A living
design language.

AGBOLÉ OYÈ is an independent, research-led design practice creating collectible furniture, lighting, and objects. In conversation with African and diasporic histories, the studio explores how cultural knowledge and inherited forms can inform contemporary design.

The practice takes inspiration from àgbò ilé, the Yoruba family compound, and the courtyard as a space connecting individual and communal life. Within this shared environment, different people, activities, and everyday rituals exist alongside one another. Rather than reproducing the architecture, AGBOLÉ OYÈ explores how these relationships can take shape through furniture, objects, and the spaces they help shape.

This understanding of shared space informs the studio’s exploration of Fourth Spaces, environments shaped by the experience of living between cultures, where different histories, identities, and ways of life can coexist without becoming the same. Grounded in cultural anthropology, with an interest in neuroarchitecture and neurodesign, the practice considers how material, proportion, and spatial arrangement can create opportunities for connection, belonging, and collective experience.

Influenced by Afro-now-ism ↗, developed by artist Stephanie Dinkins, the studio approaches cultural knowledge as something living, open to reinterpretation and new possibilities.

Research moves between historical references, material experimentation, prototyping, and collaboration. Through this process, the studio explores how ideas can move beyond their original contexts while remaining attentive to the people, places, and traditions from which they emerge.

The studio was founded by Omolola Oyetubo ↗, whose work also includes exhibitions and cultural gatherings through HOUSE OF OYE ↗.