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Mariam Kamara is the founder and director of Atelier Masōmī in Niamey, Niger, an architecture firm whose interests lie in designing solutions relevant to spatial problems inherent in the developing world, in a cultural, historical and climatic way. She is a founding member of the united4design collaborative office in Seattle, where she worked on two major projects in West Africa. Her tenure as Associate Associate Professor of Urban Studies at Brown University began in the spring of 2017.
Kamara holds a bachelor's degree in Technical Computing from Purdue University (2001) and a master's degree in Computer Science from New York University (2004). Her thesis project, Mobile Loitering (2013), focused on gender issues and public space in Niger, West Africa. Her thesis received an award for the Department of Architecture and a special mention at the 2014 Young Architects of Africa. It was also exhibited at the Triennale de Milano in 2014 at the Africa Big Chance Big Change exhibition.
Interviewed during the Mextrópoli 2019 Architecture Festival, Mariam Kamara talks about the importance of the streets in her native country of Niger, explains the importance of public space, and affirms that architecture and urbanism will continue to be relevant in shaping the lives of people.
