Why Tola Ojuolape is in the Design 100

Tola Ojuolape set up her own studio in 2021, after a decade at Blacksheep working on hospitality projects for clients including Ritz-Carlton, Marriott and Hyundai Card. Her own practice announced itself with the Africa Centre in Southwark, an interior built with architecture studio Freehaus around natural clay plasters, an indigo-dyed stairwell nodding to West African textile traditions, and a restaurant, Tatale, finished in lattice-back banquettes and relief-tiled surfaces. Tactility, not signage, is how the building tells you where you are.

That instinct for materials with memory has carried into branding and furniture work alongside interiors, including the Collectors’ Lounge at Somerset House’s Collect fair. Ojuolape was shortlisted for Dezeen’s Emerging Interior Designer of the Year in 2023 and named a Next in Design 2025 winner by Homes & Gardens. Raised in County Clare and trained across Ireland, Milan and London, she lectures at the Royal College of Art and Camberwell College of Arts alongside a growing list of hospitality and cultural commissions.