Oshinówò Studio adds a glass prism to Lutyens's Freetown Memorial, Sierra Leone

Sir Edwin Lutyens designed the Freetown Memorial in 1931 to honour soldiers who fell in the First World War. Nearly a century later, Tosin Oshinówò and her studio have restored it and added something new: an 8.4-metre prism of structural glass. It carries the etched names of more than 900 members of the Sierra Leone Carrier Corps, commemorated individually here for the first time. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Claire Horton calls the work part of "righting a historic wrong".

The memorial stands in the forecourt of the Ministry of Finance, now a controlled-access area, so Oshinówò turned to light to reach the wider city. Four glass fins, weighing 4,000kg in all, glow in colour and send a beam upwards that can be seen from about 5km across Freetown. It will be lit on significant days through the year, a way of remembering other tragedies in the country's history too. A Krio and English epitaph by poets Nii Ayikwei Parkes and Julianknxx is inscribed on the pavilion.

Lutyens's masonry was never meant to bear the extra weight, so the team reinforced it from within, a fix Oshinówò fondly calls "a root canal". Stonemasons and bronze specialists restored the original. Access to the forecourt is restricted, so for most visitors the beam over the city on commemorative days is the part to look out for.

Our summary of a story from Wallpaper*, published 7 November 2026. Read the original