“I’m the first of a kind,” says Muyiwa Oki. He is, in more than one way. At 32 he will take office on 1 September as the youngest-ever president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Born in Nigeria, he is the first black person in the post. In his regular job – which, like other presidents, he will continue to do part-time during his two-year term – he is an employee rather than a principal, working for the construction company Mace, which isn’t primarily an architectural practice. He aims to speak for the unsung workers of the profession, rather than its bosses: “We need to do more work celebrating the community, the village that creates good architecture,” he says.
We are sitting in a boardroom, its walls lined in leather and Indian laurel, of the institute’s 89-year-old headquarters in Portland Place, central London. Behind him is a portrait of the moustachioed Aston Webb, an architect whose practice designed the Victoria and Albert Museum and the facade of Buckingham Palace, and a previous holder of Oki’s post.
