Golden Lion for Demas Nwoko

Nigerian architect Demas Nwoko will be awarded with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture. A well deserved honour for the 88-year-old artist whose work has been compared to that of Gaudi and Frank Lloyd Wright, but who remains relatively unknown in Nigeria and abroad. Curator of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, Lesley Lokko, calls Nwoko ‘everything all at once: an architect, sculptor, designer, writer, set designer, critic, and historian.’

Nwoko was one of the famous Zaria rebels, a group of creatives at the University of Zaria in northern Nigeria in the 1950s who rejected the Eurocentric art curriculum and embraced and adapted traditional techniques and forms in their work. Master builder Nwoko translated this in buildings that were environmentally sustainable and culturally authentic long before such notions became mainstream.

In 2010 one of Legacy’s cofounders, the recently deceased John Godwin, and his wife Gillian Hopwood published an all-encompassing book on the work of this Nigerian architect whom they believed deserved more widespread acknowledgement. Nwoko’s buildings in Nigeria are few but impressive, from the Dominican Chapel in Ibadan to his house in Idumuje-Ugboko in southeast Nigeria, and well worth a visit.