Background
Nigeria made its debut at the London Design Biennale in 2025 with Hopes and Impediments, the country's first federally supported national pavilion at the event. Named after Chinua Achebe's essays on art, culture and modernism, the pavilion interrogated identity as a collective negotiation shaped by memory and shifting histories.
At its centre was Lejja, a community in Enugu State, south-eastern Nigeria, home to one of the world's earliest iron-smelting traditions. The pavilion used that history as a lens on how indigenous knowledge systems shape governance, gender dynamics and communal resilience, combining ethnographic research, digital tools and speculative architectural interventions.
The pavilion ran at Somerset House from 5 to 29 June 2025 as part of the Biennale's fifth edition. It was curated and designed by Myles Ikenna Igwebuike, with visual direction and programming by Itohan Barlow, founder of Culture Lab Africa, which produced the pavilion.
The deployment
The pavilion's reach was extended beyond its physical footprint by a location-based augmented reality trail running across London. Digital collectibles representing elements of the pavilion and of Nigerian heritage were anchored to real locations around the city. Participants collected each item by travelling to its location in person and viewing it through their phone camera, and each collectible unlocked written information and stories connected to the object and its cultural context.
The objective was to let people across London engage with the pavilion and the heritage it showcased without needing to visit Somerset House, turning a time-boxed exhibition in a single building into a city-wide experience.
Technology
The trail ran on the Pikd platform, a gamified location-based AR product for brand and cultural engagement. Pikd is a React Native application shipped to both iOS and Android from a single codebase, with its AR layer built on ViroReact, the open-source React Native AR framework maintained by ReactVision. Participants used their own smartphones; no dedicated hardware was deployed.
Partners and backing
- Culture Lab Africa — pavilion production, visual direction and programming
- Pikd — digital collaborator, responsible for the AR trail
- Chidi Nwaubani — sculpture and interaction design
- Centre for Memories, Nteje Studios and the Museum of West African Art — research partners
- Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy, the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization and the Nigeria High Commission, London — administering bodies
The pavilion was supported by the Royal College of Art, The Africa Centre, Moniepoint and Leadway Holdings.
Recognition
Hopes and Impediments received a special mention at the London Design Biennale 2025, placing it among the top five of 35 pavilions. The awards ceremony was held on 5 June 2025 and presided over by Sir Chris Bryant, Minister of State for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism.
