FIVE MINUTES WITH: Lesley Lokko

We sat down with Professor Lesley Lokko to discuss the 2024 Living Cities Forum theme, ‘Common Interests’, her favourite urban space transformations, and the most urgent challenges facing the industry.

Professor Lesley Lokko OBE is the Founder and Chair of the African Futures Institute (AFI) in Accra, Ghana. She was the Founder and Director of the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg (2014—2019). She was appointed Curator of the 18th International Architecture Biennale at La Biennale di Venezia in 2023. In January 2024, she was awarded the UK’s highest architecture award, the RIBA Royal Gold Medal. In April 2024, she was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people in the annual TIME100 list.

How does the theme of Common Interests resonate with you and your work?

We’re so in sync it’s a little disconcerting! One of my main interests, even in architecture, is language. What we say, what we mean, what we interpret and what we build are so closely interlinked that it’s impossible (for me at least) to think of architecture in any other way. It’s a language — it narrates, it shapes, it explains, it frames, it guides — with different tools and means to speech and the written word, of course, but the basic principles are the same. Architecture strives to give meaning to our lives.

As an African student of architecture in the global North, I struggled to find space (literally) to develop and explore my own, culturally located and specific voice. It seemed to me then, as it does now, that students who came to architectural education from contexts other than the European/American ones that have shaped architectural canon since the Renaissance were tasked with two things: learn the dominant architectural language so well that it became a mother tongue and learn how to translate.

To translate well, you must find concepts in common between the two (or three) languages you speak/write/draw/build. So, from the outset, the word ‘common’ is paramount. What do we have in common? What are the shared values, ethics, approaches that we can rely on to help us navigate new territories, new spaces, new ways of seeing the world? Reading the statement, ‘public spaces are not always spaces of cohesion, but rather spaces of interests examined through lenses of “Country”, ecology, climate, diversity, activation and technology’ made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The term ‘Country’ is specifically Australian but it’s an amazing example of the potential impact of a different way of understanding the world that has such powerful ramifications for us globally.

What are some of your favourite projects that have transformed urban space?

I was on the Aga Khan Award for Architecture Master Jury in 2016 and loved Superkilen, the project by BIG. It’s a brilliant public space, on the one hand, but on the other, challenges so many assumptions about who the ‘we’ in the word ‘public’ can be. I particularly liked the fact that the project upends the ages-old dichotomy of there being many ‘worlds’ — the so-called Arab world, the developing world, the Third World — as somewhere else, other than Europe. No, our worlds are intertwined, co- and mutually dependent on one another and always have been.

Barcelona is one of my favourite cities for the quality of its urban spaces, from small squares to huge boulevards. But my list also contains spaces that aren’t always classified as ‘urban’ or ‘public’ space. Markets, bazaars, beaches . . . like everything else, meanings can be both universal and site specific. 

What issue do you see as the most urgent for the architecture industry to tackle?

I imagine few will be surprised by my answer: education. I come from the world’s youngest and fastest-urbanising continent. Education is both our battleground and our only hope. The antagonistic tug-of-war that seems to be an entrenched aspect of the relationship between education and practice, teaching and practice, activism and practice is distracting and time-consuming.

The older one gets, the harder it is to change. Not impossible, just harder. It requires more time and effort to unlearn to relearn, or to make space for new ideas. Age brings wisdom and perspective (I genuinely believe this), which is invaluable, but it can also obscure possibilities. I’ve always seen education as a space of freedom: the sheer bureaucracy of the academy can be stifling and overwhelming. Sadly, the tension between the academy and the so-called ‘outside world’ only serves to amplify the squeeze.

What primarily motivated you to found African Futures Institute?

Founding the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg was a formative experience for me: the students and young faculty were outstanding. In the end, however, the bureaucracy and administrative challenges were overwhelming, and I left for New York imagining (wrongly) that I would find a more balanced and supportive working environment.

I moved to New York at the end of 2019 to take up a position as Dean of The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture. Two months later, COVID-19 hit and the world as we knew it changed. It was a challenging time, to say the least, and six months later, I resigned. Having dreamt of starting a school of architecture at home in Ghana for almost thirty years, I realised that if, at that point, I didn’t do it, I probably never would. My experience in South Africa from 2014–2019 had only strengthened my determination to expose African students of architecture to other ways of thinking about the built environment disciplines.

Initially, I thought of the African Futures Institute as a school of architecture, focusing primarily on postgraduate
students, but three months after it began operations, I was appointed Curator of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia. It was impossible to do both projects simultaneously, so the AFI took a back seat for two years, pivoting from public events and developing a teaching programme to research and curatorship. It was an amazing time and opportunity, and when I returned to Accra, I knew my original plan to open a large, fully operational and validated school of architecture wouldn’t work, at least not in a timeframe that I was comfortable with. So, after much deliberation, we’ve moved from the idea of an institute to a programme, the Nomadic African Studio, which will begin in 2025. I’m not going to say much more about the Nomadic African Studio now — details will be launched at the end of September but do watch this space!

What do you hope to be the impact of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale program?

I’m too close to the experience to separate my personal ambitions (to do a ‘good’ job, not to let anyone down, to do my friends and family proud) from the longer-term public ones — to showcase Africa and the diaspora in an imaginative, dynamic and creative light, rather than the way we’re usually portrayed, which is always lacking in something — capital, capacity, competency, culture.

What are you reading at the moment?

I read everything and anything. My father used to say I’d read the labels on a jam jar all day if I could. On my bedside table right now are The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn, Colm Tóibín’s Long Island and The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing. If David Malouf had a new book out, I’d be reading it too. I adore his work.

What do you hope audiences attending Living Cities Forum come away with?

A sense of hope and optimism in the midst of such challenging and aggressive times; a sense of having learned or experienced something unexpected or new; and a renewed understanding and appreciation for the power of the built and natural environments.

Professor Lesley Lokko OBE will be presenting in person at Living Cities Forum: Common Interests, supported by the British Council.