ILE AYE is the second chapter in an ongoing collaboration between EXTRALESS and OK-RM. This publication is both a document of the inauguration of the Ilewo Rammed Earth Initiative — a project to transform Ilewo Orile in Ogun State, Nigeria, into a site of cultural, ecological and architectural significance — and a space to investigate the notion of ‘Tools for the Performance of Life’, revealed here in elemental forms: earth and body. Through ILE AYE, the earth is tested materially and discursively, allowing indigenous knowledge and techne to recast, and be recasted by, contemporary design and architectural discourse. The artefacts, processes, and conceptual scaffolding presented are prototypes and armatures of possibility that continue the collaboration’s concern with performance and performativity. The promise of Ilewo, meaning the land of riches, is staged and materialised here. This convergence is held together by a dialogue of gentle tutelage, between a novice and a master toolmaker, in a narrative written by the artist, writer and educator Adjoa Armah. A map as well as a script, this dialogue offers guidance while invoking the certainty of the project’s success. With Orile itself meaning homeland, or more literally the earthing of one’s Ori, one’s divine essence, this project collapses multiple levels of belonging to position Ilewo Orile as both ground and horizon. ILE AYE is realised in its collaborations between local and international participants under the direction of EXTRALESS (Badé and Tokunbo Fontana) and OK-RM (Oliver Knight and Rory McGrath), including rammed earth specialist Kwame Deheer (Hive Earth Ghana), architect Takeshi Hayatsu, with textual interpretation by Adjoa Armah and visual documentation by Giovanna Silva, among many others. ILE AYE launches as part of an exhibition in London in June 2026. In this new forum and geography, it presents seven rammed earth artefacts within a former Jacobean schoolhouse (now the studio and exhibition space of artist Alvaro Barrington) activated through a performance by Adjoa Armah, a collective dialogue, shared meal and sonic lecture: a recommitment of the work as a site for collective study.
