Africa at London Design Week

London Design Week is one of the most influential design events in the world. Held annually across London, it brings together thousands of designers, architects, developers, collectors, and creative thinkers from across the globe. This year’s edition featured panel discussions, studio open days, exhibitions, and networking events spread across the city, drawing participants from Europe, […]

London Design Week is one of the most influential design events in the world. Held annually across London, it brings together thousands of designers, architects, developers, collectors, and creative thinkers from across the globe. This year’s edition featured panel discussions, studio open days, exhibitions, and networking events spread across the city, drawing participants from Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. The event has built a reputation over decades as a barometer for where global design is heading  and who is leading it there.

I attended as a Nigerian interior designer. I sat in panels, walked through exhibitions, and had conversations with some of the most respected names in the industry. And what I found was not a one-way lesson in how Africans should design. It was a two-way conversation — one that Africa, and Nigeria specifically, is more than ready to lead. 

One of the most talked-about themes at this year’s event was sensory-led design, the idea that a space should be felt before it is ever seen. Designers spoke about anchoring every project decision to an emotional truth: how light moves, how materials feel under the hand, how sound is carried or absorbed. The best spaces, they argued, are ones people instinctively respond to the moment they walk in, without needing to be told why.

Franky Rousell, Founder and CEO of Jolie, a London studio celebrated for its sensory-led approach, described this as defining the emotional rhythm of a project from the very beginning and protecting that intention all the way through to completion. It is a philosophy that has earned Jolie a reputation as one of the most thoughtful design practices in the UK.

What the UK design industry does exceptionally well is create structures, platforms, and conversations that elevate creative practice globally. London Design Week itself is a testament to that, a city that has built an ecosystem where designers from every corner of the world can come, contribute, and be heard. That openness, that infrastructure, that culture of taking design seriously as both art and industry, is something Nigeria can genuinely learn from and aspire to build at home.

But the exchange does not stop there. Because what the global design world is now celebrating as innovation, Africa has practised intuitively for centuries.

African design has always been sensory-led. Our materials carry memory. Our patterns carry generations of meaning. Our spaces have always been designed to be felt — through the weight of hand-carved wood, the coolness of terracotta, the rhythm of hand-woven textile. Nigerian designers, architects, and creative practitioners are producing work of genuine world-class standard, work that does not imitate Western aesthetics but converses with them as equals.

From Lagos to Abuja, a new generation of practitioners is drawing on indigenous materials, traditional craftsmanship, and deep cultural knowledge to create spaces that are both locally rooted and globally relevant. The warmth of natural materials. The emotional power of handmade objects. The dignity of a space that tells the story of the people who inhabit it. These are not emerging ideas in Nigerian design. They are its foundation.

The question is no longer whether Africa belongs in the global design conversation. We are already in it. The question is how loudly we choose to speak.

There is one more conversation that London Design Week sparked for me , and it is one I believe is even more urgent at home than abroad.

In the UK, there is a growing movement around accessible design — the idea that good design should not be the exclusive preserve of the wealthy. Architects and designers are increasingly asking: how do we create beautiful, thoughtful, well-designed spaces for everyone, not just those who can afford premium fees?

In Nigeria, this question is rarely asked loudly enough. Interior design is still widely perceived as a luxury — something for the elite, for the corporate boardroom, for the

Lekki penthouse. The average Nigerian family, the young professional renting a flat in Surulere, the small business owner setting up a shop in Kano — they are told, implicitly or explicitly, that good design is not for them.

I fundamentally disagree. And it is why I advocate what I call Democratic African Design.

The premise is simple: every Nigerian deserves to live and work in a space that reflects their dignity, their culture, and their identity. Good design is not a luxury. It is a right. And it does not require imported marble or European furniture to achieve it. It requires knowledge, skill, and intention — and a commitment to using what Africa already has in abundance: extraordinary local materials, master artisans, and a design heritage that the rest of the world is only beginning to fully appreciate.

Democratic African Design means working with local craftspeople whose techniques have been refined over generations. It means sustainable indigenous materials that carry the climate and culture of the place. It means creating spaces that a first-generation Lagos professional and a grandmother in Kaduna can both walk into and feel genuinely seen. It means bringing the standard of design that has historically been reserved for the top one per cent to everyone who deserves it -which is everyone.

 I left London Design Week not humbled, but energised. Not as a student who had come to learn from the West, but as a practitioner who had gone to contribute to a global conversation and came back more convinced than ever that Nigeria’s moment in that conversation has arrived.

The world is paying attention to African design. London has shown us what a thriving creative ecosystem looks like. Now it is our turn to show the world what African design feels like.

We have always designed with soul. It is time the world knew it.

 

Aisha Salaudeen is the Principal Designer at Aisha Ali Studio, Lagos, and Creative Partner at Arcpenter.