Dominican institute
Demas Nwoko’s first architectural commission, completed in 1970, was a chapel for the Dominican Institute in Ibadan. Built with locally sourced materials, the structure reflects a careful negotiation between place, belief, and form. Its bell tower—at once sculptural and symbolic—evokes Christianity’s crown of thorns while also recalling the roof-corner pinnacles found in vernacular Hausa architecture. The chapel marked the beginning of Nwoko’s architectural practice and signalled an approach rooted in local materiality, climate, and cultural memory rather than imported models. These works wereproduced on commission for Wallpaper.
