Lesley Lokko is on a mission to transform architecture, fostering a new generation of ‘more dynamic thinkers’

The acclaimed academic is challenging young designers and architects to think outside the box, with a new, exploratory initiative dubbed the Nomadic African Studio.

When Lesley Lokko was a young student in 1990s London, architecture was a place of openness and experimentation. And yet, she felt the discipline was incapable of thinking beyond European concepts of space. “We were being taught… in a very predominantly Eurocentric way, about the difference between inside and outside, between privacy and publicity, or even simple things like a family structure,” said the renowned Scottish-Ghanian architect, now in her 60s. She noted the difference between her experience growing up around extended family and the small “two-up, two-down” homes common among nuclear families in the UK. Even her way of thinking about building materials was at odds with the curriculum: in the tropics, concrete rots and metal rusts. “The way you think about weather and materials and circulation and ventilation is very different,” Lokko told CNN over a video call from Ghana’s capital Accra. Fast forward three decades and Lokko is now the educator leading the classroom. Her initiative, the African Futures Institute (AFI), is an effort to radically re-imagine what a design education should look like for younger generations. The institute, based in Accra, was initially going to be an independent post-graduate school of architecture. But Lokko soon realized the logistics and resources needed to start an entirely new school might be out of reach. “Also, I’m not sure that the world needs another architecture school… what it needs are more ambitious, more creative, more dynamic thinkers and makers,” she said. Instead, the AFI will host the Nomadic African Studio, a series of annual studio sessions offering new ways to think about architecture and design as they relate to pressing global issues, like climate change and migration.