Olorunfemi Adewuyi's community-oriented design honours local culture and tradition

For Wallpaper’s 2025 Next Generation issue, we have rounded-up a hotlist of emerging design talent from around the world, shining a light on the newcomers paving the present and forging the future. Join us on our journey to meet ten designers from Adelaide, Tokyo, London, Lagos, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Loch Lomond, New York and Paris. Welcome to our ascending stars of 2025.

Emerging designer Olorunfemi Adewuyi, Lagos

Adewuyi studied architecture at Covenant University in Nigeria and is an associate at Lagos-based design and architecture practice Studio Contra. In 2023, he founded OMI Collective with a mission to rescue declining crafts and integrate them into contemporary life, honouring traditional skills and vernacular expressions that might otherwise be subsumed in favour of a globalised design language. Adewuyi believes design has a social and democratic impetus.

Wallpaper*: How do you describe what you do?
Olorunfemi Adewuyi: Recently I’ve come to think of what we do as being concerned with memory – not just preserving memories, but contextualising them so we can hold on to local culture in a globalised world. We do this by humanising design, making tactile furniture and objects that materialise memory so you can literally touch traditions in the objects you use in daily life.

W*: What motivates your work?
OA: I want to do social work, but I recognise this isn’t going to sustain a living, so I also design furniture and work as a sustainability expert. Social design is essential to the context of where I live. For example, one of the challenges we have in Lagos is our water supply. Everyone has to be a local government officer and build their own water supply, so you find water tanks on every roof. It’s an eyesore, but also an opportunity. I ask myself how we might use water tanks to bring green life to our urban habitat.

W*: What has been a career highlight?
OA: Showing at the Stockholm Furniture Fair in the Greenhouse section for emerging designers in 2025.

W*: Who would be a dream client?
OA: The woman on the street roasting plantain. The economy of Lagos is largely informal. I want to put design in the hands of the woman on the street so she is empowered to improve her life without waiting for the government to help.

W*: What do you believe is the power of design?
OA: Good design can have an economic power that people don’t see immediately. Many people feel design is only for the elite. I believe the commercial aspects of design can fuel social design, too. My goal as a designer is to bring social projects at scale to fruition, ones with the potential for the genuine life improvement of many people. Good design is about finding the sweet spot where this relationship is symbiotic.

Olorunfemi Adewuyi, photographed by Stephen Tayo, on the rooftop of his office in Onikan, Lagos
Omi-cv.com