Ini Archibong often begins work not with shapes but with sounds — homemade hip-hop, to be precise. “Sometimes I don’t even sketch,” he says. “I’ll make an hour’s worth of beats and close my eyes. Those shapes I imagine become furniture pieces.” Archibong seems to relish mixing things up. Since graduating in 2015, he has created a curvaceous watch for Hermès, a hand-sculpted table mirror for watch brand Vacheron Constantin and an interactive sound installation in Dallas. Still just 37, he has the kind of CV that many more established makers would envy. His poetic, mystical designs reference everything from his Nigerian heritage to philosophy, fantasy stories, mathematics and music. For a while, he juggled music-making and design, but he decided to put his energy into the latter. “I knew that I could always make music, even if I didn’t have an audience,” he says, speaking via Zoom on a train to Geneva from Neuchâtel, where he is based.

The project now occupying his attention is arguably his most ambitious yet. It begins with a commission for this month’s London Design Biennale, the Pavilion of the African Diaspora, a temporary “folly” created in collaboration with architect Zena Howard from Perkins+Will. Sail-like in shape, the billowing structure evokes the ships that carried enslaved African people to America and the Caribbean. Installed on the terrace of Somerset House, it will act as a stage for talks and events celebrating African identity.

The pavilion will tell “the story of our people”, Archibong says: a “monument” to those from the African diaspora, as well as a testament to their global influence: “[It’s] a place that represents them. It’s also a physical space for them to express themselves to each other and for other people to bear witness to our dialogues.”