i/van/able is imaginary. founded and led by ife salema vanable, i/van/able does not actually exist, but is nonetheless Old Hand at synthesis, interrogation, and speculation. a supposed architectural workshop and think tank, i/van/able has never existed and yet has always been in the works. i/van/able is a fantasy and a fiction, a desire. longing and digging in on Tall Tales: State Looks, Black Desire(s), Housing Schemes, which began in part with DEEP SEGREGATION. thinking on the sky, groundlessness, and blackness as swarm. STILL, KEPT, breakfront and sofa set, on the way. see ife’s curriculum vitae and/or get in touch.
Ife Salema Vanable is an architect, historian, and theorist who directs i/van/able, a Bronx-based
architectural workshop and think tank that produces theoretical,
speculative, and physical interventions that defy prevailing notions of type, taste and form. This work has been
supported by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), recognized
by the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), and exhibited at the 2021 Venice
Architecture Biennale.
Ife holds professional and post-professional degrees in architecture from Cornell and Princeton Universities and has studied at the Architectural Association in London and the University College of Lands and Architectural Studies (now Ardhi University) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Ife is the inaugural KPF Visiting Scholar (2021) and is currently a Presidential Visiting Fellow at Yale University’s School of Architecture (YSoA). Ife is also a PhD candidate in architectural history and theory at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP). Her scholarly work asks questions of and seeks to unearth complex and seemingly banal relationships between the design of architecture, law, and public policy, the performance of domesticity and respectability, and the politics, aesthetics, and materiality of the making of home. She has received numerous awards, prizes, and fellowships, including a History and Theory Prize from Princeton University, a Columbia University Buell Center Fellowship, and an inaugural Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC) Prize.
Ife’s writing has been published in the Avery Review and she is co-editor of the forthcoming volume Black Production and the Space of the University to be published by Columbia Books on Architecture and the City.
Ife has taught at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), Yale University’s School of Architecture (YSoA), and is an incoming assistant professor in the department of architecture at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP).
Ife holds professional and post-professional degrees in architecture from Cornell and Princeton Universities and has studied at the Architectural Association in London and the University College of Lands and Architectural Studies (now Ardhi University) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Ife is the inaugural KPF Visiting Scholar (2021) and is currently a Presidential Visiting Fellow at Yale University’s School of Architecture (YSoA). Ife is also a PhD candidate in architectural history and theory at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP). Her scholarly work asks questions of and seeks to unearth complex and seemingly banal relationships between the design of architecture, law, and public policy, the performance of domesticity and respectability, and the politics, aesthetics, and materiality of the making of home. She has received numerous awards, prizes, and fellowships, including a History and Theory Prize from Princeton University, a Columbia University Buell Center Fellowship, and an inaugural Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC) Prize.
Ife’s writing has been published in the Avery Review and she is co-editor of the forthcoming volume Black Production and the Space of the University to be published by Columbia Books on Architecture and the City.
Ife has taught at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), Yale University’s School of Architecture (YSoA), and is an incoming assistant professor in the department of architecture at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP).