News and articles

A first-person record of a career in motion: exhibitions, talks, study, and the buildings along the way.

2026

4 July 2026
Technical Precision Meets Climate Responsibility: The Work of Oluyemisi Awoniyi
The Guardian
The Guardian published a piece on the work, Technical Precision Meets Climate Responsibility, written by Priscilla Iwedike. It followed my exhibition at the Lagos Architects Forum in May 2026, and the drawings and climate-led proposals I showed with the Nigerian Institute of Architects, Lagos Chapter. The piece looks at the drawings I exhibited, and at a way of working that starts with climate, durable materials, and careful coordination. Those drawings come from years of civic buildings, neighbourhood health centres, family homes, and halls that hold a community together. It is one of the first times the path has been written down by someone else, in public.
Read the article
May 2026
Lagos Architects Forum
In May 2026 five of my projects were selected for exhibition at the Lagos Architects Forum, organised by the Nigerian Institute of Architects, Lagos Chapter. The boards showed how traditional African materials and vernacular ways of building can sit inside contemporary work, and still meet the brief, the climate, and the way a room needs to feel. I stood with the drawings and talked them through with architects, academics, and policymakers. The Guardian wrote about that exhibition two months later. The show itself was the conversation.
View on Instagram
April 2026
A community centre for Senegal
In April 2026 I led a five-person team into the Kaira Looro architecture competition, for a community centre in southern Senegal. The plan is a cluster of pavilions around a courtyard, with an assembly hall, a classroom and library, and a craft workshop. The baobab, a tree people gather under, was the idea that held it together. We drew stabilised earth walls, a ventilated thatch roof, timber louvres, and woven panels, chosen for the climate and for the craft already there. It is an ideas competition, submitted rather than built, and it is part of how I keep testing what I believe about gathering, material, and place.
February 2026
Surface Design Show, London
In February 2026 I was selected to exhibit at the Surface Design Show in London, the materials exhibition held with the Royal Institute of British Architects as host partner. I showed work that puts African vernacular principles beside contemporary sustainable materials, and I stood with the boards and answered questions from architects, designers, and suppliers. It was one of the first times I set that work down in a UK room, in public. The conversation was as useful as the selection.
View on Instagram
2026
Building a personal brand in public
I am no longer waiting for a practice name to define the work. This site is a place to walk with me as I grow as a designer, a voice, and a professional finding her footing in the UK. I have spent years designing and delivering the places people actually live with, from civic buildings and neighbourhood health centres to family homes and halls. Architecture remains a chapter I am proud of. It is not the whole book, and I am still walking it in public. The notes on this site are that walk, still unfinished, one place and one lesson at a time.
Read the biography

2025

June 2025
National Energy Foundation
Since June 2025 I have been a Project Officer at the National Energy Foundation in Milton Keynes. The days are retrofit, energy advice for households, and the records that keep that help honest. I also help the organisation prepare for ISO 14001, writing the policies and checking where practice still falls short of the standard. In March 2026 I completed ISO 14001 environmental management training of my own. It is a different kind of drawing from a plan: carbon, a household, and how a home actually uses energy. It is the chapter I am in now.
Get in touch
2025
Learning a new planning culture
Moving my focus to the United Kingdom has meant learning a new planning culture while carrying forward years of project delivery across Nigeria. That learning started before I arrived. In 2020, working from Nigeria, I designed a single-storey rear extension at Grebe Close in London, and the planning application was granted. The work was light, layout and the connection to the garden, written in the rules of a place I had not yet lived in. Since moving, I have spent a summer with Rider Levett Bucknall in Birmingham, on schedules, measured surveys and cost plans, and supported alteration works to a Grade II listed church and a mixed-use scheme with its own energy network at Giws Associates in Essex. The extension was a small building, and a large lesson.
See the project

2024

2024
A distinction in Northampton
In 2024 I graduated with distinction from the MSc in BIM-enabled sustainable buildings at the University of Northampton. The dissertation asked how commercial buildings can cut carbon, using energy modelling in IES and life-cycle assessment in One Click LCA, and how that evidence can enter a design decision early. The question had started earlier, in a talk I gave for the Green Building Council of Nigeria. The degree gave me a language for performance, not only for form. It is the study I carried into the work I do now.
January 2024
A Net Zero conversation
In January 2024 the Green Building Council of Nigeria invited me to join a webinar called A Net Zero Carbon Roadmap for the Nigerian Built Environment. I spoke on the critical role of data in decarbonising that built environment: how BIM, performance analysis, and plain evidence can support a lower-carbon construction sector. The council later published the talk on YouTube in its Knowledge Series. The same webinar was listed by the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, a partnership hosted by the UN Environment Programme, which named me as a speaker. From 2022 to 2024 I was also on the research team, helping build the Nigeria Built Environment Carbon Database and the briefs that carried that work. If we cannot count the carbon, we cannot take responsibility for it.
Watch the talk

2022

2022
Interiors that feel like home
For a duplex in Ibadan I developed a design proposal, a reminder that good spaces are as much about how they feel as how they are drawn. Material, light and procurement had to hold together as one decision, not a sequence of afterthoughts. The proposal treated the finishes, the daylight and the way a household moves as one conversation. A house is finished when someone can live in it well, and a proposal is where that thinking starts.
See the project

2026

4 July 2026

Technical Precision Meets Climate Responsibility: The Work of Oluyemisi Awoniyi

The Guardian

The Guardian published a piece on the work, Technical Precision Meets Climate Responsibility, written by Priscilla Iwedike. It followed my exhibition at the Lagos Architects Forum in May 2026, and the drawings and climate-led proposals I showed with the Nigerian Institute of Architects, Lagos Chapter. The piece looks at the drawings I exhibited, and at a way of working that starts with climate, durable materials, and careful coordination. Those drawings come from years of civic buildings, neighbourhood health centres, family homes, and halls that hold a community together. It is one of the first times the path has been written down by someone else, in public.

Read the article

May 2026

Lagos Architects Forum

In May 2026 five of my projects were selected for exhibition at the Lagos Architects Forum, organised by the Nigerian Institute of Architects, Lagos Chapter. The boards showed how traditional African materials and vernacular ways of building can sit inside contemporary work, and still meet the brief, the climate, and the way a room needs to feel. I stood with the drawings and talked them through with architects, academics, and policymakers. The Guardian wrote about that exhibition two months later. The show itself was the conversation.

View on Instagram

April 2026

A community centre for Senegal

In April 2026 I led a five-person team into the Kaira Looro architecture competition, for a community centre in southern Senegal. The plan is a cluster of pavilions around a courtyard, with an assembly hall, a classroom and library, and a craft workshop. The baobab, a tree people gather under, was the idea that held it together. We drew stabilised earth walls, a ventilated thatch roof, timber louvres, and woven panels, chosen for the climate and for the craft already there. It is an ideas competition, submitted rather than built, and it is part of how I keep testing what I believe about gathering, material, and place.

February 2026

Surface Design Show, London

In February 2026 I was selected to exhibit at the Surface Design Show in London, the materials exhibition held with the Royal Institute of British Architects as host partner. I showed work that puts African vernacular principles beside contemporary sustainable materials, and I stood with the boards and answered questions from architects, designers, and suppliers. It was one of the first times I set that work down in a UK room, in public. The conversation was as useful as the selection.

View on Instagram

2026

Building a personal brand in public

I am no longer waiting for a practice name to define the work. This site is a place to walk with me as I grow as a designer, a voice, and a professional finding her footing in the UK. I have spent years designing and delivering the places people actually live with, from civic buildings and neighbourhood health centres to family homes and halls. Architecture remains a chapter I am proud of. It is not the whole book, and I am still walking it in public. The notes on this site are that walk, still unfinished, one place and one lesson at a time.

Read the biography

2025

June 2025

National Energy Foundation

Since June 2025 I have been a Project Officer at the National Energy Foundation in Milton Keynes. The days are retrofit, energy advice for households, and the records that keep that help honest. I also help the organisation prepare for ISO 14001, writing the policies and checking where practice still falls short of the standard. In March 2026 I completed ISO 14001 environmental management training of my own. It is a different kind of drawing from a plan: carbon, a household, and how a home actually uses energy. It is the chapter I am in now.

Get in touch

2025

Learning a new planning culture

Moving my focus to the United Kingdom has meant learning a new planning culture while carrying forward years of project delivery across Nigeria. That learning started before I arrived. In 2020, working from Nigeria, I designed a single-storey rear extension at Grebe Close in London, and the planning application was granted. The work was light, layout and the connection to the garden, written in the rules of a place I had not yet lived in. Since moving, I have spent a summer with Rider Levett Bucknall in Birmingham, on schedules, measured surveys and cost plans, and supported alteration works to a Grade II listed church and a mixed-use scheme with its own energy network at Giws Associates in Essex. The extension was a small building, and a large lesson.

See the project

2024

A distinction in Northampton

In 2024 I graduated with distinction from the MSc in BIM-enabled sustainable buildings at the University of Northampton. The dissertation asked how commercial buildings can cut carbon, using energy modelling in IES and life-cycle assessment in One Click LCA, and how that evidence can enter a design decision early. The question had started earlier, in a talk I gave for the Green Building Council of Nigeria. The degree gave me a language for performance, not only for form. It is the study I carried into the work I do now.

January 2024

A Net Zero conversation

In January 2024 the Green Building Council of Nigeria invited me to join a webinar called A Net Zero Carbon Roadmap for the Nigerian Built Environment. I spoke on the critical role of data in decarbonising that built environment: how BIM, performance analysis, and plain evidence can support a lower-carbon construction sector. The council later published the talk on YouTube in its Knowledge Series. The same webinar was listed by the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, a partnership hosted by the UN Environment Programme, which named me as a speaker. From 2022 to 2024 I was also on the research team, helping build the Nigeria Built Environment Carbon Database and the briefs that carried that work. If we cannot count the carbon, we cannot take responsibility for it.

Watch the talk

2022

Interiors that feel like home

For a duplex in Ibadan I developed a design proposal, a reminder that good spaces are as much about how they feel as how they are drawn. Material, light and procurement had to hold together as one decision, not a sequence of afterthoughts. The proposal treated the finishes, the daylight and the way a household moves as one conversation. A house is finished when someone can live in it well, and a proposal is where that thinking starts.

See the project