Alero Olympio (1959-2005) was an architect and builder known for an intimately ecological approach to architecture. Born in Ghana, she divided her practice between Ghana and Scotland. She focused on work that prioritized people and was sincerely committed to social and environmental sustainability, prioritizing using locally sourced materials.
Her work legacy includes physical buildings like the Kokrobitey Institute, her advocacy for earthen constructions, research on sustainable forestry products, and so much more. However, a gap exists in the institutionalized archives of her work, leading to the current ongoing efforts to build a comprehensive archive of her contributions. The 2024 Womxn in Design and Architecture (WDA) annual conference organized by Princeton University School of Architecture made a significant contribution. It featured exhibitions, seminars, and panel discussions that reflected on Alero Olympio's legacy and examined the architectural insights her work continues to offer.
Alero Olympio challenged the traditional archetype of architecture. Her work aimed to enhance the overall experience of both spatial and material aspects of constructing buildings. According to Mae-ling Lokko's article "World Forming by Ghanian Women in Architecture," Olympio's architecture embraced tactility on multiple dimensions. The floor was a sensory landscape of cool, smooth, polished earthen and stone materials, while laterite walls were rendered flat with a distinctive red-matt finish or lined with a smooth undulating surface, reminiscent of traditional kneaded mud balls but coated in brilliant white.
However, Olympio's work extended beyond constructing physical buildings. She examined the sociopolitical implications of building them. Her advocacy for the use of earth in buildings was an act of decolonizing architectural identity. Every building she designed was a political statement of defiance. In the post-colonial era, there is a crucial need to reclaim identity, deviate from Western paradigms, and explore all cultural nuances that define a place, with architecture being no exception.
This conviction drove Olympio's long-term experimentation with laterite - the rich clayey soil native to most parts of Ghana. Lokko highlights how Olympio's work aimed to represent the material in a unique blend of modern domesticity and traditional thermodynamic intelligence. For instance, the construction of the Kokrobitey Institute led her to commission earth-brick machinery from India and teach local builders the brick production process. She promoted laterite as a material for development, enhancing both road technologies and on-site housing construction. By embodying principles of bioclimatic design and resource efficiency, her buildings proposed local technological solutions not only as answers to infrastructure and energy challenges but also as aspirations for the rising middle class.
The 2024 WDA conference, "Alero Olympio: Activated Matter," expanded Alero's growing archive. The event featured seminars and panel discussions from 10 participants, focusing on themes like uncommon constructions, social transformations, and restructuring practices. These topics examined Olympio's practice within existing material cultures and systems of local knowledge, while also envisioning new structural and technical possibilities. The conference examined her inclusive, multifaceted practice, which challenges conventional modes of architectural production. This approach results in a redefined form of social entrepreneurship that builds connections across disciplines and borders. The conference also explored how Olympio's work, both locally and internationally, disrupts boundaries around race, gender, class, and sexuality, fostering cross-global networks.
The 3-day conference began with a seminar by Prof. Lesley Lokko. She emphasized that to find knowledge that isn't institutionalized, one must look at its anecdotes. This was reflected in the work of Alero, whose projects resonated most with her colleagues, the local builders she worked with, and the people who experienced the spaces she constructed. Prof. Lokko highlighted Alero's preference for non-industrialized products, her emphasis on locality, site specificity, non-traveling forms, and present materiality. This was not only a suitable response to the architectural discourse in Ghana, but also a poetic way for Alero to balance the tension between practicing abroad and at home.
Furthermore, the second seminar was conducted by Renée Neblett, founder of the Kokrobitey Institute, and a collaborator with Alero on the Making the Building project. Renée's seminar focused on Alero’s ideals of sustainability, locality, and authentic connection with people. She elaborated on the design and construction process of the Kokrobitey Institute, located in a small fishing village 45 minutes from Accra, the capital of Ghana. Constructed with local materials, the campus layout is inspired by the courtyard formations of an Ashanti compound, promoting a sense of community conducive to thoughtful reflection, learning, and social interaction. The campus includes apartment-style rooms for up to 33 residents, an organic garden, a design studio named in honor of Alero, and a dining area with a view of the ocean horizon. Brick, wood, and stone are the primary building materials. Alero used the local community, its environment, and its waste as primary resources for the construction. She mobilized women in the community to harvest stones for the building's foundation, retrieved waste wood from small factories to create pillars, and trained local builders in making earth bricks. The building process not only fostered community, but also revitalized abandoned cultural knowledge, serving as the foundation for the institute's success.
Alero Olympio's portfolio also includes the visitor trail at Kakum National Park, numerous private residences, the book ‘Akosua in Brazil’, research into Ghana's forestry, and activism alongside local architects advocating for more earth houses. She has also been involved in various people-centered conservation projects. Her work has inspired new Accra-based creatives who engage with and contribute to her archive, enriched by its openness, incompleteness, and the experiences of people. Alero Olympio's approach demonstrates that centering people in architecture or any related field transforms us into environmentalists, social advocates, and humanists.
The annual WDA series, held since 2017, is masterminded by SoA Dean Monica Ponce de Leon and spearheaded by SoA Public Program and Publications Manager Courtney Coffman. Each year the current student-members of WDA select the architect to highlight and the speakers to invite.
This year’s WDA members—all current M.Arch students at the SoA—are Olivia Ahmadi, Jocelyn Beausire, Marie Chapa, Julia Chou, Hermine Demaël, Sophia Diodati, Vanessa Gonzalez, Luciana Hodara Rahde, Kyara Robinson, Sofia Rojo, Janeen Zheng, Marie de Testa, Madeline Kim, Allison Wenner, Pavan Vadgama, Stephanie Rosas, Nneoma Onyekwere and Mariam Arwa Al-Hachami.
