Shahed Saleem is an architect, author and Reader in Architecture at the University of Westminster. He works across disciplines to create installations, buildings, texts and drawings. He explores the built envrionment as a complex interplay of narratives as embodied through people’s individual and collective memories and imaginations.

Saleem co-curated the V&A Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2021 and his book ‘The British Mosque’ was published in 2018 by Historic England. His design work has been nominated for the V&A Jameel Prize 2013 and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2016, and his research work won a RIBA Presidents Medal for Research commendation 2020 and was nominated for the Historic England Angel Award and the SAHGB Colvin Prize 2019.

Practice

Shahed founded his architectural practice, Makespace, in the 2000s in east London. The practice delievered a wide range of commercial and residential buildings primarily across London and mostly for small-scale clients from the city’s diverse backgrounds. He has also built up an extensive track record and experience of working with faith communities across London (and beyond) in developing and designing their places of worship.

This inherently involves dialogue, consultation and participation. Often the communities are operating on low budgets and are inexperienced at procuring buildings. Every project is a journey of learning for all involved, and one must always be ready to embrace the unexpected and unconventional.

Through his mosque designs, Shahed has sought to represent the identity of the communities through innovative design proposals which represent migrant Muslim communities and complex, multivocal and in dialogue with their urban, social and cultural contexts.

Research

Through his work with Historic England and the Survey of London, along with his own research into the architecture of under-represented groups, Shahed has developed a consderable understanding of how urban history and heritage are constructed through a range of insitutional discourses and practices. He is keenly interested in intervening in these practices to identify, include and amplify the histories of minority and marginalised communities, and to ena- ble them to become part of instututional and collective knowledge.

Shahed’s monograph, The British Mosque, published in 2018 by Historic England is the first narrative of Muslim architecture in Britain. As well constructing a historical narrative, it is a project in the recognition and validation of the presence and history of a minority community who are otherwise historically subject to multiple forms of racism and discrimination. The work therefore offers a method and precedence for further such work to explore the empowering potential of history telling.

Saleem’s drawings and sketchbooks are held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Henry Luce III Centre in Washington DC.

Photo: Matt Rowe