Lesley Lokko launches Nomadic African Studio as "a space to think about architecture differently"

Scottish-Ghanaian architect Lesley Lokko has established the Nomadic African Studio, which will run annual architecture workshops across Africa.

Organised by Lokko's African Futures Institute (AFI), the Nomadic African Studio will organise a series of fully funded, month-long educational programmes for young architects.

"It's really about a space to think about architecture differently, so not focused on training people to build buildings per se, but providing a platform for thinking, dreaming and imagining architecture in a different way," Lokko told Dezeen.

Organised with funding from Open Society Foundations and watch brand Rolex, the first iteration of the Nomadic African Studio is set to take place this summer in Fez, Morocco.

Over 30 participants from 12 countries, who were chosen by a nomination committee and open call, will attend the in-person sessions.

Following her resignation as dean of the Spitzer School of Architecture at City College in New York, Lokko returned to Ghana with the intention of establishing an independent, post-graduate school of architecture.

"Idea was to establish an independent school of architecture"

However, after running the first-ever architecture college at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023, she decided that a nomadic studio focused on post-graduates would be more impactful.

"When I came back to Ghana in 2021 the idea was to establish an independent school of architecture – that was the ambition," she said.

"But then Venice came along and, you know, I'm in my 60s now, and I realised, I'll probably spend the next 10 years just getting the permissions in order to do it. So, I thought, let's shift."

Lokko describes the programme as Africa-focused, and over half of the first cohort of participants are from Africa, with another 25 per cent from the diaspora.

Each of the first five planned studios will be based on a theme and will take place in a city chosen to align with that theme. Following Fez, the studios will take place in Abidjan in Ivory Coast, Johannesburg in South Africa, Accra in Ghana and Port Louis in Mauritius.

First of five planned studios in Fez

"We chose five themes and we chose locations that had something to do with those contexts," explained Lokko.

"Fez, for us, was interesting because it's Morocco, which is both part of Africa and not part of it – it's a much ambiguous territory," she continued. "So we thought it would be really interesting to use it as a kind of catalyst to think about identities that are beyond the nation state."

The studios were designed to build on young people's architectural education and early years in practice.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say it's filling a gap [in architectural education], because I think we're not even completely clear what the gap is," said Lokko.

"What I think is amazing about architectural education in general is that it gives you incredible tools and an incredible set of skills to think about quite complex issues," she continued.

"Africa is undergoing rapid and very intense change, so this is a really interesting set of tools to bring to this context. Whether it has wider resonance for architectural education elsewhere, I don't know yet."

Confidence "desperately needed"

Along with learning and building connections, Lokko said that the most important thing the participants can take away from the Nomadic African Studio is confidence.

"Confidence in their own voices, their own ideas, their own networks, their own opinions, their own imaginations," she said.

"I've said it's pretty much all my career, that confidence is the one thing that's really it's hard to build and it's what's desperately needed."

According to Lokko, this is especially important for young architects in Africa on one of the reasons she wanted all the participants to be under 35.

"We're a very young continent, the average age is under 19," she explained. "We also have the world's oldest leadership and we're culturally predisposed to respecting our elders, not speaking out and not being particularly publicly critical.

"So the idea is to, is to really give people the tools and the confidence to become more publicly critical in what they do."

Ghanaian-Scottish architect Lokko was recently awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal earlier this year, making her the first black woman to win the prestigious award.

She was also recently named on Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people and named on the BBC's list most inspiring and influential women of 2024.

The main portrait is by Festus Jackson Davis.

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