Pearl Lam (林明珠): Architecture is discussed as form, material or style. And architecture is never neutral. They shape how people live, how cities evolved, and ultimately how power is organized. Today we are discussing about the shifting of cultural gravity. With always a design authority is always concentrated in Europe and in North America. But it seems that today cities around Global South is negotiating their own modernity rapidly, unevenly, but with lots of confidence, increasing confidence. And here I am sitting with an architect, Tosin Oshinowo.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Am I right? Oshinowo, who is at the center of negotiation. Tosin, can you just give a little brief about yourself to the audience? I spent last night reading about African modernism, Afrofuturism and I saw many of your works.

Tosin Oshinowo: Thank you so much for having me. This is really nice to have this conversation. So my name is Tosin Oshinowo. I am an architect, Lagos based Nigerian architect. I run a practice, Oshinowo Studio. Our work is very much built around an honest response to social issues. We’re very socially responsible. We’re very climate conscious in our approach.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Sustainability.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes. Well, I don’t like that word sustainability, but we’re very, very climate responsible. But we’re very big on an aesthetic that’s very minimal as well. We believe in the truth of using materials in their purest form. I have some very strong views on what is considered as cultural. A lot of our work is very much based on a strong aesthetic or consciousness of identity. I think that’s a Part of architecture that we have kind of lost due to colonialism. And there’s a generation now who are very much about reclaiming that in whatever form it takes. So, it’s not always necessarily about necessarily conscious references to traditional, but very much present in who we are today collectively looking forward, but with homage paid to the past as well.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But obviously I saw some of your buildings.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And some of your architecture. You are taking a lot of cultural identity to put forward to your design. Right. So, I never spent all my aggregated. I mean, my aggregated days I’m in Africa is not more than two weeks together with three. With three trips in three different countries. So, you know, your culture, how do you define what culture is?

Tosin Oshinowo: This is a very very, you know, it’s very broad. It’s very, very broad. And it’s such an important question because I get quite annoyed when people say Africa. I’m like, this is a continent. You know, there’s so many countries here and countries made up of so many different ethnic groups. You have to remember that the formation of any African country was obviously formed by the Berlin Conference in 1985. Lines were drawn for us, and we went from that into modernity, into independent states with those same lines. But you do have different ethnic groups across different countries. For example, the Fulani are nomadic ethnic group, and you can find them across the whole Sahel of Western Africa. You know, so you get people of this cultural group in many different countries. Nigeria itself has over 250 different languages, which is 250 different ethnic groups. What is this shared identity? There isn’t really one. And so, when you start to think about design, start to think about architecture in a modern sense, what does that mean for so many different people? And then even on the continent, so many different potential climate stratas in the south, in Lagos, where we are now is tropical. If you go to the north, it’s Sahel Sahara. If you go further up towards Morocco, you get desert or Mediterranean. So, it’s constantly evolving. So, the idea of an architecture or vernacular that would have taken an identity doesn’t really exist in modern times. And so, when you think about the style of architecture, how do you create an architecture of modernity that doesn’t necessarily take from tradition? And you have to find beautiful nuances that you can pull and create those representations.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): The interesting thing is when I saw your minimalism compared to Corbusier or the Die-Hard Bauhaus, it’s completely off. Because, you know, when we talk about Corbusier and all that, I Mean. I mean, Bauhaus, you have to have a square, and then you cannot even have gray.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes. And I think this is a very, very important point because space should be a reflection of life, and life is a reflection of culture.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absolutely.

Tosin Oshinowo: And so, when we think about our buildings and how we design, we think about how people use space here. For example, if you look at the traditional house in West Africa, it was a courtyard. There was always a series of smaller rooms.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Is it the same courtyard houses as in China?

Tosin Oshinowo: Ironically, yes. And the same that you would also have, you know, in the Middle east, you know. Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Because it’s the way of living.

Tosin Oshinowo: It’s a way of living. And it’s not a European Western way of living.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absolutely not.

Tosin Oshinowo: Absolutely. And though we have lost it in its true sense and form, the use of space still remains the same. And this is so beautiful, the idea of public and private spaces as you move through the home. And obviously.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, I think it’s much more. Yeah.

Tosin Oshinowo: Depending on where you sit within the family or as a visitor. You’re only open to certain areas.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Exactly.

Tosin Oshinowo: But. But with that, you then also have the idea of material. And what’s really beautiful about our traditional architecture is it was always very true to material use. So, when you use.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): What is your traditional clay? Right.

Tosin Oshinowo: So, we would have used, I would say, laterite. So, it’s a very red soil. It’s very common across West Africa, specifically. And it’s. It’s almost like a mud or a clay. And in some cases, it would have been used as an adobe block. So, it would have been made into blocks, dried and then stacked, which you can just soak in water and you can reuse again. Now, we use it in a more contemporary sense with rammed earth, but it’s a material of place. It keeps very cool during the day. It retains warmth at night, so it’s very comfortable. It also deters prudence and insects ironically.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So you are saying that when you use this traditional material, you don’t need to put anything to. What is that called? Insulation?

Tosin Oshinowo: You don’t, because it already does it. But when it was used in tradition, it was used in its natural form. And what I’m trying to say that I associate with the use of materials in our architecture is we use them in true form because tradition did. And I think the problem we have on the continent is when people think about, culturally, what is African, they always revert to maximalism, which really isn’t our culture.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): No, I don’t see. Or I don’t see. Yours is about maximalism. And I think baroque is more maximalism than any African architecture.

Tosin Oshinowo: But I think what’s really interesting is I think in contemporary sense, we do have maximalism. When you see the printed fabrics, but those are not actually African, ironically. Therefore, they were fake damask that were initially planned by the Dutch for the Indonesian market.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes, I know, I know. I read. Because of Yinka Shonibare, who told. Was completely focusing on that.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yeah, yeah. But ironically, when you look at traditional fabrics from this region, they were very beautiful and very minimalist. If you look at the batiks, the ties and dyes, where you have the patterning that was done in Oshogbo, they were always based on very clean patterning with a very mute palette. And so, when you really dive deep into a lot of African cultures, you start to see that in the purest form of how these materials and patterns and textures were used, there was always an emphasis on simplicity. And in modernity, someone just said somewhere, oh, it should all be maximalist. And we’ve embraced it, which is also interesting. But when you really think about an architecture, it was always true to form, using materials in their simplest composition to create beautiful contemplating spaces. And even the use of space in Africa is very unique because if you go back to the idea of the courtyard house, the room was only a place for dwelling and sleep.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You have a lot of activities outside the house, on the outside.

Tosin Oshinowo: I mean, you’re in Lagos now, you see so much activity on the street. It’s not by fluke. It’s actually bicultural appropriation. Yes. It’s a way of life. We are very communal people. We do a lot of activities outside, and also, we have the climate that encourages it.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But you are very humid. Humidity.

Tosin Oshinowo: We like our humid. It’s good for the skin.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, I know. I’m from a humid. A very. A city with huge humidity. I ran away. I always stay within the AC room.

Tosin Oshinowo: We like humidity, but it’s beautiful to create an architecture that is reflective of. Of that need for life.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Hold on. When you were working in America. Yes, America. Or working in Europe and in Europe. Yes. I mean, in Som and all that, were you allowed to do that?

Tosin Oshinowo: Oh, no, I was.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): No, because you were. You were, you know, a project architect. You just follow?

Tosin Oshinowo: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was much younger at the time, and so I guess.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So, you learned the discipline?

Tosin Oshinowo: I learned the discipline in Europe, but my association with an experience of space was very much observational as a child here, but very much refined here as a practitioner.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Okay. Just to talk about spatial, to talk about aesthetic. So, one question I always like to ask an architect. Would your design is based on aesthetic or based on spatial? Because if it is attracting capital and so money dominates your design. So, then, it will be very different. It will be aesthetic rather than spatial. Right.

Tosin Oshinowo: I would say this is a really interesting question because I have also worked at two extremes for very, very wealthy people and for communities who are displaced. I think it starts with spatial. Always.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Okay.

Tosin Oshinowo: Spatial is fundamentally the grain for which our designs are created. Capital is very secondary because also you have to remember that as a practice, we’re 13 years now, so we’re not a very old practice. We started off working for people who like nice things but didn’t have much means. And that forces you to think a very differently.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And actually, that is interesting because it push you. You push your boundaries.

Tosin Oshinowo: You push your boundaries because you also.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Do push your imagination.

Tosin Oshinowo: You have to push your imagination because we have to work with what we have here. And you have a very limited palette. And how do you create really beautiful experiential architecture from that limited palette? And what I initially thought was a frustration that, oh, we can’t do much here, I actually ended up realizing was actually a real blessing.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, because it really pushed you.

Tosin Oshinowo: It really pushed us. Yes, yes. And so we’ve been able to create an aesthetic language that has now become desirable, ironically, at a fraction of what it would cost if you were working from capital first.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Okay, so talk about Lagos. Okay. Speedy, chaotic, unpredictable. And I mean, designing places in this city, in such city, do you have any design philosophy coming out from that?

Tosin Oshinowo: Definitely.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think.

Tosin Oshinowo: Lagos encourages you to listen. There’s so much that we actually do not control. I mean, in any form of ecosystem, there’s so many moving parts. The work must always respond to the environment. You cannot afford to approach a design in a vacuum. There are so many constraints, there’s so many variables. So much of architecture in this kind of climate and even in your way of life is constantly adapting, responding to changes, responding to restrictions. And, and yeah, I would say that’s a, A general approach. I have a. I have a very wide philosophy about how we need to even approach the design of the city.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I thought, well, it’s very special.

Tosin Oshinowo: I mean, I have.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, I have seen very special.

Tosin Oshinowo: No, no, very interesting news about. You know, I, I went to school in Europe, so I, I always long to come home and I was always one of those kids who was always looking for every excuse to come back to Lagos. There is a smell.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I Love you get, it’s like people telling me when I arrive Hong Kong, you know, Hong Kong. Hong Kong is called Fragrance Harbour, right? Translation, they said, we love this. I said, how can we never have the spell?

Tosin Oshinowo: I promise you anything that you associate with childhood or home. And it was a happy memory. No matter what it is. It’s an encouraging, welcoming feeling. So, you get to lakes, you get that humid air. I know the humidity, you get this whiff that I later realized in age was actually sewage. But, you know, I associate it with home. Lagos has many, many challenges, but it’s such a place that really pushes creativity. You know, there’s so many industries here that are doing so well, from fashion, film, art, music, architecture, design. This really is a place. So much, yeah, so much is happening here. But we also need to think differently about how we think about this kind of space. Lagos has a population today of over 22 million people. You know, in a landmass that is less than 1% of the whole of Nigeria. So that tells you a lot. Nigeria has over 250 million people. Now. 22 Million people are living in 1% of the surface area. So that says a lot. You know, the infrastructure is already at breaking point. But I think honestly that so much of how we think about the city of Master Planning now has to be in a realistic response to this intensity. And it’s not always necessarily about more infrastructure. It’s about working with what we have that has worked well already.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): With that traffic jam, you don’t have infrastructure. I mean, this is. I mean, I counted. This is one of the worst five cities of traffic jam. I mean, it’s not the top. It’s not the top. I give you, it’s not the top. Mumbai is number one. I mean, it’s not the top, but.

Tosin Oshinowo: I think like in society, easy. It’s not easy yet. It’s not easy, but you find coping mechanisms. People still get up every day, go to work. They’re able to still do what they need to do, even with the traffic. You know, I have to say, when Google Maps came, we all realized, how did we survive without it? You plan around it. You don’t leave anywhere without checking. And then you look, do I really need to go? Is there another route? How much work can I do in the car while I’m on the move? You know, the technology of the mobile phone has really changed the way we occupy the city today. You know, there’s so many things we do on our phones. We have probably more advanced banking technology in Africa than other Parts of the world.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Because to get cash is so difficult.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yeah, I mean my banking app in Nigeria is more sophisticated than my banking app in the uk.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Wow.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Wow.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes. This is a, this is a fact. We, we have made some significant leaps that really haven’t happened locations. But it’s because of the constraints. It has created innovations that have allowed us to continue.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes, of course, of course. Constraint always push you to have innovations. You’re absolutely right. Okay, so next question, next question. Architecture is, is never neutral. And actually, I want to ask you, do you see architecture equates to power? Does architecture gives power because you know, it defined where people lives, how city evolves. Ultimately is you create the space for power.

Tosin Oshinowo: This is a very interesting approach, but in a way I don’t, I think yes and no in this environment. I think at the turn of independence there was a lot of nationalist architecture.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes.

Tosin Oshinowo: There was a push for, you know, modernization and you had a lot of institutional buildings that were built between the 60s and the 70s and towards the 80s when we started to have the commodity price crash and you know, the devaluation of the Naira instructed adjustment programs, it completely changed. And in that period you didn’t have architecture that was imposing and capitalist, you know, and power kind of driven. You started to have the alternative small scale developments done by, you know, bottom up initiatives. And Lagos really today is a mismatch of both. So I can’t say that you can see a visual narrative of power to date in our state or institutional architecture. You probably see it more in the architecture that is created by the very big divide that we have in society today. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, the, the Gini coefficient, we have a very big gap between the have and the have nots. And so when you see the kind of, and I would use this word.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Very strongly, do you have social housing?

Tosin Oshinowo: We’re supposed to.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Okay.

Tosin Oshinowo: We do have some government provided, but unfortunately, it’s not to the quantity that is required for the number of people who live in the state. And so that is filled by a series of different scale developers who provide housing obviously at cost. And I think that there is a.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Will you do, will you design for this housing?

Tosin Oshinowo: I have done housing. It’s not social housing. It was humanitarian housing in the north of Nigeria for community who was displaced from the insurgency. But it’s not common to find architects working in this space because obviously, you know, this also has to do with income. And when you look at the numbers and the developers, how much they’re willing to pay. They would rather go and get a draftsman instead of work with a professional because obviously they look at the fees and they look at how much they can make from the return. And it’s very expensive to build in Nigeria. It’s actually Nigeria and Lagos. Really? Why?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Is there a reason why?

Tosin Oshinowo: I think generally the system is inefficient. The inefficiencies bring high costs. Of course, for example, we don’t have 24-hour power. The easiest way to make anything affordable is to have consistent power. Yeah, we don’t manufacture a lot because we don’t have power. And so a lot of things are imported. Then you have import tariffs when things come in. So, in a, in a country where we don’t manufacture very much, we don’t have consistent power. We don’t even. We only have, I think, one or two manufacturers of cement. Most of it’s imported. So, you can already see how everything stacks up. The minute that we have any economic downturn and we have a devaluation of the currency, then it makes it very difficult for the people who work in construction to make. So it’s, it’s a series of many spiraling issues that, you know, do affect things. So it’s, it’s a very challenging place.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): To operate, but not impossible because architecture defines a city.

Tosin Oshinowo: It does define a city. It defines the people, it defines how people and feel about themselves. The subconscious identity that you have of place is very much built around the architecture that surrounds you. And I, and I believe that we’ve had a lot of challenges recently. The economy thankfully is on the upward now, but we lost a lot of people. You have a lot of people who’ve emigrated. But I don’t believe immigration is the answer. We all can’t go. This is the land of our ancestors. Lagos has been here for hundreds of years. The country’s been here for hundreds of years. Lagos was made a colony in the 1800s. You know, there’s so much, so much of who we are as a history that is present here. And I feel that, you know, for what it’s worth, it’s important that architecture, architects, me included, we continue to add a positive narrative to this place.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Now the favorite topic of everyone is talking about is about the shifting of the cultural gravity. So last night I was reading everything. The first thing is, went right into my face is Global South. Yes, Global South. And you are the part of the Global South. So, you know, we were always talking about, you know, architecture from the early 20th century. It’s always the Modernism, the postmodernism and all that. Now we have African modernism, which I believe after reading it, you are part of the group of people who define what is African modernism. And you are not following the west, but creating, negotiating at your own terms. Tell me more about it.

Tosin Oshinowo: I would say, I would say that. So African modernism and the way some people have defined it is almost considered as post war. And that was a period of nationalism where a lot of countries were gaining independence. And the style that was created, which was a unifying canvas across many different ethnic groups, across, you know, the continent, I think I would say I’m a generation of, you could maybe say postmodernism or neo modernism. So, with a generation probably from the 90s onwards, who are deciding to do things very consciously, differently, not taking modernism as an imported narrative, but taking it as a presence, using material of place kind of expression. So, it is very distinct from that early modernism that also emphasized passive systems of cooling and natural light, which we still push for today, but we’re very much basing it in the entirety of building services, you know, working with both natural and artificial lighting or building buildings for contemporary settings, for very modern, present-day use.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So, what is the difference between the African modernism versus modernism from the West? What are you refining to talk about this, this African?

Tosin Oshinowo: I would say that we do not necessarily emphasize only the use of concrete, which modernism really did.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, completely.

Tosin Oshinowo: So, we’re also incorporating materials of place, which is important, but also looking for nuances of identity that we can place into the building so that you see that.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Cultural identity?

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes, cultural identity very present, maybe through motif, maybe through, you know, iconography, maybe through materiality, but very much making it feel that it is of place, which you did not necessarily have with modernism. Modernism was a. Was a style that was perpetuated across the global south, from, you know, Thailand, Indonesia to Nigeria to Ghana. We have the same types of buildings that were replicated and all over the world. All over the world.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And I realized, especially after second World War, exactly when they want to mass manufacture, rebuilding, because it was all bombed. So everywhere looks the same. Everywhere looks China, everywhere looks the same.

Tosin Oshinowo: So how do we take those lessons from that technology and material and hybrid it today with materials of tradition in these places and then make it very consciously about the cultural use of space. And not an important style, an important kind of appropriation of this is how a living room should be, or this is the way the room should be set, but very much rooted in culture. So, it really is, you know, of this region. So that if you replicate it somewhere else it could look nice, but it’s not responding to the needs of the people and the culture.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So, do you, do you believe or do you see this African modernism is being accepted globally or are you thinking that in the global sense they haven’t catch up yet because you know, the Western domination of culture, not just architecture culture in all ways. I mean, it seems that now it’s shifting that we are moving out from this Western domination and each of the global south countries are defining something different.

Tosin Oshinowo: Well, I think first of all they don’t have a choice. They have to listen, wait. We are definitely here, we’ve always been here, but we are coming very strongly with our own voice. I believe a world confident. Yes, we’re very confident. I believe the world should be plural, it should not be singular. Yes, they’ve had their heyday and there is a place for the influence of Western design, Western technology.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): We are educated in the west.

Tosin Oshinowo: But, I think there is a renaissance of an understanding of identity and a celebration of who we are. And that is coming across in all aspects of our creative economies and specifically also in architecture. And we’re already seeing the absorbance or celebration in other industries. We see it in music, we see it in fashion, we see it in film, we see it in art. And we’re going to begin to see it also in architecture now the world that has allowed the west to dominate architecture, and not just architecture in their regions, but to replicate in other places. I think it will always be there. But you will also see architects from other regions also getting opportunities to work in other places. And I think that that’s important. As long as you’re adding creative value that can be appropriate or adapted, I think there is merit for it.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Don’t you believe that? One thing that we adopt all these so called fast, I mean mass manufacturing buildings of this modernist building is because that people us, because we’re a colony or because we are educated. And in the west, we didn’t have the confidence to be ourselves. And now with the younger generation returning, I mean everybody is thinking it’s completely a different mindset because we don’t want to follow anymore.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): We want to establish who we are and what we are.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): As completely different sense of living.

Tosin Oshinowo: It’s a very different sense of living. I mean I grew up in a world where even religion wise we were taught, you know, Christianity or Islam, these were both, they’re both Abrahamic religions, they’re both religions that came to influence us. As I’m from, I’m a Yoruba girl. I’m from the Yoruba ethnic group. Now you get a lot more people who are very interested in European mythology.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes.

Tosin Oshinowo: Why are these lessons not taught?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I was trying to buy a book about. About Yoruba spirituality. Because, student, I need to read this in order to understand really, you know, to have a deeper understanding of African art or African culture.

Tosin Oshinowo: It’s so important. And sadly, the easiest way to brainwash any society is to teach children a different religion. It’s the fastest way to. And unfortunately, that’s what happened in a lot of Africa. And now there is a consciousness that, okay, these can live side by side. Why did this part of our identity and culture have to be erased for us to embrace what it meant to be modern? It doesn’t, you know, and this world of plurality I’m really passionate about. I’m very happy to be part of this evolving movement. And to think that there’s a generation who will come, who. This will become their normal. What we see as a transition will be there.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absolutely. Because I think it’s confidence. Yes. I think your. I mean, this generation.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I mean with the confidence, with the self belief and also you have experience in the west and coming back with a completely open mind and see what is lacking.

Tosin Oshinowo: And that duality is also very important.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah. Because who wants to have the same thing all over the world? I mean, this homogenous. I mean, being homogeneous is horrible.

Tosin Oshinowo: We have to put a pause on that.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So now, next question. Emerging African. Everything we talk about Africa, we talk about emerging African art, emerging. This emergence. Do you think it’s still emergence or do you think that it is center and that. And it’s just that the global world hasn’t caught up.

Tosin Oshinowo: I think the world just hasn’t caught up. It’s a bit annoying to use the word emerging. It’s like saying you’re forever young, which is not a bad thing either. But. But no, it’s. We have some masters who’ve been here. There’s an exhibition now on at the Tate. What’s it? Nigerian.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, Nigerian modernism.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah.

Tosin Oshinowo: These are masters. They’re in there. If they’re still quite a few are no longer with us, those that are in their 90s, these are pioneers. These were radicals in their day. They’re not emerging, they’re established and they should be celebrated accordingly. And it’s really nice that an exhibition like that is put on so that they do get their flowers in an international sense.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So if a historian is going to say that this Decade is marking the shift to global South. What do you think about what role do you think that African architecture would play? Play a catalyst or participants?

Tosin Oshinowo: You know what’s really interesting with architecture? Architecture is, is one of the creative industries that sees these transitions the slowest just because everything takes so much longer. On average, every building project will take about three years. And so, these movements and transitions that you see in other industries have long happened before we see it in architecture. I think our response will very much be a different way of doing things. And so much of architecture is also influenced by the economic strength of any country. You don’t build tall if your, your economy isn’t strong.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And that just of course, the first thing is economy. Yes, building costs a lot of money.

Tosin Oshinowo: It costs a lot of money. And Africa’s economies, I don’t think, I think the whole of Africa’s economy makes up about 3% of the global economy. So, it is so, so, so small. It is so small. And so, our responses are also gentler. You know, the scale at which we build is very different, but I believe the scale at which we build is also very sensitive. It’s very much based on a one-on-one human kind of interaction. And it has a very important place in the world, and it has a very important place in society. And I think what’s important is that when we think about African architecture, we should not relate it in a direct comparison with Western because they’re working at very different entities.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Right.

Tosin Oshinowo: And we must understand and celebrate it for what it is and how it responds. Because we still are living in cities, we’re still living in denser spaces. I mean, think about this. When you think about Lagos with 22 plus people with A, with, with a global economy, that the whole continent is only 3%. How are we responding to accommodate all these people in this space? It does make you think that wow, they must be doing something interesting. And when you look at this in relation to how much the continent contributes to global carbon as very small, that also scales and shows that the whole continent is not contributing more than 4% of global carbon, 3% of the world’s economy, but has 17% of the world’s economy people today and is the fastest developing population in the world. Yes, there’s something very interesting happening here. How will architecture respond to this growing number of people without the economy that builds at a higher scale? And so, there’s going to be in the next 20, 30 years, it’s going to be very interesting to see how we actually do that. I don’t have the answers to hand. But it’s going to be a very interesting region to observe.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But I think just thinking about Nigeria, the resources and in Nigeria is already a basic form development and you have all those foreign powers coming in trying to grab everything and of the resources. I’m really surprised that Lagos is not even affluent, more affluent than today.

Tosin Oshinowo: Oh, but Lagos is a very affluent.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I know, but it’s not, you know, I thought that it will be, you know, tall buildings everywhere because you know.

Tosin Oshinowo: You’re not seeing it.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Every city is, you know, you’re building every architecture everywhere. Right. All those others. What is great about it is, I mean every city that I’ve been to, they always invite foreign architect to try to, you know, participate to build. To build the city here. No, not so many. And you still, you know, you’re still developing your own language, your architectural language, which is amazing because I saw, I was in China, I saw the same sort of acceleration in Shanghai starting from early 90s. You know, you have to speed. You have the instability and you have this ambition. Then the whole city developed. But none of the architecture was really. I mean big architecture is always from the foreign. It’s really very few Chinese architect who built this language. It’s only now that we have that.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yeah, well, I think the reason why you don’t see it yet is because we’re not building at that scale. But we do have and Lagos has certain areas of very strong intended development. We have Eko Atlantic which is by the bar beach, which has high rise buildings developed. Right. Most of those buildings will not be done by Nigerian architects. We do have areas in the Lekki free zone that is also planned for development that I think will probably be more hybrid.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Do you think that Lagos would experience the same, I mean the comparable phase like Shanghai and that it will be within, you know, decades. It will become a vibrant city with all the different architecture.

Tosin Oshinowo: I suspect that we will probably still have a very strong emphasis on sprawl. The scale of buildings that will probably have the foreign architects will be the high-density buildings. Very few people have experience working that of kind capacity. And unless the state makes a conscious effort to ensure that these are done with partnership with local firms, there will not be that knowledge transfer to allow local practitioners to be able to also work in that capacity.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): If you have a city that filled with Afro more, it would be fantastic.

Tosin Oshinowo: I mean this is what happened in Singapore. When Singapore was developing, there was a very strong emphasis that they would have to be a hybrid between local Practitioners and foreign practitioners, because you need that knowledge transfer. If you haven’t designed a 70 story building, no one’s going to give that.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Of course.

Tosin Oshinowo: Do you know what I mean?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Of course.

Tosin Oshinowo: Unless you’ve partnered or collaborated and been part of that process.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And then if you have a 70 story building, you have to have a very good construction team.

Tosin Oshinowo: Exactly. So, there are many things that need to be put in place. There’s a lot that Lagos still needs to do. There is the train link that is being done now. There’s, I think, two lines. One is completed, one is ongoing and another one is in the pipeworks until we get full power. You know, there’s certain things to really make a city function in the way we see international, you know, cities. Lagos is a, is a metropolitan city or global city, but we don’t have the same infrastructure on those scales. There are so many elements that still need to be put in place.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You love Lagos.

Tosin Oshinowo: I do.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Please give me this. You know, the historical style of architecture in Lagos.

Tosin Oshinowo: This is a really interesting question. Lagos has a lot of different styles and in a way, it can come across as a little bit confusing. So, Lagos was a colony in the 1800s, and then obviously at the abolishment of the slave trade, you had a lot of former slaves or people who were displaced but never became slaves who came in from Freetown. So, these are the slaves that the British would have seized the slave ship, they would have dumped the contents in Freetown. So, they never really became slave, but they were educated and they became very well to do. They actually became the first set of aristocratic Africans. Yeah, they were doctors, lawyers, they were traders. And with them you have a bunch of people who. So, these people are called the Saros. So, these are the Sierra Leonean returnees. And then you have another group of people who came from Brazil.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes, because Brazil. Because I went to Salvador.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And Salvador is the place where they, in order slave, they arrive at Salvador place first.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And then I went. And even the food was amazing.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes. And so, you have the people who came from there, they’re called the Agudas and they brought the style from Brazil. But the style from Brazil is actually not Brazilian, it’s Portuguese.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Oh yes, of course, of course.

Tosin Oshinowo: And so, you have areas of Lagos Island which is, which was then the place where you had the large residence of these returned people. And they brought these beautiful styles of architecture with the dormer windows and the decorations done in motifs along the doors and the columns and the shutter windows. And this style of architecture started to be seen as associated with affluent, because these people were wealthy, educated, they had money. There’s a very famous Brazilian retornia Gouda called Da Costa, Da Silva. They were so wealthy that they used to send their dry cleaning to London.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): What?

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes, that’s how wealthy they were. And so, this became. This was seen as a very beautiful style to associate with affluence. And so, across the western region of Nigeria, this style started to populate. So, this Brazilian, this Portuguese through Brazilian style that came to Nigeria. But it wasn’t only Nigeria, it was also another part of West Africa. So, this style was very, very present. And then obviously we had the colonialist era and the colonial style of architecture that came. The early style of buildings that the colonial office would have done, which was referential to a lot of institutional buildings in the uk. So, for example, I think the Governor’s house looks very much like a building that would have been in Temple in London. And then after that, you then get into the full modernism where you had before independence, there was still a big influx in investment from. To the British, the British colonies. And that brought the first generation of modernist architects.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Right.

Tosin Oshinowo: And then post independence, that when you had a big influence, you then had a big scaling of that, not just from institutional buildings, but people who could afford private residences or office buildings, so on and so forth. And then post that, you then get into like the 80s, which was like a downtime, because economically things are very challenged. But in the 90s you get another military government. Yes. In the 90s you get another wave of influence which you see in certain parts of Victoria island, where you have a style of architecture which is influenced particularly from the people who came from Lebanon and the architecture from Lebanon. So, you have a lot of glass, granite, very strong modernist buildings, but they’re not the same as the tropical modern buildings that came in the 50s and 60s. And then you get the next generation from the naughties onwards, which I’m part of, which is now the returning. The returning who has had a Western education, who have been exposed and I think also the age of social media, where you start to see buildings and other parts of the the world that you’re not trying to necessarily replicate as is, but look for how you can create interesting nuances that can work in place. And so now we have this thing that people do so often, which is now, which is a lot of white and gray buildings, strong contrasting colors, very strong modernist, almost an influence from the Bauhaus. But people don’t realize that it’s from the Bauhaus that they’re taking that. But that’s something that you see a lot now. So, it’s interesting when you start to see this.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah. Because if you see architecture, the buildings, the construction and everything, it actually shows you the history.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Of the country, of the city.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yes. Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Bravo. Love it.

Tosin Oshinowo: Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Thank you so much Tosin for joining me today. And because of you, I’m going to visit Lagos Mall.

Tosin Oshinowo: Thank you so much for having me.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Thank you.