Archinect - News

Questions surround the deadly collapse of a 21-story tower during construction in Lagos, Nigeria

2021-11-02T16:11:00-04:00

At least 16 people have been confirmed dead after the collapse of a 21-story apartment tower which was under construction in Lagos, Nigeria. The collapse occurred on Monday, November 1st in the city’s Ikoyi district, on a construction site for luxury apartments. As of Tuesday, November 2nd, nine people have been pulled alive from the rubble with over 100 people still feared missing, many of whom are construction workers.

The apartment building had been under construction for the past two years and is one of three towers being built on the site by a private developer named Fourscore Homes. The cheapest unit to be marketed in the now-ruined structure was selling for $1.2 million. According to Bloomberg, Nigerian authorities have now arrested the owner of the building on undisclosed charges.

In June of this year, the building site was temporarily sealed off for failing to meet structural integrity requirements and to allow for anomalies to be corrected before construction recommen...

The story behind Kunlé Adeyemi's Makoko floating school collapse

2018-03-02T14:02:00-05:00

There is a persistent risk of doing harm, dashing hopes, and eroding trust with trial and error, no matter how virtuous the objectives. It is the duty of the powerful to minimize that risk as much as possible. “It was supposed to be innovation, but now we’re being told it was experimentation,” Papa Omotayo, a Lagos-based architect and friend of Adeyemi’s, said of the floating school a few days after the collapse. “The issue is, can you experiment in a community like [Makoko] [...] ?”

Kunlé Adeyemi's floating school was built in 2013 and collapsed in 2016. The structured was meant to served 100 elementary students in Makoko, a heavily populated slum on Lagos' waterfront. Classes were only held for about 4 months in the 3 years it stood.

Now two years later, Allyn Gaestel analyses the full story around the failed structure in her long-form piece titled "Things Fall Apart". The question is raised: is it ok to experiment with trial and error in marginalized communities?

Allyn Gaestel explains, "The project was a chimera composed of flawed and superficial ideas and curated by deflection, obfuscation, and overestimation." As the situation stands now money has been donated, however no decision has been reached on what to do next.

Entrepreneurs seek solutions to solve Lagos' housing crisis

2017-01-25T13:24:00-05:00

From a self-sustaining city to refurbished-shipping containers, private sector real-estate developers are offering both big and small solutions

Nancy Kacungira looks at how entrepreneurs are tackling the housing crisis in Lagos.

Kunlé Adeyemi's Makoko floating school collapses

2016-06-10T13:24:00-04:00

The school collapsed on Tuesday after a heavy rainfall that took over most part of the Lagos including Makoko, a slum and highly populated part of the state [...] “So as far as that floating school is concerned, it was erected without the permission of the state government. “The simple answer to the floating school is that it is an illegal structure and it shouldn’t be there.”

Kunlé Adeyemi's floating school was built with the help of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2013, to serve 100 elementary school students living in the Makoko slum on Lagos' waterfront. About 300,000 people are estimated to be living in the slum, which before the floating school was built, was going to be demolished due to health concerns. The school had a influential role in convincing the government to instead adopt a "regeneration plan" for the slum.

From The Guardian:

The school became a symbol of bottom-up development, its designs even adopted by the state ministry of urban development for new house plans. The collapse throws this process into disarray.

Plans to rebuild are reportedly already underway.

Related on Archinect:

Rem Koolhaas and Kunlé Adeyemi sit down with Guardian Cities to discuss Lagos

2016-02-29T14:53:00-05:00

In 1997 two architects set out to rethink Lagos, an African megacity that had been largely abandoned by the state. Amid the apparent chaos and crime, they discovered remarkable patterns of organisation. Two decades later, Rem Koolhaas and Kunlé Adeyemi discuss the past, present and future of the city – and reveal why their own project never saw the light of day

"...it was the ultimate dysfunctional city – but actually, in terms of all the initiatives and ingenuity, it mobilised an incredibly beautiful, almost utopian landscape of independence and agency." - Rem Koolhaas

What Makoko can teach about "organic" urban development

2016-02-25T14:53:00-05:00

'Why can’t communities simply be communities and develop in the organic way that we allow other communities to develop?'...'They are inspirational in that people have developed them themselves, without government and real estate types pushing them around. Without a doubt, they still have problems. But they are stabilising themselves and, over time, knitting themselves into the fabric of their cities. This is a true marvel of global urbanism.'

MoMA's “Uneven Growth” case studies conclude with exhibition this month

2014-11-13T13:03:00-05:00

MoMA began its "Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities" initiative last year aiming to advance international discussion on disproportionate urban development and its potential consequences. To address this issue, six interdisciplinary teams spent 14 months in workshops designing proposals that investigate new architectural possibilities for six metropolises. Each case study will be exhibited to the public at MoMA starting on November 22.

But the discussion doesn't end there. MoMA also created a user-generated Tumblr that collects examples of emerging modes of tactical urbanism taking place in the six cities.

Here's a glimpse:

LAGOS
By NLÉ (Lagos, Nigeria and Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Zoohaus/Inteligencias Colectivas (Madrid, Spain)

HONG KONG
By MAP Office (Hong Kong, China)
Network Architecture Lab (Columbia University, New York, U.S.)

ISTANBUL
By Superpool (Istanbul, Turkey)
Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (Paris, France)

MUMBAI
By URBZ: user-generated cities (Mumbai, India)
Ensamble Studio/MIT-POPlab (Madrid, Spain and Cambridge, U.S.)

RIO DE JANEIRO
By RUA Arquitetos (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
MAS Urban Design at ETH (Zurich, Switzerland)

NEW YORK
By SITU Studio (New York, U.S.)
Cohabitation Strategies (CohStra) (Rotterdam, Netherlands AND New York, U.S.)

For further details and images from each case study, head over to Bustler.

Koolhaas guides viewers through bustling Lagos in this interactive documentary

2014-06-24T18:51:00-04:00

The documentary Lagos Wide and Close - An Interactive Journey into an Exploding City, arose from Rem Koolhaas' 2001 visit to Lagos, Nigeria with filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak, hoping to document a phase in one of Africa's fastest growing cities. The doc's unique direction allows viewers to switch between two video and three audio channels in realtime, mixing and matching different perspectives on the city. At once documenting Lagos from the personal perspective of bus driver Olawole Busayo ("Close"), and an aerial urban view ("Wide"), the interactive piece samples from Busayo's daily journey, interviews with Lagos' citizens, and comments by Koolhaas.

After visiting in 2001, Koolhaas continued to research Lagos throughout the early 'aughts with the Project on the City at Harvard's GSD, leading to the interactive documentary's release on DVD in 2004. The film is now available to experience online, where viewers can take full advantage of the multi-modal storytelling, and flip through ...

Eko Atlantic - privatized vs. collective, ecological survival

2014-01-22T10:02:00-05:00

The disaster capitalists behind Eko Atlantic have seized on climate change to push through pro-corporate plans to build a city of their dreams, an architectural insult to the daily circumstances of ordinary Nigerians.

Martin Lukacs argues that Eko Atlantic, a new privatized city to be built near Lagos, Nigeria, is the perfect illustration of how the super-rich will exploit the crisis of climate change to increase inequality and seal themselves off from its impacts.