As we reflect on the great thought leaders who have shaped the artistic and cultural identity of Nigeria, one name is stamped in solid gold: Prince Demas Nwoko, the iconic designer, artist, architect, playwright and cultural philosopher who marks his 90th birthday on December 20, 2025. His prodigious cultural production spans more than six decades, a trajectory of excellence in art and design that situates him as a patriarch of African modern design.

Demas Nwoko was born in 1935 in Idumuje-Ugboko, a rural community in today’s Delta State. The aesthetics of the built environment in his community played a critical role in stirring his interest in creative enterprise. As one of the members of the influential Zaria Art Society, Nwoko and other students settled for what I term a compromise position, by adopting the concept that was called Natural Synthesis.

This was a strategy of expressing African traditional art concepts with Western artistic techniques, leading to the evolution of African cultural authenticity in contemporary art and design.

His design philosophy drew inspiration from traditional African culture and the natural environment and guided his choice of form and materials in his cultural production. The design concept was years ahead of contemporary design thinking like Human Centered Design (HCD), which has the needs of people, experiences and behaviour at the core of solving complex design problems.

The nexus between Demas Nwoko’s philosophy and Human-Centered Design (HCD) is that both prioritise designing from the lived realities of people, but Nwoko goes beyond and above HCD by grounding it in indigenous knowledge, climate, culture, and local materials, ensuring solutions are not only user-centered but also culturally authentic, sustainable, and context-responsive. His paintings – the Nok Terracotta inspired sculptures, and architecture – reflect this design strategy.

Creativity, for Nwoko, is the highest form of intellectual activity. Indeed, the depth of thinking that guided the construction of his cultural spaces, reflect functional beautiful forms in harmony with their natural environment. He adopted the concept of environmental sustainability before it became a dominant design strategy, in his use of raw earth material for his architecture.

These spaces of beauty, include the New Culture Studio, the Dominican Institute, Ibadan, the Oba Akenzua Cultural Centre, Benin and his residential building in Idumuje-Ugboko. His built spaces transcend aesthetics, by stimulating cognitive and emotive development as one engages the visual ecology in artistic dialogue.

His design philosophy, reflects the core dimensions of design for sustainability. His vision captures the triple pillars of sustainable development, people, planet and profit. As a visionary creative leader, Nwoko has been an advocate of the evolution of indigenous product design to meet our domestic needs. In his The Guardian newspaper interview, dated May 5, 2000, with Jahman Anikulapo under the headline:
“Design can save us, Says Nwoko,” he explained the transformative power of design in national development.

In recognition of his significant contribution to the advancement of culturally authentic architecture, Nwoko was celebrated in the Venice Biennale, with the award of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2023.

The concept of cultural authenticity and environmental sustainability as manifest in his architecture, ironically, is a lone voice in the wilderness in mainstream design circles in Nigeria. The iconic buildings within our cityscape in the Federal Capital City, Abuja, reflect the international style instead of defining our national identity through indigenous design language and material. This is a missed opportunity for ecotourism.

Imitation of foreign design solutions in product design, furniture design, and interior spaces, dominate our design landscape. This is called copy and paste. This has multiple implications: the loss of Intellectual Property benefits, the diminishing of national design identity, and lost opportunity in the cognitive development that comes through solving complex design problems or what is termed as “wicked problems.”

The evolution of industrial design power houses in Nigeria, that will birth the industrial renaissance to change the narrative of an import dependent economy, requires a new culture. Demas Nwoko advocates for design to be used as a transformative tool for social impact and cultural re-engineering, through culture sensitive authentic design interventions.

As we celebrate our own iconic living legend at 90, I recall my first sip of the chalice of the distilled creative wisdom of Baba Demas Nwoko. As a final year student of the University of Benin, I had asked him about the myriad challenges confronting Nigeria and his solution towards reconciling these conflicts. His response was instructive. He said every society has a conflict resolution cycle that resets once they get to the critical phase that could lead to disintegration. About two decades later, I reminded him of his statement, because from my perspective, the challenges had become hydra-headed. Baba Demas Nwoko reinforced his statement, adding that the process was still on track.

I have deduced, that the reset button for social change is not automatic but could start with a personal resolve to effect change in your sphere of influence. Pockets of minor impact could cumulatively translate into significant social rebirth. I therefore decided that there is the need to arrest the drift and change the narrative by setting up strategic design platforms to advocate for culturally authentic design solutions that will redefine our material culture. Twenty-five years after The Guardian newspaper interview on design and national development mentioned earlier, Nigeria is still an import dependent nation, with a myriad of our material culture, sourced from foreign industries.

This generation of design thought leaders should not drop the baton, but preserve the design philosophy of Baba Demas Nwoko. Arc. Anyibofu Nwoko Ugbodaga (his daughter), Nmadili Okwumabua, Arc. Stephen Ajadi and a diverse range of other talented designers draw inspiration from Nwoko’s ideas. His message to aspiring design historians, philosophers, urban planners, architects and industrial designers, is that they should read his books and internalise his thoughts, as their guide for shaping the products and services of the future. The new culture envisioned by Baba Demas is now our reality.

Azodoh, former Zonal Coordinator, National Gallery of Art (North Central), is the Principal Consultant, DesignBank Consult, Abuja