Richard Aina will be presenting his work online – that won him the this year’s RIBA President’s Dissertation Medal at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Architectural Association.

The thesis initially explores how and why West African objects of particular tribes were crafted, within their respective contexts and the various infrastructures that have existed; and persist in allowing these sacred objects to find themselves dissociated from their socioreligious premise.

The second part of the thesis is in response to the first and current paradigm that has been triggered since President Macron’s seminal speech at the University of Ouagadougou in 2017 – in which he vowed that France would begin to return West African objects of antiquity that are in their possession. Located in traditional Lobi land, The VESSEL is introduced as a traditionally infused contemporary vernacular architecture for the LOBI peoples that rehouses and spiritually rehabilitates their BATEBA figures of antiquity.