Indy Johar and Grayson Perry also among those recognised in King Charles III’s first New Year Honours
Scottish-Ghanaian architect Lesley Lokko and Dark Matters Laboratories co-founder Indy Johar are among the architecture names recognised in King Charles III’s first New Year Honours list.
Lokko, who is the founder and director of the Africa Futures Institute in Accra and is curating this year’s Venice Biennale, received an OBE for services to architecture and education.
She said she was “deeply touched and honoured by this unexpected recognition, not just for me personally, but for the wider field of architectural education, which is so richly expanded by the ongoing inclusion of different voices.”
Lokko was recognised for an “outstanding and sustained contribution to architecture and education”, which was said to have “radically changed the global conversation around race, identity, and architecture”.
Her book White Papers, Black Marks: Race Space and Architecture, published in 2000, was a highly influential work which pioneered the study of race within architecture.
Johar, who also co-founded design studio Architecture 00, was awarded an MBE for services to architecture. He is an advisor to the Mayor of London on good growth with his practice Dark Matter Laboratories focused on building institutional infrastructure for towns and cities.
Artist Grayson Perry was also handed the highest ranking honour of CBE for services to the arts.
Perry, who won the prestigious Erasmus Prize in 2021 for contributions to culture, was appointed trustee of the British Museum and Chancellor of the University of the Arts London, and received a RIBA honorary fellowship in 2016.
His collaborations with architects include a fairytale-inspired Essex home designed with FAT and completed in 2015, and an affordable housing scheme with architects Apparata.
Also recognised was Pamela Beaumont Robertson, lately the curator of The Hunterian Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow, who was given an MBE for services to Architecture, and Celia Sinclair Thornqvist, founder of The Willow Tea Rooms Trust, who was also handed an MBE.
The pair both worked on the Simpson & Brown-designed restoration of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s category A-listed Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street, which was opened by King Charles and Queen-consort Camilla in 2018.
Recipients of honours given for services to construction included Bill Robertson, the founder of Scottish construction firm Robertson Group, who received a knighthood in the New Year Honours List.
Professor David Mosey, former director of construction law and dispute resolution at King’s College London, was handed a CBE for services to the construction industry.
Last year, the former Trowers & Hamlins partner’s review of public sector – ‘Constructing the Gold Standard’ – was approved and adopted in its entirety by government.
“I am very grateful to the construction industry and its clients for supporting my research into the collaborative delivery of improved value, reduced risks and net zero carbon,” said Mosey.
“The construction sector makes enormous contributions to our society when its specialists share their knowledge through a strategic approach to procurement and contracting.”
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