Lesley Lokko to receive Royal Gold Medal 2024 for Architecture

For over two decades, Lokko has devoted her career to amplifying under-represented voices and examining the complex relationship between architecture, identity and race, profoundly impacting architectural education, dialogue and discourse.  

Her work to “democratise architecture” has been hailed by the RIBA Honours Committee 2024 as a “clarion call for equitable representation in policies, planning, and design that shape our spaces”.

In 2021, she founded the African Futures Institute (AFI) in Accra, Ghana, aiming to be a new model of education, research and public dialogue that unites the arts, humanities and sciences and “reimagines Africa as the crucible of the future”. Operating as a pan-African think tank, the institute champions cutting-edge teaching and world-class research to confront contemporary challenges around race, environmental justice and new forms of urbanism.  

Prior to establishing the AFI, Lokko taught around the world and reframed architecture courses to democratise, decolonise and progress architectural education. Notable roles include Founder and Director of the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg and Dean of The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York. 

In 2023, Lokko was awarded an OBE for services to architecture and education and was appointed Curator of the 18th International Architecture Biennale in Venice. Titled ‘The Laboratory of the Future’, the exhibition placed Africa at its centre and included its first ever educational component. The Biennale College Architettura saw 50 students from across the globe come together for a four-week teaching programme, focused on the twin themes of the exhibition – decarbonisation and decolonisation. 

Main Image :Professor Lesley Lokko © Debra Hurford-Brown