The Documentary Podcast · BBC World Service

Mariam Issoufou: Designing a museum

·27 min·1 clip

Mariam Issoufou decided to design a museum only after asking herself 'who decided that the only valid venue for art is inside an intimidating box?' — and found that the national museum in Niger is never empty, but people go to be together, not to see the art.

1. The Documentary Podcast follows Mariam Issoufou as she tries to design and build the Bet Bee museum in Tambacunda, eastern Senegal. 2. Olivia Humphries narrates the project, and Mariam Issoufou is the architect at the center of the story because the museum has been delayed, redesigned, and repeatedly pushed back. 3. The episode asks what a museum in rural Senegal is for, especially when Mariam herself feels ambivalent about museums as a typology. 4. Mariam says architecture can take four to ten years, and she describes the process as emotional, with many ups and downs. 5. She explains that the Bet Bee was designed in 2021, but four years later the team still had not broken ground. 6. Mariam says she almost became a software developer instead of an architect, because she studied computer science in the United States and worked in software for almost a decade. 7. She describes a moment when political questions about Black people and colonization pushed her toward architecture school in her 30s. 8. Leslie Loko, founder of the African Futures Institute in Accra, Ghana, says Mariam refutes the idea that Africa lacks architecture. 9. Loko points to Agadez, Niger, and the Grand Mosque with its 27-meter-high minaret as part of the architectural tradition Mariam draws on. 10. Mariam says she wants to make architecture that elevates people beyond the idea that they only need “four walls and a roof.” 11. She says her design process starts with research, conversations, and what she calls “excavating the DNA of the place.” 12. She also says she works with local builders and crafts people wherever possible, and that she learns from their skills before choosing materials. 13. Loko says earth, bamboo, coconut husk, and other local materials are often seen as inferior, but Mariam gives them “dignity and respect.” 14. Nicholas Fox Weber says the Bet Bee was controversial because it is being built in Tambacunda, a town with no major gallery within a six-hour drive. 15. Mariam says she had to answer her own question of why anyone would go to a museum, and she settled on the idea that the primary space should be a place for people to come together. 16. The design model shows an above-ground public area with shady fruit trees, an amphitheater, and an eight-meter earth screen inspired by megaliths in Senegal. 17. Mariam says the gallery is buried underground, with a ramp that reveals the collection gradually and helps keep temperatures down without heavy air conditioning. 18. She compares glass display cases to “little gel cells” and prefers carved pillars and open shelving that let objects sit within the architecture. 19. The tone is reflective and practical, with studio interview sections, site visits in New York and Senegal, and detailed design explanations from Mariam and her collaborators. 20. Listeners who like architecture, West African art, and long-form design stories will get the most from this episode; listeners wanting a fast news summary probably will not.

As heard by us

A museum opening becomes a patient study in design, memory, and place.

Mariam's museum commission comes across as a test of patience as much as design, with Olivia Humphries tracking the long lead-up to opening and Mariam noting how much time large projects can take.

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Why you'd press play

A museum opening where every detail is carrying history.

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