- Artist Merch
Advanced Variable products with swatches
Products variations colors and images without any additional plugins.
- Culture Shop Merch
- Other Product
- Features
Meet Tosin Oshinowo: The Architect Redefining African Design
Outside her architectural work, Tosin is the founder of Ilé-Ilà (“House of Lines”), a luxury furniture line that merges traditional Yoruba craftsmanship with modern design. Using locally sourced materials like Nigerian teak and Aso-Oke fabric, her furniture is a vibrant celebration of heritage and innovation. Each piece tells a story — of history, culture, and pride in African excellence.
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Tosin Oshinowo is a Lagos-based architect, designer, and curator known for her bold approach to contemporary African design. With a practice rooted in sustainability, cultural relevance, and Afro-minimalism, she is reshaping how the world sees African architecture — not as a relic of the past, but as a blueprint for the future.
Tosin is the founder of cmDesign Atelier (cmD+A), the architecture firm behind several iconic buildings in Nigeria, including the Maryland Mall in Lagos, famously known as the “Big Black Box.” Her aesthetic is clean, functional, and forward-thinking, blending modernist principles with indigenous influences to respond to Africa’s evolving urban challenges.
Born in Nigeria and trained in the UK, Tosin holds degrees from Kingston College, the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL, and a Master’s in Urban Design from the Architectural Association in London. After working in international practices like Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), she returned to Nigeria with a mission: to create spaces that feel authentically African, not imported.
-
- Architecture shoot of a agaja beach house at ilashe, Lagos.
In 2023, she gained global acclaim as the curator of the 2nd Lagos Biennial and the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, where her work centered around themes of post-colonial design, resilience, and rethinking the built environment in the Global South. Her curatorial voice is as bold as her buildings — grounded in research, yet unapologetically African.
Through her work, Tosin Oshinowo is challenging the world’s perception of African cities, design, and aesthetics. She is part of a generation of creators proving that Africa is not only participating in the global design conversation — it’s leading it.
She currently lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria, where she continues to design for the present, build for the future, and draw inspiration from the past.