Design in 7, 2024 | Wale Falade

Listen in as professionals from the fields of apparel design, architecture, graphic design, interior design, landscape architecture, product design, and retail share thought-provoking, inspiring, and often humorous tales from the design trenches.
Design in 7 is a two-time UMAA Program Extraordinaire Award Winner.
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Wale Falade (Wa-LAY FALL-ah-DAY)
Principal, Locus Architecture; President, MSP-NOMA
issuu.com/umndesign/docs/fina...
Born in Lagos, Nigeria - a city with over 15 million inhabitants and a complicated history - Wale’s early life experiences set the stage for reflection and a profound understanding of cultural identity. Because Lagos was colonized by the British, Wale never really learned much about pre-colonial Nigerian history growing up and the media he consumed tended to be Western.
An avid base player who dabbles in sound mixing and painting, Wale emigrated to Minnesota to study architecture and added yet another layer to his diverse background and experiences-challenging him to reconcile his heritage with new cultural dynamics.
Wale earned a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Minnesota and has worked in the industry for over 18 years, with projects in 40 U.S. states and Canadian provinces. He is a principal at Locus Architecture, founder of FIHÀN Design+Architecture, and the current president of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects.
Based on experience, Wale knows that cultural identity has many forms and layers - ethnicity, religion, politics, families, and corporations all have their own cultures. And, the “safe baseline” in a given culture is considered acceptable, but it’s also that perspective that limits our ideas and creativity. In preparation for this talk, Wale posed these evocative questions:
How do we learn to see things differently and appreciate the beauty of cultures outside of what we are familiar with?
How do we undergo a process of “unlearning” so we can be bold and push back against the things we're used to, and start seeing things with new eyes?