Design Inspired by Cultural Legacy

My lecture will cover part of my 30 year journey where I have devel­oped a design language that researches and query into my own African heritage that is not only depen­dent on looking at past furni­ture designs and crafts but is also inclu­sive of anything that could be rein­ter­preted or fused together to create a new methodology.

The incep­tion of this approach came about as part of my indus­trial design thesis back in Fall 1992 at Univer­sity of Kansas (School of Art and Design now renamed School of Archi­tec­ture & Design). Even though there were many trig­gers for this query, one of them was the consis­tent lack of Black dias­poric design­ers in the modern design canon and their poten­tial approach to design that could be similar or differ­ent than most Euro-Centric design­ers and many design move­ments such as the Bauhaus.

The culmi­na­tion of this research and prac­tice is my current solo show ​“Juxta­posed: A Portal to African Design” at Wexler Gallery in Philadel­phia (attached photos). During the lecture I will show various works, the African inspi­ra­tions for each furni­ture design, mention cultural signif­i­cance of arti­facts, cover the making and problem solving methods used during the construc­tion of each piece as well.