With a “dual perspective” derived from her global education and her roots in Lagos, Tosin Oshinowo has built a powerful and socially responsible practice. Her work, which ranges from the luxurious to the humanitarian, is a relentless quest for dignity and cultural relevance in the African built environment.
The art of building African dignity and resilience
In Tosin Oshinowo, contemporary African architecture finds one of its most critical and innovative voices. Born and raised in Lagos, her career is a synthesis between the rigor of the great Western schools (Kingston University, Architectural Association, UCL) and the vibrant pragmatism of her native Nigeria, a place she considers her permanent urban laboratory. This “double perspective” enables her to approach design not only from an aesthetic angle, but also from an economic, social and political one.
Simplicity, identity and decolonization
Tosin Oshinowo’s aesthetic language is encapsulated by the concept ofAfrominimalism. Far from austerity, it’s a simplification that confers dignity, using clean lines, sophisticated geometric patterns and careful attention to texture.
This style is a strategy of identity resistance. By adopting the forms of global minimalism, Oshinowo decolonizes the latter by injecting it with Yoruba cultural awareness and adaptation to climatic imperatives. The Lantern House in Ikoyi is a perfect illustration: this residence uses openwork steel screens to filter the sun and ensure privacy, creating a play of light that gives the house the effect of a lantern at night, while respecting the spatial zoning specific to multi-generational Yoruba family life.
The critique of “Top-Down” and alternative urbanism
Tosin Oshinowo rejects the simplistic duality that pits African architecture between vernacular and colonial imitation. She advocates a “third way” that uses modern techniques to serve a local identity.
His critique focuses on the standardization of post-colonial spaces, which has often led to the “almost complete suppression of indigenous traditions”. For Oshinowo, there is no singular African architectural identity, but rather culture-specific spatial configurations, and the designer must demonstrate“humility” by “listening” to users and designingbottom-up.
Her research work, Alternative Urbanism: The Self-Organized Markets of Lagos, exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2025, is a major theoretical pivot. In it, she analyzes the resilience of Lagos’s informal markets, described as “factories that transform the waste of the global North”. Born of scarcity and reuse, these systems are, she argues, models of circular economy and regeneration inherently superior to those of the North. The future lies in the ability to “bridge these two worlds”: state formality and the dynamic resilience of the informal.
International influence
Oshinowo’s influence extends beyond Nigeria. She has applied her “design for equity” to large-scale civic and humanitarian projects, such as the
As curator of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2023(The Beauty of Impermanence), she used the global stage to spread her key message: “there is no center”. She promoted the ingenuity of the Global South, demonstrating that adaptability born of necessity is a crucial source of knowledge for the global community.
Ultimately, Tosin Oshinowo charts a path for African architecture that is resolutely modern, culturally rooted and socially impactful. She reinvents space so that culture, identity and community can flourish, positioning Africa as a source of innovation for global architecture and urbanism.
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