By Matthew Johnson

Before Ololade Temitope Oduneye draws a line, he asks a question most architects skip: what does this material cost the planet?

That question has defined his trajectory since he first picked up a drafting pencil in Ibadan, Nigeria, and it now sits at the centre of work that has earned him recognition from the Chartered Institute of Architecture and a Global Recognition Award for exceptional achievement.

Oduneye completed a BSc in Architectural Technology at Coventry University. The degree is almost a footnote to what he has actually been building: a coherent intellectual framework for low-carbon construction in an industry that still treats sustainability as an afterthought.

His two major research projects tell that story directly. The first examines geopolymer concrete, a cement alternative made from industrial waste products like fly ash and slag, and its potential to dramatically reduce the construction industry’s share of global greenhouse gas emissions, currently sitting at 39 percent of the total. The second investigates how low-carbon materials as a whole, from cross-laminated timber to recycled aggregates, can be systematically integrated into net-zero building design, using aquatic centres as the proving ground.

These are not abstract exercises. Oduneye anchors both pieces of work in real buildings, real data, and real constraints. He is interested in sustainable construction as a practice.

That instinct traces back to a career that began on construction sites and in care homes. Before university, he spent years as a freelance draughtsman at Terbaik Consult, translating architect intentions into technical drawings that workers could actually build from. In parallel, he worked as a healthcare assistant. Both roles demand the same things: precision, responsibility, and the habit of asking what a decision means for the person on the other end of it.

Those habits show up in his design work. As a selected representative at the Best in the Built Environment West Midlands Show, and as an Autodesk Certified User across AutoCAD and Revit, Oduneye has demonstrated the technical command to make ambitious ideas buildable. His proposed project converting a sports centre into a student facility, reworking the layout entirely while retaining the original structure and meeting BREEAM standards, is the kind of problem that separates people who understand sustainability from people who only talk about it.

Oduneye stands at the intersection of technical precision and environmental conviction, a combination the construction industry is actively short of. The questions he is driving through his work, about embodied carbon, circular material economies, and what net-zero actually requires at the building level, are the questions the next decade of construction will be decided by. He is positioned to help decide them.