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Lesley Naa Norle Lokko is a Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and novelist.[1] From 2019 to 2020 she was a professor and served as Dean of Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture City College of New York,[2] in addition to juggling teaching positions and different careers in Johannesburg, London, Accra and Edinburgh.[3]

Lesley Lokko
Born	Lesley Naa Norle Lokko Dundee, Scotland
Occupation	Architect, academic, novelist
Nationality	Ghanaian-Scottish
Alma mater	University College London[1]
Website
www.lesleylokko.com

In 2015, Lokko established the Graduate School of Architecture (GSA) at University of Johannesburg – an African school dedicated to postgraduate architecture education.[4] She returned to Accra, Ghana in 2021 and established the African Futures Institute, a postgraduate school of architecture and public events platform.

Early life and education

Lesley Lokko was born in Dundee, the daughter of a Ghanaian surgeon and a Scottish mother, and grew up in Ghana and Scotland.[5][6] At the age of 17 she went to a private boarding school in England.[7] She began studying Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford University, but left the programme to go to the United States.[6] She graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, with a BSc(Arch) in 1992, and a MArch in 1995, and went on to earn a PhD in architecture from the University of London in 2007.[8]

Career

Much of Lokko's writing contains themes about cultural and racial identity.[9] She regularly lectures in South Africa,[6] and has also taught in the United Kingdom and the United States.[1] She also writes regularly for The Architectural Review.[10] She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa (edited by Margaret Busby).[11] In 2004, she published her first novel, Sundowners, a Guardian top 40 bestseller, following up with eleven more novels.^{[citation needed]} In 2020, she moved from Orion to PanMacmillan with her novel Soul Sisters.^{[citation needed]}

Lokko has taught architecture all over the globe. Before exiting the United States, She was an assistant professor in Architecture at Iowa State University from 1997 to 1998 and at University of Illinois at Chicago from 1998 to 2000.[2] In 2000, she became the Martin Luther King Visiting Professor of architecture at the University of Michigan.[12] She then moved back to the United Kingdom for almost a decade, teaching architecture at Kingston University, University of North London and, finally, University of Westminster, where she established the current Master of Arts programme in the pathway of Architecture, Cultural Identity and Globalisation (MACIG).[2][13]

Lokko was first appointed Visiting African Scholar at the University of Cape Town upon her return to South Africa.[12] Tired of "Europe’s hand-me-downs", Lokko, in partnership with the University of Johannesburg, established the Graduate School of Architecture (GSA) in 2014/2015 and became the director of School. The GSA, modelled after the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and London's Architectural Association, is the only school on the continent offering the Unit System way of teaching.[4]

In 2015, Lokko became Head of the newly established Graduate School and associate professor of architecture at the University of Johannesburg.[14][15][16] She founded the GSA at a time of political imperatives in South Africa and witnessed the large-scale student protests, with the uprising conscious of national identity in postcolonial South Africa.[17]

In June 2019 she was named as dean of the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, remaining in this position until 2020.[16][18] She is currently founder and director of the African Futures Institute in Accra, Ghana.

In 2021, she was appointed as the curator of the 18th Venice Biennale of Architecture, set to open in 2023.[19]

Awards and recognitions

• 2021 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contribution to Architecture[20]
• 2020 RIBA Annie Spink Award[21]

Selected published works

• 2000: White Papers, Black Marks: Race, Culture, Architecture[1]
• 2004: Sundowners[1]
• 2005: Saffron Skies[1]
• 2008: Bitter Chocolate[1]
• 2009: Rich Girl, Poor Girl[22]
• 2010: One Secret Summer[23]
• 2011: A Private Affair[1]
• 2012: An Absolute Deception[1]
• 2014: Little White Lies[1]
• 2016: The Last Debutante[24]
• 2021: Soul Sisters[25]

As editor

• 2000: White Papers, Black Marks: Architecture, Race, Culture[8]
• 2017: FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture[2]
• 2020: FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture Vol 2

References

External links

• Lesley Lokko official website
• Lesley Lokko page at The Architectural Review
• Lisa Allen-Agostini, "Transforming Africa’s landscape", Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, 11 June 2018.
• https://www.architecture.com/knowledge-and-resources/knowledge-landing-page/professor-lesley-lokko-wins-2020-riba-annie-spink-award
• Eleanor Young, "Lesley Lokko: Culture Revolutionary", https://www.ribaj.com/intelligence/lesley-lokko-profile-annie-spink-award-2020

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