Jeanne Autran-Edorh is making the case for a West African architecture rooted in craft, not imports
The co-founder of Studio Neida on celebrating non-Western design roots, working with local artisans and why craft is at risk of disappearing.
French-Togolese designer Jeanne Autran-Edorh worked for Pritzker Architecture Prize winners Francis Kéré, Jean Nouvel and Herzog & de Meuron, before co-founding interdisciplinary practice Studio Neida. Based between Brussels and Lomé, its portfolio spans architecture, design and research, with a focus on locally sourced materials and regenerative craftsmanship. Autran-Edorh co-curated Togo’s first Venice Architecture Biennale pavilion for the event’s 19th edition in 2025, as well as its presentation at the Triennale in Milan.
Rooted in craft and context, Studio Neida’s work is a celebration of West Africa’s architectural roots. “They’re a rich foundation that we have to preserve,” Autran-Edorh tells Monocle, as she welcomes us into her home in Lomé. “And they’re at risk of disappearing because we live in an age when many crafts are being replaced by industrially made imports.” She tells us about what she plans to do about this and her ambitions for the studio.
How does a young practice such as Studio Neida win clients?
We started it three years ago after working at several other offices. What matters isn’t just the relationship with the client but with everyone that the architecture will affect. It’s about how your work changes life in a city or the community around it and how to ensure that those who will build it or live near it can have a say in the design process. The client isn’t one person – the word encompasses the people walking past a project too. It’s about asking not just whether a building is aesthetically pleasing or functional but also how it supports daily life.
What roles do place and context play?
Our goal is to create architecture that belongs to its place and reflects its people. In West Africa, this involves unlearning ways of designing imposed from elsewhere and restarting with a more collaborative practice. It’s about local knowledge and working together. Often, a project develops in collaboration with an artisan.
Does your process differ in Africa and Europe?
I have practised in European, African and US contexts on projects such as the National Assembly of Benin, which was heavily influenced by politics, and then at smaller scales, where you have much more freedom. There’s a kind of reversal of value: in Europe, craft has become a luxury and manufactured materials are the default. In West Africa, imported materials raise the cost, so making things locally is cheaper. The design process ends up far more tied to craft and drawing everything by hand. That, for me, is more stimulating and creative. If you need a new dress, you seek out a tailor and design it yourself; if you need a table, you go to a carpenter and make a custom one. Everyone becomes a designer because you must think about the dimensions, the shape and the materials.
One of your projects, a guesthouse in Lomé, makes a point of working with the site’s conditions. What can be learnt from taking such an approach?
It’s about making use of the available resources. That might sound like a constraint but it can also be an opportunity. The clay bricks for this guesthouse were made from soil dug up on site, pressed and sun-dried. We produced them as we built.
What’s your experience of working with big institutions and governments?
We started our practice with initiatives of our own: documenting abandoned buildings in Lomé and proposing adaptive reuse. That drew interest from institutions, which eventually led to us doing the Togo Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. It wasn’t a commission that came to us; we initiated the dialogue ourselves.
Tell us about some of the buildings in Lomé that you explored as part of this curatorial programme.
The exhibition looked at both post-independence and precolonial architecture. We wanted to put the two in dialogue and deliberately skip the colonial period to celebrate the architecture commissioned by the Togolese state. Post-independence architecture shows the building of a nation’s identity. There’s a strong language in those buildings. They express the pride and the history of a country.
Where is Togolese and Lomé’s architecture heading? And how can this be a springboard for your practice?
What’s sometimes difficult is a feeling of going backwards. Contemporary architecture is often less contextual and has less finesse than in the modernist era. We’re starting to see towers in Lomé that could be in London or New York. These are not adapted to the context, the climate. There’s a lot that we can learn from older architecture.
What can the rest of the world take from contemporary West African architecture?
Young architects in Africa are valuing traditional materials and existing knowledge. There’s a need to give value to these traditions of making and craftsmanship. It’s about not trying to follow existing models but trying to develop an architecture that belongs to its context.
