BAV Awards 2024

Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

Demas Nwoko

"One of the central themes of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition is an approach to architecture as an "extended" field of endeavor, encompassing both the material and immaterial worlds; a space where ideas are as important as artifacts, particularly in the service of what is to come. Despite the strong emphasis on the future, it seems entirely fitting that the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement should be awarded to a person whose material works span the last 70 years, but whose immaterial legacy - approach, ideas, ethos - is in a continuous process of evaluation, understanding and celebration.
Baba (an honorary Nigerian title) Demas Nwoko is all of these things: architect, sculptor, designer, writer, scenographer, critic and historian. When asked specifically, he refers to himself as an 'artist-designer', which speaks both to the polyglot nature of his talents and works, and to the rather narrow interpretation of the word 'architect' that has undoubtedly kept his name far from anal.
The son of a traditional Obi (ruler), he was born in 1935 in Idumuje-Ugboko, Southern Nigeria. His early forays into painting, drawing and sculpture at secondary school in Benin City prompted him to enroll to study Architecture at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology in Zaria. However, discovering that all the courses focused more on technical drawing skills rather than creative imagination, he decided to change tack and enroll for Fine Arts. He was a founding member of the Zaria Art Society - a collective that included Yusuf Grillo, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Uche Okeke and Simon Okeke, also known as the 'Zaria rebels' - who were interested in combining modernity with African aesthetics as an authentic language reflecting the growing spirit of political independence in the 1940s and 1950s.
This profound desire to combine and synthesize rather than eliminate characterized Nwoko's work for over five decades. He was one of the first Nigerian creators of space and form to criticize Nigeria's dependence on the West for both imported materials and goods as well as ideas, and remained faithful to the use of local resources.
Although relatively few, Nwoko's buildings in Nigeria fulfill two fundamental roles. They are forerunners of the sustainable, resource-conscious and culturally authentic forms of expression that are spreading across the African continent - and the globe - and they point to the future, no small achievement for someone whose work is still largely unknown, even in his homeland. In 1977, writing about Nwoko's first commission, to build the Dominican Institute complex in Ibadan, architectural critic Noel Moffett remarked: "Here, under a tropical sun, architecture and sculpture come together in a way that perhaps only Gaudí, of all architects, managed to do so convincingly.
It gives me great pride and pleasure to award the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Demas Nwoko, an architect who belongs to both the 20th and 21st centuries."
Lesley Lokko

Demas Nwoko is a Nigerian-born artist, designer and architect who has been at the forefront of the modern art movement in Nigeria. As an artist, he strives to integrate modern techniques in architecture and set design to express the African subject in much of his work. In the 1960s, he was a member of the Mbari Club of Ibadan, a growing committee of Nigerian and foreign artists.
Prince Demas Nwoko was born in 1935 in Idumuje Ugboko, Nigeria, in Aniocha North Local Government Area, Delta State, his father being Obi (King) Nwoko II. Nwoko grew up in Idumuje Ugboko, inspired by the newly built residential compounds in the town and the edifice of the King's Palace, his grandfather, who designed the palace himself. Later extensions to the palace were commissioned by Nwoko's father.
He studied at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology in Zaria (1957-1961), where he was an important founding member of the Zaria Art Society. This influential group of artists, popularly known as the 'Zaria Rebels', promoted natural synthesis: an artistic concept coined by the artist Uche Okeke, who bridged the gap between their Western education by colonial teachers and their emphasis on African themes and narratives. The Zaria rebels contributed to Nigeria's post-colonial modernist avant-garde in the early 1960s, alongside their peers in literature, theater and music.
In 1961, Nwoko was awarded a scholarship to the Centre Français du Théâtre in Paris, where he studied theater architecture and scenography. After university, he returned to Nigeria to lecture at the newly opened Theater School of the University of Ibadan. Reconnecting with his old colleague in the Zaria Art Society, Nwoko set up places such as the Mbari Writers and Artists Club, developing a new art that blended African aesthetics, forms and processes with modernist Western ones in a way that reflected the spirit of political independence. Nwoko's first commission, to build the Dominican Institute complex in Ibadan, came in 1970, although he had already begun his architectural work at New Culture Studios in Ibadan in the early 1960s.
He founded New Culture Studios in Ibadan, which now operates a training center for performing arts and design. Nwoko also founded the (now defunct) New Culture Magazine in the 1970s, a publication that documented contemporary art and culture.

The New Culture Studios
Oremeji, Ibadan, Nigeria
1967

Dominican Institute, Chapel
Ibadan, Nigeria , 1970-1975

Oba Akenzua Center
for Arts and Culture
Benin City, Nigeria
1972-1995

Villa
Idumuje Ugboko, Nigeria
1976

International Architecture Exhibition Awards

Jury

International Jury of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, composed of
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (President, Italy);
Nora Akawi (Palestine);
Thelma Golden (USA);
Tau Tavengwa (Zimbabwe);
Izabela Wieczorek (Poland),
decided to award the following prizes:

Golden Lion for best national participation

BRAZILIATerra

The Golden Lion for the best national entry was awarded to Brazil for a research exhibition and architectural intervention that centers the philosophy and imagination of indigenous and black peoples towards ways of reparation.

Curator: José Olympio da Veiga Pereira, President of Fundaçao Bienal de São Paulo
Curators: Gabriela de Matos and Paula Tavares
Exhibitors: Ana Flávia Magalhães Magalhães Pinto, Ayrson Heráclito, Day Rodrigues with the collaboration of Vilmei Patrícia Santana Silva, Fissura collective, Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká (Casa Branca do Engenho Velho), Juliana Vicente, Mbya - Guarani indigenous people, Tukano, Arawak and Maku indigenous people, Tecelas do Alaká (Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá), Thierry Oussou, Vídeo nas Aldeias
Location: Giardini

Special Mention

GREAT BRITAIN

Dancing Before the Moon

The Special Mention for National Participation is awarded to the UK for its curatorial strategy and design proposals that celebrate the power of everyday rituals as forms of resistance and spatial practices in diaspora communities.

Curator: Sevra Davis, Director of Architecture Design Fashion at the British Council
Curators: Jayden Ali, Joseph Henry, Meneesha Kellay and Sumitra Upham
Exhibitors: Yussef Agbo-Ola, Jayden Ali, Mac Collins, Shawanda Corbett, Madhav Kidao, Sandra Poulson
Location: Giardini