Unreasonable Architecture”—a practice that retires spatial practices rooted in frameworks of modern reason and chronopolitics, to determine new modes of society-making through alternative cosmologies and knowledge systems. The collective’s projects include installations in Kudzanai Chiurai’s The Library of Things We Forgot to Remember, Johannesburg, the Foundation for Contemporary Art (FCA) in Accra, Ghana, and the Malmö Konsthall,Sweden. Her editorial contributions include her forthcoming book Inventory of Unreasonable Wallmaking (2025) and co-editorship of iLiso Ekapa magazine’s fourth issue, Collusions: Conversations with Architecture.
Sindi’s influence in curation and advocacy include a co-curated architectural exhibition for the Saison Africa 2020 Festival in Bordeaux, France, leading to the creation of the 'her(e); otherwise' platform, later supported by a Graham Foundation grant. Recognized internationally, she was featured on RebelARCHITETTE’s Women Architects World Map, was named one of Africa's 50 most influential female architects by Africans Column, and has contributed to Architectural Guide: Sub-Saharan Africa_The Architect’s Set. Through her work, Sindi continues to shape critical conversations on architecture’s role in decoloniality and alternative spatial imaginaries.