Back to the Beginning
Her location? Centre stage. In her hands? A microphone. Her gaze? Piercing and uncowed. None of which are new or unusual for the woman who has spent a lifetime teaching others. She’s done it all before, and she’ll do it all again. She is vibrant against the pale background of her location and her peers. The eye is drawn through the image to her colourful beaded necklace, betraying her African heritage and contrasting with the architect’s uniform of black-on-black-on-black.
Dr Lesley Lokko speaking at the panel discussion “Breaking Ground – difficult women in architecture” as part of The Climate Justice Series at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture in New York. Credits: Sirin Samman.
Comfortable in the role, Dr Lokko has taught architecture around the Western world since 1997, to audiences that appear wholly dissimilar to herself: a middle-class Scottish-Ghanian woman, raised in Ghana and shuttled back-and-forth to the United Kingdom. Her journey across America and the UK began at school level, and continued past her graduation into her career as an academic in higher education. This very lack of definitive roots is what triggered her interest in her surroundings, and a desire to pursue architecture. But her heritage would continue to mark her as an outsider in ‘racist and cliquey environments,’ whilst simultaneously providing the theme for her published works – both journalistic and fictional in nature. [1] Her academic contributions centred around the links between cultural heritage, identity and architecture.
Her identity, observations and experiences in trying to merge the two halves of her heritage while working in the world of architectural academia ultimately led to her founding of the GSA [2] and AFI [3] institutions. These institutes are the results of her efforts to marry her personal life, spent in South Africa and Ghana, and her professional career, spent in Western architectural institutions due to the lack of opportunity on the continent she has forever called home. She has described this part of her life as ‘the most rewarding experience of [her] professional career to date.’ [4]
Strong and knowledgeable in herself, she has never had any qualms about fulfilling a position when needed or taking initiative when the opportunity arose. Her positions have progressed from teacher and professor to novelist, from founder and director to dean. Across these diverse roles, one thing they all have in common is Lokko’s leadership in trailblazing the future of architectural education away from the confines of Eurocentrism and tradition. Leading by example (and, by her own admission, ‘tough, driven, empowered, impatient and inspirational’ in her management style) [5] in her professional capacity as well as in her personal life, Dr Lokko has always put her own health first: on the one hand, by pursuing the writing of fictional novels as a means of escape, and on the other, by leaving a position should it not respect her or empathise accordingly. A lesson that many should take note of and incorporate into their own lives as well.
Despite playing a variety of roles throughout the years, the life of Dr Lokko is ultimately marked by her strength, passion and belief in aiding and assisting her home and heritage in its pursuit and success as an international power in architecture.
Image Credits: Photo Sirin Samman.
1. Lokko, Lesley. White Papers, Black Marks: Architecture, Race, Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
2. The Graduate School of Architecture, founded in 2015 in partnership with the University of Johannesburg.
3. The African Futures Institute, founded in Accra, Ghana by Lesley Lokko and Sir David Adjaye OBE.
4. Rottok, K. C. “Graduate School of Architecture’s Prof. Lesley Lokko.” SAprofessionals.com, 18 Aug. 2019. Web. (Accessed 20 July 2022) Link.
5. Ibid.