Profile
Adedoyin Teriba’s research focuses on the history of modern architecture in a global context but more specifically on 19th- and 20th-century architecture in the Bight of Benin and the African Diaspora in Brazil. He is currently writing a dissertation titled “Architecture and Afro-Brazilian Ideals in Southwest Nigeria (1894–1944),” which explores how a 19th-century Afro-Brazilian immigrant group designed and built funerary, religious, residential, and royal architecture for a variety of clientele in southwest Nigeria.
Adedoyin is an architect who has worked for both architectural and construction management firms in New York, New Jersey, and Nigeria. In addition, he is an artist whose portfolio includes landscape paintings in watercolor, gouache, oil pastel, ink and charcoal, and pencil, sometimes mixing those media in the same artwork. He has also done architectural renderings for construction management firms in New York City. In the past, he has led architectural tours of downtown Lagos, Nigeria, for U.S. consular officials, and he was an architecture critic for MoveModern.com.
He holds a bachelor of architecture degree from the Federal University of Technology Minna, Nigeria, a master of architecture degree from the University of Oklahoma, as well as an M.A. in art history from Princeton University. He served as a curatorial assistant at the Princeton University Art Museum in 2009, working on the exhibition Life Objects: Rites of Passage in African Art. His dissertation research has been supported by fellowships from the Center for Cultural and Art Policy Studies and the Program of Latin American Studies at Princeton University, as well as its Department of Art and Archaeology.
Current Research
In addition to his dissertation, Adedoyin is working on how pre-rational experiences of architecture differ or overlap in various regions, as well as their possible impact on the writing of architectural history. He is also doing research on the nature of open-air museums, and the influence of the Civil Rights Movement on international architectural exhibitions. Furthermore, he is studying the potential of virtual studios to create international design teams that execute adaptive reuse architectural commissions around the world.
Selected Publications
“Using Notions of Beauty to Remember and Be Known in the Bight of Benin and Its Hinterland,” Pidgin Magazine 11 (2012); also published as “Usando noções de beleza para recordar e ser conhecido no Golfo de Benim e seus arredores,” Textos Escolhidos de Cultura e Arte Populares 10.1 (May 2013).
Review of David Adjaye, African Metropolitan Architecture (Rizzoli, 2011), in Architectural Record 200.8 (August 2012).