From a young age, Yinka Ilori's world was a colorful one. The London-based multidisciplinary artist and designer's parents and their friends dressed in eye-catching hues and favored rich Nigerian textiles, impressing upon Ilori color's ability to influence a person's mood or recall certain memories. In the years since, vibrant colors have become a tenant of Ilori's design work for his eponymous Yinka Ilori Studio, so, when it came time for the designer to create a studio space of his own in West London's Park Royal neighborhood, he began with a color story.
"For the studio, I have drawn on the colors that I associate with happy childhood memories and which I think inject the space with a sense of optimism and possibility," Ilori tells ARCHITECT via email. "I've also chosen these colors to create an atmosphere where my team and I can really let our imaginations run wild."
This means that the space—a formerly nondescript industrial-style unit—is finished with bursts of saffron, sky blue, and blushing pink and accented with every color from lime green to lavender. Arched doorways are orange, polished floors are a golden mustard, and hardware is red.
Ilori worked with the London-based architect Sam Jacob—founder of Sam Jacob Studio in London—to plan the project. Although Ilori and Jacob collaborated remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, they worked with the studio's original layout to define three distinct areas: an office and work space, and exhibition and archive space, and a communal table and kitchen.
"From the outset, I wanted to rethink what a studio could be and how it could serve multiple purposes as a space to not only create, but also as a meeting place, a space to display work, and where I could build a sense of community," Ilori says. "We wanted to experiment with the existing space to develop distinctive zones but also use dynamic partitions that would create flexibility and fluidity."
In addition to these partitions—an arrangement of sliding walls and translucent and felt curtains—color played a practical role in signaling the separate zones without closing anything off. "Color works as another spatial device, helping give definition, helping to connect or differentiate spaces from one another," Jacob tells ARCHITECT via email.
The move underscores the value of colorful architecture, a characteristic that some designers are wary of. "In architecture, there is a resistance that is in part about the fear of being seen to make a choice (a neutral tone is seen conversely as not being a choice)," Jacob says. "Color adds other layers—about taste, about meaning, about sensibility and feeling. All things that architecture tends to shy away from. Or rather, these are things that it would rather not talk about."
Color is also something, Jacob continues, often "trained out of architects" during school. "But there are many other traditions outside of the narrow architectural canon that engage with color—different histories, other traditions, and cultures as well as creative movements that show the amazing ability of color to contribute to design."
As Ilori and his growing team move into the studio, he hopes that the space and its design will inspire ambitious work. "This is the first space that really feels like my own," Ilori says. "I am always looking to push my practice further, experimenting with ideas and materials and I hope the space will inspire us as a team and spark new ideas and conversations."
