Mariam Kamara

Mariam Kamara is a Nigerien architect. In 2014, she founded atelier masōmī, an architecture and research firm through which she tackles a wide variety of public, cultural, residential, commercial and urban design projects. A notable example is a Religious-Secular Complex of Dandaji in Niger, a collaborative cultural project that won the 2017 Gold LafargeHolcim Award for Africa and the Middle East, and the 2018 Silver Global LafargeHolcim Award for Sustainable Architecture. Prior to architecture, Kamara was a software developer for several years after obtaining her Masters and Bachelor degrees in Computer Science, respectively from New York University and Purdue University. She studied architecture at the University of Washington. Her Master’s thesis, Mobile
Loitering, which focused on issues of gender and public space in Niger, was awarded Thesis
Prize and a special mention in the 2014 Young Architects in Africa Competition. Kamara’s work is guided by the belief that architects have an important role to play in thinking of spaces that have the power to elevate, dignify, and provide a better quality of life. Through her practice, she aims to
discover innovative ways of doing so, while maintaining an intimate dialogue between
architecture, people, and context.