In Conversation: Mariam Issoufou with Professor Lesley Lokko OBE

Design & Crafts Council Ireland, in collaboration with the Irish Architecture Foundation, present an evening with Mariam Issoufou in conversation with Professor Lesley Lokko OBE, two leading architects shaping the global landscape.

Special Guests Include:

• Mariam Issoufou – Founder of Mariam Issoufou Architects
• Professor Lesley Lokko OBE – Director of African Futures Institute
• Lars Courage – Dutch Designer – Architect & Engineer
• Cian Deegan – Founding Director of TAKA Architects

Mariam Issoufou is an architect from Niger. She studied architecture at the University of Washington. In 2014, she founded Atelier Masōmī, an architecture and research practice that tackles public, cultural, residential, commercial and urban design projects. The firm is headquartered in Niamey, with a design studio in New York. Issoufou believes that architects have an important role to play in creating spaces that elevate, give dignity, and provide people with a better quality of life.

The firm’s completed projects include the Hikma Community Complex, a library and mosque complex, which won two Global Lafarge Holcim Awards for sustainable architecture. Other works include the Niamey 2000 Housing project, a response to Niger’s housing crisis which was shortlisted for the 2022 Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Upcoming projects include the Yantala Office building in Niger, the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development in Liberia.

Issoufou is a professor of Architecture Heritage and Sustainability at ETH Zurich. She previously occupied academic roles as adjunct associate professor of Urban Studies at Brown University and as the 2021 Aga Khan critic at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Issoufou is a 2019 Laureate of the Prince Claus Award. She was named as one of 15 Creative Women of Our Time by the New York Times. The firm has been on the AD100 list since 2021.

Professor Lesley Lokko OBE is the Founder and Chair of the African Futures Institute (AFI) headquartered in Accra, Ghana and Director of the Nomadic African Studio; an annual winter/summer school located in different cities around the African continent. She holds a BSc (Arch), MArch and PhD in Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. She was the Founder and Director of the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg (2014—2019). She is the Editor of White Papers, Black Marks: Race, Culture, Architecture (University of Minnesota Press, 2000) and the Editor-in-Chief of FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture.

She is currently a Visiting Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture and at University College Dublin. She was appointed Curator of the 18th International Architecture Biennale at La Biennale di Venezia in 2023. In January 2023, she was awarded an OBE ‘for services to architecture and education’ in King Charles’ New Year’s Honours List. In January 2024, she was awarded the UK’s highest architecture award, the RIBA Royal Gold Medal. In April 2024, she was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people in the annual TIME100 list.

Event Schedule

• 5.30pm  Doors Open

• 6.00pm – 7.00pm
  Design Diplomacy

  Collaboration Country: Netherlands

  Dutch Designer: Lars Courage
  Irish Designer: Cian Deegan

• 7.00pm – 7.10pm  Interval

• 7.10pm – 8.10pm
  Headline Event – Collaboration with Irish Architecture Foundation

  Mariam Issoufou in conversation with Lesley Lokko

EVENING EVENT

Design Diplomacy.

Design Diplomacy is a concept developed by Helsinki Design Week, and produces unique, intimate conversations between two creative minds.

During the event the international design professional meets an Irish designer over a card game of questions.

Visitors will have an opportunity to experience carefully curated and unique conversations as in each situation the interlocutors meet for the first time.

Lars Courage draws inspiration from industries like automobiles and fashion, integrating their forms and materials into his architectural work. Passionate about metal, particularly steel, glass, and colors—especially in prepainted metal—his firm, Courage Architecten, founded in 2001, focuses on simple, robust buildings and has helped popularize prepainted metal in both urban and rural architecture.

Cian Deegan is a founding director of TAKA Architects.

TAKA Architects was founded in 2008, by Alice Casey and Cian Deegan and is based in Dublin, Ireland.

The practice works on a wide range of project types including single family homes, public buildings, sports and educational projects and social housing.

The practice has received national and international awards; including being shortlisted for the 2017 Mies Van der Rohe European Union Prize, finalist in the BD Young Architect of the Year Award and Royal Academy Dorfman Award, and winner of the AR Peter Davey Prize for Emerging Architecture 2019.

TAKA has exhibited in the Venice Architecture Biennale several times: in 2008 as an exhibitor in the Irish National Pavilion, in 2010 as co-curator of the Irish National Pavilion, and in 2018 as an exhibitor in the Central Pavilion.

Alice & Cian have taught Architecture at Queens University Belfast, University College Dublin, and currently at the Dublin School of Architecture (TU Dublin). They have both been recipients of the EU Marie Curie/ Adapt-R research fellowship and completed PhDs by Practice with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in 2017. TAKA have delivered lectures on their work internationally including a keynote lecture at Yale University in 2024.

Special Thanks To

Additional Information

• Advanced booking required

• Suitable for all audiences

• Wheelchair accessible