Olufemi is an architect, designer and researcher based in Cotonou, Bénin. She is the founder of SAH STUDIO, a polymath research-based practice in Cotonou, developing projects from various scales and materiality, celebrating local contexts with a focus on decolonizing architecture. She holds a Master in Fine Arts and a Master of Architecture. She is a registered member of the Beninese Board of Architects.
While researching for her Master’s thesis, she noticed impending urban challenges in West Africa and since has been exploring the vast topic. Her thesis led up to the conceptualization of a Nouvel Ilot cotonois, with a unique configuration of West African mix-use of social housing and informal commerce.
After working in Paris at Graal Architecture, she moved to Abidjan to join world renowned architectural firm Koffi et Diabaté Architects. Over 4 years, she oversaw, as general contractor’s project manager, Benin’s leading construction project, Koffi et Diabaté 20 000 Logements (Video). At this position she encountered large scale urban processes, learned urban master planning for Ouédo, a 50 000 people city in the outskirts of Cotonou. There, she sharpened her tools as urban projects manager, construction coordinator and government relations liaison.
Her process flows around design and research on biodiversity in the city, heritage, informality and housing in Cotonou. She has a unique capacity to simultaneously scrutinize city life, culture socio-economical dynamics translating this sublte set of datas into applicable designs. For her, all urban, architectural and design questions must be thoroughly analyzed, bearing the local context in mind with a focus on decolonizing architecture and our heritage. Thus, she roots her practice in research as a primary tool declined in several mediums, culminating in essays and publication about architectural issues reflected in people lives. Her diverse sensibilities push her to explore her creativity, permanently thinking from smaller to the larger scales, thus producing architecture, furniture design, textile design and art installations.
Finally, in 2021, she decided to harness all her creative abilities and develop a multi-disciplinary researched based-practice based in Cotonou, SAH STUDIO.
SAH STUDIO’s practice rest in 4 ongoing research pillars: housing/habitus in Cotonou, informality in public space and vernacular architecture and bio diversity in West African cities. Currently, her research on informality in public space, initiated in 2015 in her master thesis has won the Prince Claus Prize, Building Beyond 2023.
She participated in the 14th and 18th Venice Biennale, for Asunsìon: Extrapolations Métropolitaines in 2014, exhibited at African Mobilities in Architekturmuseum, Munich for the project Life of Femi with Issa Diabaté in 2019 and is the Laureate of the Prince Claus Building Beyond 2023 Prize.
In September 2022, she participated in a symposium at African Future Institute of Prof Lesley Lokko in Accra, where she exposed her manifesto for production of large infrastructures in Benin, culminating in the publication as one of the authors of Building African Futures: 10 Manifestos for Transformative Architecture and Urbanism (Iwaléwabooks, 2023) edited by Prof Julia Gallagher of SOAS London, Kuukuwa Manful and Emmanuel Sarpong, book launched at Carnival La biennale di Venezia 2023.
In March 2023, she collaborated with the MoMA New York, on their ongoing research on post independences buildings in Cotonou, Porto-Novo.
She currently runs SAH STUDIO in Cotonou and is engaged in various building and research projects and a tutor at Africa Design School in Cotonou we she shares about her research in West Africa.