YAA Projects designs architecture in dialogue and response to place, identity, climate, material and history.
YAA Projects is a London based architecture, design and research practice directed by Nana Biamah-Ofosu. We explore counter-histories, diasporic spatial intelligence and material culture, through making, speaking and writing architecture.
Our work centres peripheral cultures and identities to create a more equitable, inclusive, sustainable built environment. We work across a variety of scales and interests— from exhibitions and interiors to residential, housing, public spaces and cultural projects. Writing and speaking architecture through teaching, research and public lectures are important aspects of the practice and our work.
Recent projects include the Design Museum’s Design Researchers in Residence exhibition design, Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Power in West Africa at the 18th Venice Biennale which was selected as part of ArchDaily’s ‘Top 2023 Pavilions and Installations Interrogating Architecture of the Global South’, the ArchiAfrika Pavilion and Althea McNish: Colour is Mine at the William Morris Gallery in London and the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, which was included in The Guardian’s ‘Best Designs and Designers of 2023’. Our current research projects include a study of the African communal housing typologies. We recently designed and curated Common, Communal, Community an exhibition in Vienna showcasing evolving this work.
YAA Projects is part of the London Mayor’s Architecture + Urbanism Framework, specialising in delivering Housing on Small Sites as well as High Streets & Town Centre Recovery & Transformation projects.
We believe that good buildings, spaces and environments are designed through dialogue and in response to place, identity, climate, material and history.
Nana Biamah-Ofosu Director
Nana Biamah-Ofosu is a Ghanaian-British architect working between Accra and London. Her practice focuses on the architecture and urbanism of African modernity, communality, domesticity, identity and geography through a diasporic and decolonial framework. Nana is an experienced educator. She is a Unit Tutor at the Architectural Association and a lecturer at Kingston School of Art. She has also lectured widely in the UK and internationally, the inaugural Venice Biennale College Architettura at the 18th International Architecture Biennale in Venice. Nana has served in the juries of several awards, including the RIBA Silver Medal, and is a member of the RIBA Awards Working Group and the Soane Medal Committee. As a writer, she explores the social, political, and cultural impact of design and architecture, engaging with contemporary practitioners to define new paths towards a more critical, expansive, and inclusive discourse on the built environment.
Team Past & Present
William Keaton Seddon
Efua Boakye
Richard Aina
Sharon Fung
Siqi Zhao
Working with us
We are always interested in hearing from potential clients and collaborators. If you are interested in working with us, please contact us at info@yaaprojects.com