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Edited: June 22, 2023
Maxwell Mutanda
A young African man with an open mouth smile showing teeth, he's wearing a black collar-less shirt and blue glasses which contrast against his dark brown skin. He is standing in an outdoor urban space.

A young African man with an open mouth smile showing teeth, he’s wearing a black collar-less shirt and blue glasses which contrast against his dark brown skin. He is standing in an outdoor urban space.

Pronouns
He/him
Date and place of birth
b. 1983, Harare, Zimbabwe
Current location
London, UK
Year(s) of residency and/or fellowship
2020, Rapid Response Fellow

Maxwell Mutanda is a pluridispclinary research, visual artist, architect, and lecturer in Environmental and Spatial Equity and Co-Director of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. His work investigates the role of globalisation, climate and technology within the built environment.

His achievements include the 2018 AFRICA’SOUT! Artist-in-Residence at Denniston Hill, New York; 2020 Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future Fellow at Eyebeam; 2020 Graham Foundation Grant to Individuals; 2020 Cultural and Artistic Responses to Environmental Change grant from the Prince Claus Fund; as well as fellowships from The New Museum’s IdeasCity New Orleans; Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (2020); and DocLab: Liminal Reality, and IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling film festival screenings (2021). Maxwell studied Architecture at the Bartlett, University College London and is the 2020 MSc in Sustainable Urban Development Sheehan Scholar at the University of Oxford.

His work has been featured at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; Arc en Rêve Centre d’Architecture, Bordeaux; the 2014 and 2016 Venice Architecture Biennales; the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial; and the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. Maxwell has been an editorial contributor for The Architectural Review as well as an advisor for the Prince Claus Fund‘s Building Beyond Mentorship programme. He is currently a Trustee on the board of Mediale, an international media arts charity and arts festival based in York, and the Arts Council England (ACE) National Portfolio Funded Organisation (NPO) Eclipse Theatre Company, a leading Black-led touring company based in Leeds.

Rapid Response Project

Mutanda’s Rapid Response project seeks to develop augmented (digital and physical) research methodologies that shift or adjust to accommodate the new and undiscovered. By researching the covalence between the “Right to the City” and accessible digital space through investigating technology’s impact on the spatial injustice of digital platform workers in the Global South, particularly motorcycle couriers, the project develops a humanist space for imagination. Using software to script conditional statements relating to the real or imagined spatialities of dark kitchens, motorcycles, streetscapes and domestic space, it will explore indeterminacy and multiplicity.

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