Alero Therese Olympio was born in Accra, Ghana on May 31, 1959 to the late Bonito Olympio, a Togolese/Ghanaian, and to Cecile McHardy, a Jamaican. In 1957, Ghana was the first African country to achieve independence. Cecile McHardy, along with other intellectuals of the African diaspora, came to offer help and support to the Nkrumah government. In 1967, after the coup d’etat which overthrew Kwame Nkrumah, Cecile Mchardy and her daughter left for France, where Olympio attended Catholic school for two years. In 1969, she returned to Ghana. In 1970, at age 10, she published a book co-written with her mother. Akosua in Brazil (Ghana Publishing Corporation 1970) is an illustrated tale of a Ghanaian girl’s journey to Brazil.

From 1969 to 1976 she attended Ghana’s Achimota Secondary School, where she completed her GCE O-levels in 1976. From 1977 to 1979 she attended St. Leonard’s School in St. Andrews, Scotland, where she completed her GCE A-levels. In 1982, she graduated with a B.Sc. in Building Construction and Architecture from the University of Dundee, Scotland.

From 1982 to 1983, Olympio worked with Henri Porrier et Associes in Paris, France. They worked on a competition project to design a University of Mining and Geology in Niamey, Niger, funded by the Deutsche Bank. Olympio conducted research and designed prototypes for low-cost, energy-efficient housing in dry climates such as the Sahel’s. The competition was won, and the project built in 1984.

She returned to Scotland for a post-graduate in Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, and to complete Part Two of the Royal Institute of British Architects Registration. In 1986, she graduated with a Dip. Arch. RIBA (Diploma in Architecture of the Royal Institute of British Architects).
Upon graduation, Olympio worked as Assistant Architect the Edinburgh practice J & F Johnston and Co., working on residential development, supermarkets, and restoration and conversion projects. In 1986, the company became a member of the Scottish Export Consortium, a body set up to market Scottish consultants overseas. Olympio became a consultant to the Scottish Development Association (SDA) and to the British Overseas Trade Board. In 1987, she became Associate Director of J & F Johnston Overseas, and introduced it to the West African Market. The company was responsible for projects including the 4-star, 200-room Golden Tulip International Hotel in Accra (Contractors: Taylor Woodrow International), built and completed in 1991. In 1991, Olympio was awarded the fitting-out contract for the hotel.

It was during this period, beginning in 1988, that Olympio began her work in sustainable architecture in her home country, Ghana. From the beginning, her work explored the use of natural materials, local building techniques, technology transfer, and energy-efficient, locally-relevant construction. She created a Design/Build proposal for self-build, low-cost workers’ housing for the aluminium company VALCO, as well as a proposal for self-build rammed-earth houses. That same year, Olympio built three-bedroom prototypes for Ghana’s Ministry of Housing (at a construction cost of $200/house). Olympio then worked with the 31st of December Women’s Movement on a technology transfer program for training and production of earth bricks. She compiled the research project “Natural Materials for Architecture in Africa,” which studied the application of earth, timber, and stone building technologies.

In 1990, Olympio’s interest in carpentry and knowledge of Ghanaian timber led her to open a small hardwood furniture company. “Market Furniture” was an Edinburgh design workshop which crafted antique reproductions using secondary hardwoods from Ghana. The workshop was affiliated to factories in Ghana which produced knock-down parts for export. For three years, the company imported and assembled furniture, and then supplied it to the trade in Britain. Olympio’s goal in opening the workshop was to develop handcrafted production skills for export and to encourage the use of the lesser known hardwood species. A big advocate for encouraging the Timber industry to take responsibility for replanting, and Olympio’s studio was a contributor to the Ghana Forestry Commission replanting programme.

Olympio opened a small private practice in Edinburgh in 1994, concerned with design, conversion, and restorations.

1995 marked the beginning of Olympio’s development of her own particular African architecture. As Architect and Builder, she designed and built a private residential development of six houses for sale and rent in West Legon, Accra (Jamaica Estates).

In 1996, she designed and began construction of the Kokrobitey School, an American-Ghanaian International Educational Institution built on the beach of the fishing village of Kokrobitey. The School is the project in which Olympio explored and developed her ideas, and in which these ideas most coalesce. It is built entirely out of local materials—specifically laterite, stone, and secondary hardwoods. The design is inspired by traditional Asante compound house design, utilizes recycled materials and other elements of sustainable design, and was built by villagers.

In 1997, USAID financed Kakum National Park, a landscape project for Conservation International, in Ghana’s Central Region (West of Accra along the coast). The park includes Africa’s only rainforest canopy walk. Olympio worked as Designer and contractor for the ethnobotanical mountain trail, with its various pavilions, resting points and landscaping.

From 1998 until her death in 2005, Olympio continued to design and build in Ghana, exploring different problems and their solutions in residential projects such as The Actor’s House, The Tresaco Valley House, and the Spintex Road Project.