After a lifetime of campaigning for racial and gender equality and diversity in architecture, around 400 people gathered at the RIBA headquarters on Portland Place last night to celebrate the inspirational achievements and character of the amazing woman architect, educator and author, Professor Lesley Lokko, who was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal 2024.

The truly joyful event brought together a community of architects, teachers, friends, family, collaborators, and diplomats of all genders, races, ethnicities, and ages in one room to recognise how much one woman can do to change the profession and practice of architecture.

Lokko is a female force of change. Born in Dundee and raised in Ghana, she is a role model and mentor to so many because of her bottom-up approach to changing architectural education and knowledge to change the face of architectural practice.

Her long list of awards and accomplishment are telling of her commitment to make space for everyone to feel welcome into a life in architecture, valuing the multitude of ways that can happen including and beyond building buildings.

She received the RIBA Annie Spink Award for Education (2020) and the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize (2021). She established the game-changing Graduate School of Architecture (GSA) at the University of Johannesburg, then the African Futures Institute in Accra, Ghana and as curator at the Venice Biennale 2023, she brought Africa into the limelight of the world stage of architecture.

Then there are her books, both fiction and nonfiction. My favourite is White Papers, Black Marks: Architecture, Race, Culture, published in 2000- almost a quarter of a decade ago.

Last night, Lokko gave a speech that took our breath away. She was visibly humbled to receive the RIBA Gold Medal and thanked all those who had helped get her to where she is today and all those she had had the privilege to help form and nurture. She made us all laugh that her relationship with architecture has been the longest she’s had and that during the times when she thought they should break up, they somehow managed to reconcile to get back together.

Lokko unquestionably deserves this award, but as she explained over drinks later, she’s been saying and doing the same thing all her life, so she was grateful that she was now being recognised for that work. Lokko’s work has helped reduce the hierarchies of knowledge and privilege within architecture, fought against exclusion of black and minority groups, so that everyone feels welcome to enable to grow into the architect they want to be.

Thanks to Muyiwa Oki, Robbie Turner, the RIBA team and all those who organised and contributed to making the ceremony such a jubilant, lively celebration.

The WIA Committee and all its members congratulate Lesley on this amazing accomplishment.

We hope more great women architects join her in receiving this accolade in the future.

Igea Troiani

WIA UK Chair