Les Rencontres Architecturales de Lomé (RAL #1) 

In November 2024, the inaugural edition of Architecture Encounters (Les Rencontres Architecturales Africaines) was curated by Studio NEiDA at Palais de Lomé. Across two days architectural practitioners gave lectures, held two workshops, a film screening and three architecture tours. Alongside this program the Conservation / Transformation exhibition showcased Togo’s most iconic architecture from the past to the present.

RAL #1 presented a line-up of emerging architects and researchers working in West Africa to trace architectural histories in the region and explore how these can be kept alive and or transformed to provide solutions for the future. These architects and researchers, think, write and do architecture in, for and about West Africa and presented their work to a rapt audience made up mostly of architecture students from Lomé’s architecture university (EAMAU). Josias Seddoh, Nana Biamah-Ofosu, Nzinga B. Mboup, Olufemi Hinson Yovo, Anthony Baba Oladeji, Dominique Petit-Frère, Sandra Agbessi, Sabrine Bako, Mallory Cohen, Kwami Etse and Kandijme Konlani covered working with natural material, elevating informality, archiving the architectural history around us and pushing to build buildings that are of and for their place. Together they turned RAL #1 into an event to broaden the discussion of architecture and intersecting design disciplines, to question timely global issues as it pertains to the West African context.