Open House appoints Hafsa Adan and Nyima Murry as assistant curators for 2020 festival

Open City has appointed two new assistant curators to work on the 2020 edition of its annual Open House Festival. After an open applications process, the charity has appointed Nyima Murry and Hafsa Adan to join the team. They will be working to help programme the 2020 edition of the festival which is going ahead on the 19th and 20th of September with a mix of carefully managed traditional formats and new virus-proof programmes that celebrate the architecture of London safely and creatively. Phineas Harper, director of Open City said, “I could not be more excited to be working with Nyima and Hafsa. They each have a passion for the people of London and for enfranchising a wider variety of spaces and places in the Open House Festival. Starting a new job amid a lockdown is hard but it is a challenge I am confident they will more than rise to. The quality and variety of applications we received was exceptional. I want to thank everyone who applied and look forward to welcoming you to Open House at the end of September.”

Meet Nyima and Hafsa

Nyima Murry

Nyima is a recent graduate of the Architecture and Interdisciplinary Studies BSc from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She is interested in how race, the built environment and the climate change intersect, and used her final thesis to explore how this plays out within architectural education. Nyima grew up in Lancashire, is of Tibetan heritage, and is now based in London. 

Hafsa Adan

Hafsa is a Part I graduate from the University of Westminster interested in showing off the ordinary parts of our city that aren’t always celebrated. She believes, “the true beauty of London’s built environment comes from the communities who shape and inhabit it. Truly successful architecture is architecture for the people by the people.”