Mae-ling Lokko is a Ghanaian-Filipina architectural scientist, designer and educator who is repositioning the byproducts of human consumption as the materials of the future. 

As an assistant professor at Yale’s School of Architecture and Center for Ecosystems in Architecture, Lokko researches circular building materials that form part of broader agricultural and textile cycles, nurturing the soil they rely on over time. In her widely exhibited installations, Lokko deconstructs historical narratives and practices of extraction through the design of new material vocabularies, testing new processes and prototyping distributed models of production that centre collaboration.

Lokko founded Willow Technologies to scale these explorations in Accra, Ghana, repurposing agricultural waste in water treatment and as affordable, bio-based building materials. Creating insulation boards from coconut shells and wall panels of mycelium, hemp, and kenaf fibres, the organisation aims to return the value of the material production to the communities that created it.

Lokko’s research-based, activism-driven practice is situated across art, architecture, material science, engineering, and teaching, and strives towards “generative justice” in our material cultures.