Lesley Lokko is set to receive an architectural leadership
honour, while Nana Biamah-Ofosu curates the Anglophone Africa
Pavilion.
Lesley Lokko and Nana Biamah-Ofosu will take prominent roles at
Design Week Lagos 2026, connecting Ghanaian architectural leadership
with a wider conversation about African design and production. Lokko is
scheduled to receive the Architectural Leadership Honour, while
Biamah-Ofosu is curating the Anglophone Africa Pavilion.
The festival runs from October
18 to 25 at the National Theatre and other locations across Lagos.
Its formal opening and IDEA Honours ceremony are scheduled for October
21, according to the organiser’s
announcement.
Their contributions are different but complementary. One recognises
an established educator and curator; the other places a practising
architect in a position to shape how regional work is presented.
Lesley Lokko’s leadership
honour
Lokko, the Ghanaian-Scottish architect, educator and author, founded
the African Futures Institute in Accra. The institute says it
began in 2021, centred on teaching, research and public events,
before expanding into exhibitions, publishing and curatorial work.
Her Lagos honour follows major international recognition. She
received the RIBA
Royal Gold Medal in 2024, with the institute recording its
presentation on May 2 that year. RIBA recognised her contribution to
widening architectural practice and education.
She also curated the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, titled The
Laboratory of the Future. La
Biennale’s official account describes an exhibition that placed
Africa and its diaspora at the centre of its inquiry.
At the Lagos ceremony, Lokko is among three announced honourees. The
programme also names SaloneSatellite founder Marva Griffin for the
Architectural Legacy Honour and artist Yinka Shonibare for the Cultural
Impact Honour.
The award is therefore part of a broader recognition programme,
rather than a standalone event devoted only to Lokko.
Nana Biamah-Ofosu’s
curatorial role
Biamah-Ofosu, a Ghanaian-British architect and founder of YAA
Projects, will curate the Anglophone Africa Pavilion within the Design
& Innovation Exhibition. The official
exhibition page lists her alongside lead curator Norman Teague,
Francophone Africa curator Ousmane Mbaye and Lusophone Africa curator
Julio Rafael.
Her practice works across
architecture, design and research. Its interests include material
cultures, African modernity, domestic life and the experiences of
diaspora communities. Its work ranges from exhibitions and interiors to
housing, public spaces and cultural projects.
That research has a concrete architectural focus. A September
programme at the Canadian Centre for Architecture described her work
on multigenerational and communal living through African compound-house
models.
The same institution identified her as a member of the African
Futures Institute’s Nomadic African Studio core faculty. Her work
therefore connects with Lokko’s educational platform, although their
Lagos responsibilities remain separate.
The CCA also named her as one of three guest curators for a
forthcoming Out of the Box exhibition series. That project examines the
work of Gillian Hopwood and John Godwin, architects in post-independence
Nigeria whose archive was donated to the institution. It adds another
Nigerian connection to her current research and curatorial work.
Biamah-Ofosu also brings experience from Venice. In 2023, she
co-curated Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Power in West Africa
with Christopher Turner and Bushra Mohamed. She was also among the
tutors for that year’s Biennale College Architettura.
What Design Week Lagos is
presenting
The festival’s overarching theme is Making a New Africa. Its website
identifies From Material to Market: Designing for Scale as the
sub-theme, linking creative work with manufacturing and commercial
development.
Within that framework, 180 New Ideas is a major presentation spanning
fields including furniture, lighting, textiles, materials, architecture
and experimental work. It is not the title of the festival’s overall
theme.
The exhibition’s regional structure also matters. The organiser
describes five perspectives covering Nigeria, the African diaspora,
Anglophone Africa, Francophone Africa and Lusophone Africa.
Biamah-Ofosu’s pavilion sits within that wider programme, rather than
serving as a Ghana-only exhibition.
Alongside the exhibitions, the festival website lists talks,
workshops, student programmes and industry-focused activities. These
place discussion and professional development alongside the presentation
of objects and architectural ideas.
Analysis: why this matters
for Ghana
For Ghanaian readers, the strongest connection is not simply that two
recognisable names will appear in Lagos. It is the nature of their
roles: recognition for educational leadership and responsibility for
curating regional design.
Curating shapes which projects enter a conversation and how audiences
understand them. Architectural education, meanwhile, influences the
questions future practitioners ask about housing, climate, materials and
public space. Neither activity is limited to designing a single
building.
Biamah-Ofosu’s compound-house research offers one example of the
questions involved. Studying communal living can prompt discussion about
shared space, privacy and relationships between generations. Those are
useful questions for a housing conversation, although research on a
building type should not be presented as a ready-made answer to every
urban problem.
The festival’s production focus adds a practical test. Showing ideas
is one step; developing them into durable products, viable practices or
useful spaces requires further work. Exhibition visibility alone cannot
establish that those outcomes have happened.
For students and emerging designers, the programme offers a way to
examine that relationship between research, presentation and making. For
established practitioners, it provides a regional setting for comparing
approaches across different places and traditions.
Lokko’s planned honour and Biamah-Ofosu’s curatorship give this
year’s festival a clear Ghanaian connection. The next milestone is the
October 21 opening, when the announced programme moves from preparation
into public presentation.
