Emanuel Admassu

Emanuel Admassu is an artist, architect, and educator. Along with Jen Wood, he is a founding partner of AD—WO, an art and architecture practice based in New York City and, by extension, between Melbourne and Addis Ababa. He is an Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP and a founding board member of the Black Reconstruction Collective. His design, teaching, and research practices operate at the intersection of design theory, spatial justice, and contemporary African art. The work meditates on the international constellation of Afrodiasporic spaces. Most recently, Admassu has been analyzing the socio-spatial identities of two urban marketplaces: Kariakoo in Dar es Salaam and Merkato in Addis Ababa. AD—WO’s work was featured in the exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America at the Museum of Modern Art. Their installation focused on the immeasurability of Black spatial practices in Atlanta and the Atlantic.