Mariam Issoufou and Lesley Lokko in conversation

During the recent Irish Design Week, Mariam Issoufou and Lesley Lokko, founder and director of the African Futures Institute, sat down for an in-depth conversation titled Imagination for Opportunity. In her opening address, Lokko stressed that if we cannot imagine a better world, we will not be able to build one. Lokko added: “Inside every architect is a desire to make things better, at the scale of a detail joining wood and stone or at the scale of the environment.” In their conversation, Issoufou talked about some of her projects and the process that informs her architectural practice: “The question that we asked ourselves was: How do we design something that can be built naturally and effortlessly, by the skills that are available on the ground? This went on to be the way that I approach my practice in general. It’s informed research that happens beforehand to identify the opportunities that are present on the ground, the kinds of materials, skills and know-how — whether ancestral or new — in order to make a project.”