Kemi Lawson's new book celebrates the joy manifested in Black homes around the world

The topic of the Black home has been largely underexplored in existing history books. House Proud, a new book by writer, curator, and thinker Kemi Lawson and published by RIBA, steps in to correct that, offering a feast of words and images that chart Black domestic interiors and architecture across continents and eras.

The book, divided into four main sections – 'Ancestral Intelligence', 'Afro-aristo', 'Radical Shelters' and 'Future Ancestors' – was designed to pose questions as well as celebrate Black residential architecture and the creativity of Africa and its diasporic cultures.

We discuss 'House Proud' with Kemi Lawson

Wallpaper*: What inspired this book and its theme?

Kemi Lawson: House Proud began with my own home, a Grade II listed cottage in North London which I moved into in 2020. My aim was to decorate it in a way that would centre and celebrate my family’s dual Nigerian and Jamaican heritage while staying firmly rooted in modern London life.

When I went looking for inspiration, I searched interiors magazines and books for homes where Black identity and design were explored intentionally, but there was not much there. So I began with the Black-designed homes I already knew and loved: my two grandmothers’ houses in Bristol and Lagos; Devon House in Jamaica, the 1881 mansion built by George Stiebel, Jamaica’s first Black millionaire; the earthen architecture of Morocco. Then I began looking deeper into Black homes and architecture from across history.

The deeper I went, the more extraordinary the stories became. A Haitian palace at Sans-Souci, built on the scale of Versailles by a King who was once enslaved. The extraordinary technical intelligence behind Africa’s much-maligned 'mud huts.' Homes built with resilience, beauty and joy despite almost unimaginable odds. Contemporary Black homes reinterpreting traditional African design in completely new ways.

What struck me was not simply that these homes were magnificent, although they are. It was that they seemed to be speaking to each other across centuries and oceans. The same cultural pride. The same connection to ancestry. I realised these stories needed to be compiled and shared, not just for their brilliance but for the lessons they contain, which could inspire us all. The lesson that a home can carry meaning far beyond its walls. Hence, House Proud was born.

W*: I loved the sense of discovery this book gave me, as there were lots of projects I hadn’t come across before. Which of its projects made you do a double-take? Which was the most surprising?

KL: Researching House Proud took me down so many wonderful and unexpected rabbit holes. I certainly never imagined a book about Black architecture and interiors would have me quoting 19^th century Russian poetry, learning about the building qualities of cow dung, or decoding the religious symbolism of a West Indian carpet.

However, not much can match the thrill of first walking into 575 Wandsworth Road. From the outside it is an unassuming terraced house on a busy South London road. Then you step inside, and it is simply breathtaking. Almost every surface is inlaid and hand-carved in fretwork by its owner, the British-Kenyan polymath and aesthete Khadambi Asalache.

I love the story of how it began. Damp was coming through from the commercial laundry next door, so in 1986 he covered one wall with a piece of carved wood. Then he simply did not stop and was still going twenty years later, when he died. Each surface is a miniature masterpiece, drawing on the Swahili architecture of the East African coast, the Moorish architecture of Andalusia, Dogon traditions from Mali and Ottoman interiors. The skill of the carving is remarkable, and the breadth of global cultural knowledge contained within it... It is an intellectual and travel biography written in wood.

Asalache left it to the nation. It is now in the care of the National Trust and open for guided tours, six visitors at a time, shoes off at the door. A must-visit and a unique piece of British heritage.

W*: I understand the book investigates the Black home in all its shapes, forms and territories. How do you define this home, and what are the common threads that unite Black homes?

KL: A Black home is not defined by a particular colour palette, collection of objects or an architectural style. It is defined by intention: an intention to live in a way that reflects heritage and timeless ancestral values.

Looking across the homes in the book, from the Caribbean Georgian mansion to a Lagos merchant house to a Windrush front room in Bristol, I found the same threads resurfacing. I came to call these threads A.I., but a rather different kind of AI: Ancestral Intelligence.

It is a way of living directly connected to a way of life that long predates our modern nuclear family and our heavily consumerist idea of the home, and which I suspect may outlive them too. I identify four recurring themes: living in harmony with nature, an architecture of joy and rhythm, communal living, and the incorporation of sacred space.

They appear in different forms throughout the book. Together they suggest a radically different way of thinking about what a home can be, not simply somewhere to decorate and inhabit but somewhere that can connect us to family, community, nature, spirit and history.

W*: On the other hand, give me some examples of the variety hidden in these homes?

KL: Few spaces contain more layers than the British-Caribbean homes of the Windrush era, exemplified by the design language of the West Indian front room, so beautifully documented by Michael McMillan at London’s Museum of the Home.

The front room is an extraordinary combination of objects, aesthetics and a way of life. Victorian propriety sits alongside tropical aesthetics, religious iconography, tiny treasured ornaments and family remembrance, all within one relatively small space.

Anyone who grew up around those interiors will recognise the details immediately and smile. The Last Supper on the wall. Hand-crafted crochet work on the sofa. An archive of graduation and wedding photographs taking pride of place on a wall. A framed map of one’s own island. I would say a West Indian grandmother’s front room was the first museum her grandchildren ever visited, if they were allowed in!

Another extraordinary example is the Afro-Brazilian architecture of West Africa. These are homes that crossed the Atlantic twice. Portuguese-Brazilian architecture was brought to West Africa by formerly enslaved Brazilians returning to their African motherland, who then built versions of houses they had once constructed in Brazil. Except this time they were building for themselves.

The result is a wonderful architectural hybrid: classical European columns and pilasters meeting Yoruba sculptural traditions and motifs. They tell, in architectural form, the under-recognised story of an Afro-Brazilian community that profoundly influenced West African religion, food, music and culture.

Sadly, many have disappeared or stand in poor repair. Ilojo Bar in Lagos, built in the nineteenth century and a listed national monument, was demolished overnight in 2016. That loss is part of the reason why this book exists.

W*: Do you have a favourite? If you built your house tomorrow, what would it look like? (Of course, we ignore for a moment the fact that your own home is in the book too)

KL: My favourite is probably Villa Lewaro in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. The home of Madam C.J. Walker, the haircare entrepreneur usually described as America’s first self-made female millionaire.

She has one of the most remarkable life trajectories in history, and her home holds all of it. Her own company later described the journey as 'cabin to castle.' Walker herself called the house her 'dream of dreams,' and the New York Times called it a place fit for a fairy princess. She commissioned Vertner Tandy, the first Black architect registered in New York State, and she built on Millionaires’ Row, close to the Gilded Age millionaires such as the Goulds and the Rockefellers. Then, while every white neighbour on that stretch had angled their house to catch the River Hudson views, she turned hers to face Broadway. She wanted to be seen from the road.

That is what I love about Villa Lewaro. It was never only a place to show off her wealth. It was built as evidence to show the Black community that if she could achieve this, so could they. At her opening gathering in August 1918, she convened a weekend of debate on lynching, civil rights and the status of Black soldiers then serving in France. The house went on to host the Liberian president, the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance and four hundred of the company’s own sales agents at the annual convention.

And it is that element, that aspect of ancestral intelligence of community, that I would lean into if I built my house tomorrow. I increasingly think the traditional nuclear-family home feels like an outdated concept that is not working for us. I would design instead for a more expansive idea of family and community. Location, room flows, shared spaces where extended family, friends and the people you wish to form community with can all feel at home. A house with the door open.

W*: What do you hope readers will take away from reading the book?

KL: House Proud is definitely not a rule book. It will not tell you which paint colour to choose or how to lay out a room. I hope it makes you feel differently about what home actually is and about how limitless its potential can be. A home can nurture radical ideas. Tell your family’s stories. Help build a supportive community. Somewhere to experience with higher forces. To manifest joy, whatever the circumstances. To me, this is ancestral intelligence.

I hope people finish the book inspired to think about how some of those principles might shape their own homes and lives. Because I sincerely believe they offer a blueprint for a richer, more connected and more fulfilling way of living. One which is, in many ways, an antidote to some of the more disconnected ways we are living now.

'House Proud: Black Interiors and Architecture Across Continents and Centuries' by Kemide Lawson is published by RIBA on 1st September, £50 hardback