By Charles Mgbolu
Ghanaian architect and academic Lesley Lokko, 60, is over the moon after being announced the winner of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) gold medal award.
She is the first African woman to receive the gong—and the second black architect to be honoured in RIBA's history.
The 2024 honours committee says she was selected for her ‘’impactful leadership, passion, and unwavering commitment to architectural education and research, in particular her lectures and published works focusing on the subjects of race, identity and architecture.’’
The committee also praised her exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, an international exhibition of architecture from nations around the world, held in Venice, Italy, every other year.
The committee called her work "a groundbreaking event that united African and Africa-related architectural expressions.’’
'Knocked sideways'
An overwhelmed Lokko called the announcement ‘’surreal’’ on social media.
‘’This knocked me sideways. Thank you to everyone who held, nudged, pushed, championed, and cheered over the past thirty years. More than anything, I wish you were all here today.
''This is dedicated to so many people - colleagues, collaborators, communities, companions, but especially educators - who changed my life in ways I cannot explain or express,’’ she wrote on Instagram.
Lokko, who is a teacher, writer and curator, was born in Dundee, Scotland, to a Ghanaian father and a Scottish mother.
She dedicated her career to amplifying underrepresented voices and exploring the relationship between architecture, identity and race.
Architecture for the future
Lokko says her Venice Biennale exhibition was an opportunity to spotlight the scarred landscapes of postcolonial Africa and give a platform to a new generation of young, optimistic African architects, framing the continent as an architectural “laboratory of the future.''
In an interview, she said she hopes more attention was given to establishing more architectural schools for African students.
“Africa has an incredibly youthful population who are really hungry and ambitious. But education is the biggest challenge: there are under 90 accredited schools on a continent of nearly a billion people. And often, the curricula they are following have been inherited from former colonial powers. The speed of change is also enormous, and we don’t have the educational infrastructure to tackle that yet.”
Lokko continues to teach in schools around the world and has founded two architecture schools—in Johannesburg, South Africa and Ghana’s capital, Accra.
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