Maryland Mall

Maryland Mall opened in June 2016, designed by Tosin Oshinowo as team lead at cmDesign Atelier, and it made her name in Lagos. The building is small and its programme is unremarkable; the decision that carries it is the colour. Oshinowo took a site at a bus interchange where the real audience is passing traffic, and painted the whole street elevation matte black so that the building would recede at night and only the illumination read — the signage and an outdoor LED screen described at the time as the largest in sub-Saharan Africa. It is an unusually clear piece of reasoning about what a commercial facade in Lagos is actually for, and it went against local expectation strongly enough that Oshinowo has repeatedly had to explain it. She founded cmDesign Atelier in 2012 after training in London and working at OMA.