Olajumoke Adenowo. Neo Heritage: Defining Contemporary African Architecture (HC) (2023)

Olajumoke Adenowo is a renowned Nigerian architect who heads her own architecture and interior design firm, AD Consulting, which she founded in Lagos in 1994. A gifted student, at the age of 14 she enrolled at Obafemi Awolowo University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Honours Architecture) by the age of 19, and then completed her Master of Science (Architecture) in 1991.

Adenowo's intense interest in architecture and design emerged from her visits to Europe and throughout the world with her parents as a young child, as well as while living on campus at the Obafemi Awolowo University in the ancient city of Ile-Ife in Osun State, Nigeria, where her parents were professors. Having adopted a global perspective from an early age but firmly rooted in her heritage throughout her career, she is uniquely positioned to directly cultivate the kind of best practice African contemporary architecture that leverages ancestral knowledge and methods from within the continent itself.

Adenowo's notion of neo-heritage envisions a new cultural confidence emerging in Africa that can contribute to international solutions for sustainability, urban planning, and environmental and residential design.