Oluwamayowa Serene Soyannwo

Prior to joining the M.Arch program at MIT, Serene Soyannwo gained her Bachelor of Fine arts (BFA) in Architectural Design with a minor in Film Production from Parsons School of Design in New York City - culminating in her reception of Departmental Honors for her pursuits in academic and community-based work. 

In her endeavours to undertake the concerns of the field, Serene has found herself immersed in the magnitude of possibilities which research and investigation can ignite in the design process. From proposing the adaptive reuse of Hudson River State Psychiatric Hospital as a Centre to support ex-prisoners from Duchess County Jail, to submitting a competition entry for a self-built Education Centre that could shelter a Non-Profit school and its primary level students in Busua, Ghana, her ideologies have undeniably propelled her to think about global complexities with a reflective curiosity and a thorough sensitivity.

The question she hopes to find answers to while studying architecture at MIT is learning how one can seamlessly hybridise the abstract and the technical - objectives in the industry which often feel at odds when projects must adhere to economic constraints. From her experiences living and working in Nigeria, a place with discouraging levels of inequality, she sees yet still the potential the built environment holds to be transformed in this essential way that architecture tends to revolutionise - thus with the country’s distinctive natural resources and building techniques, her hope is to start her own practice in this ever-developing region, so that she might one day cultivate such aforementioned innovations through new and sustainable methodologies.