Shortly after a Pritzker sans surprises and sans risks came the announcement of another of architecture’s leading accolades, the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion, which for its part has opted to celebrate the ‘off-limits’ and hitherto ignored trajectory of the Nigerian Demas Nwoko. The self-label ‘artist-designer’ sums up his multifaceted work of the past seventy years, and also draws attention to the narrow definition of the discipline that has kept him on the sidelines throughout this time: a wrong which the curator of this year’s mostra, the Ghanaian-Scottish Lesley Lokko, hopes to right by honoring a pioneer of modern African art and a builder who, without having received any formal education, has proven a master at combining vernacular and current techniques and acts as flagbearer for Nigerian architecture.