Lesley Lokko, the Ghanaian-Scottish architect, will curate the world’s most important architecture exhibition in Venice in 2023. Why this is a good choice.
The direction of the next Architecture Biennale in Venice has been determined. The Ghanaian-Scottish architect Lesley Lokko will curate the world’s most important architecture exhibition in 2023. As the “representative of the youngest continent in the world”, Lokko thanked the Biennale for this “bold and courageous decision”. What at first glance sounds a little self-indulgent is certainly justified.
Because the architectural world and especially the part of it that is in the limelight has a problem of discrimination. The stars of the scene are almost all white, male and from the west. The Venice Architecture Biennale is no exception. Since its first edition in 1980, women have curated the Biennale only twice: in 2010 the Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima and in 2018 the Irish architects Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. The Biennale has never been under African management.
That the architecture industry also has a problem with racism, was the theme of Lokko himselfwhen she quit her job as dean of the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture in New York after less than ten months in the fall of 2020 – because of the “lack of respect and empathy for blacks, especially black women”.
Lokko has founded two architecture faculties in Johannesburg and in Accra, Ghana. She has taught at a variety of prestigious universities in the USA, Europe, Australia and Africa. And has also written several bestselling novels. A more diverse view of architecture, its influences, power centers and developments can therefore be assumed.