Call/Response: A Living Architectural Dossier

Website design for Liminal Design by Catherine Sani Ltd, Pan-African Biennale 2026

the problem

Call/Response is an architectural submission to the Pan-African Biennale 2026, under the African Futures subtheme of Shifting the Center: From Fragility to Resilience. It uses orature as a design method and asks: what does the future African city look like to you?

The project began at a gathering of architects in Malawi, where participants contributed through speech, writing and drawing. The exhibition could only hold so much of that. The team needed a digital home that could do three things:

Carry the exhibition beyond the gallery walls.
Present very different kinds of material (voices, postcards, sketches, video, speculative imagery) without flattening them into a conventional portfolio.
Stay open, so anyone could add to it after the Biennale opened.
A standard exhibition website would have documented the project. This one had to continue it.

the solution

We designed the site as a conversation rather than a catalogue, with a clear call and an easy way to respond.

The call comes first. The homepage leads with one question, “What does the future African city look like to you?” A single action takes visitors to the submission page.
A structure that mirrors the idea. The site moves from About the thinking, through Behind the Scenes and the Exhibition, into Enter the Dossier, where the contributions live.
A dossier that holds many voices. Each contributor is presented with their contribution types (video response, postcard, sketch) and the spatial responses associated with them. Video and imagery sit alongside the text.
From response to proposition. The Dossier also shows how contributions were interpreted into speculative spatial propositions, such as Brick Reimagined and Chitenje: Fabric, Pattern and Cultural Identity. Visitors can see how a spoken idea becomes a spatial one.
An invitation built into the design. The Dossier ends with “Your entry next…” and an empty box, so the site is visibly unfinished and visibly waiting for the visitor.

the result

A live site that extends the exhibition into an ongoing, public conversation.

Contributions from several participants at the first Call/Response gathering in Malawi, in three formats, are now part of the archive.
Four spatial propositions show the Dossier turning collective responses into design thinking.
The site now serves as the project’s public face for the Biennale and as an open channel for new contributions.