Archinect - News

Demas Nwoko receives the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award

2023-03-27T13:59:00-04:00

Multitalented Nigerian architect, sculptor, and designer Demas Nwoko is named the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Biennale in recognition of what curator Lesley Lokko described as the “polyglot nature of his talents and oeuvres and to the rather narrow interpretation of the word ‘architect’ that has arguably kept his name out of the annals.”

Nwoko's work was also commended by Lokko for his polymath abilities and commitment to sustainability, adding: “Although relatively few, Nwoko’s buildings in Nigeria fulfill two critical roles. They are forerunners of the sustainable, resource-mindful, and culturally authentic forms of expression now sweeping across the African continent — and the globe — and they point towards the future, no mean achievement for someone whose work is still largely unknown, even at home.”

Nwoko was born in the rural town of Idumuje-Ugboko and was educated at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science, and Technology. One of the orig...

Tosin Oshinowo-designed village reconstruction completes first phase in conflict-torn northern Nigeria

2022-11-03T15:43:00-04:00

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has released images of its just-completed first phase of the Tosin Oshinowo-designed Ngarannam village reconstruction project in Northeast Nigeria.

The project to resettle villagers displaced by Boko Haram was begun last year as part of the UNDP’s Regional Stabilisation Facility Initiative, which will rebuild a total of six communities in three of the country’s northeastern states profoundly affected by conflicts with the insurgent group in order to "quickly mend trust between the people and government."

Image courtesy UNDP/Tolulope Sanusi

The new Ngarannam village includes a total of 564 units of housing, a primary school, police station, community health center, shaded market, security forces barracks, government offices, and 16 small shops. Additional defensive trenches were enacted around the perimeter of the site to provide extra security in the case of emergency, and another 240 housing units wil...

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...

'Undoing of objectification:' Adjaye Associates unveils design for new Edo Museum of West African Art

2020-11-16T13:55:00-05:00

The three-story building, designed by David Adjaye, looks almost like a palace from the ancient Kingdom of Benin. On Friday, the architect, the British Museum and the Nigerian authorities also announced a $4 million archaeology project to excavate the site of the planned museum, and other parts of Benin City, to uncover ancient remains including parts of the city walls.

In October 2019, Adjaye Associates was selected to design a new museum to house historic artifacts looted by colonial powers in Benin City, modern-day Nigeria. Designs for this planned Edo Museum of West African Art were unveiled on Friday.

"We are proposing an undoing of the objectification that has happened in the West through full reconstruction," said Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye in a statement. "The new museum design reconstructs the inhabitation of these forms as pavilions that enable the recontextualization of artefacts. Decoupling from the Western museum model, this museum will perform as a reteaching tool — a place to instill an understanding of the magnitude and importance of these civilizations and cultures."

Image: Adjaye Associates

"Adjacent to the Oba’s Palace, the new EMOWAA draws inspiration from its historical architectural typologies and establishes its own courtyard in the form of a public garden, exhibiting a variety of indigenous flora and a canopy tha...

Yinka Ilori on design and design inclusivity

2020-06-17T17:58:00-04:00

Walking into Yinka Ilori’s west London studio from the drab suburban business park outside is to enter an oasis. Floor-to-ceiling shelving is lined with the brightly coloured, upcycled chairs, painted or upholstered in West African fabrics, that made Ilori’s name when he first left college. [...] “My work is very much about inclusivity and how people enjoy design,” says the 33-year-old.

Emerging British-Nigerian designer Yinka Ilori in conversation with The Guardian's Observer Design magazine.

Asked about his growing courage to also take on architectural-scale projects, such as his collaboration with architects Pricegore on the 2019 Dulwich Pavilion The Colour Palace, Ilori responds: "Architecture and design should be for everyone, not just one group. Sometimes it’s not as inclusive as it should be."

Happy Street, London by Yinka Illori. Photo: Luke O'Donovan.

Adjaye Associates selected to design museum in Nigeria for repatriated artifacts

2019-10-04T13:39:00-04:00

Architect David Adjaye has been selected to design a new museum in Nigeria that may one day hold cultural and artistic works that were previously looted from the region by colonial powers.

Adjaye Associates, who helped design the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., has been commissioned to undertake a feasibility study with local partner Agram Architects for the new Benin Royal Museum in Nigeria, Art News writes.

Adjaye currently consults for the Benin Dialogue Group, a cultural repatriation-focused entity that includes representatives from major European and Nigerian museums. During the colonial era, many of West Africa’s most precious art and cultural objects were stolen by colonizing powers, and as a result, now sit scattered across the world’s museums, including the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, according to Art News.

The Benin Dialogue Group is working to coordinate the tricky task of repatriating some o...

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.

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.'

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.

School at Sea

2013-05-30T14:10:00-04:00

In Makoko, a sprawling slum on the waterfront of Lagos, Nigeria, tens of thousands of people live in rickety wood houses teetering above the fetid lagoon. It’s an old fishing village on stilts, increasingly battered by floods from heavy rains and rising seas. Because the settlement was becoming dangerous, the government forcibly cleared part of it last year.

Kunle Adeyemi, a Nigerian architect, had a better idea. He and his team asked what the community wanted, and with its help and money from the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the United Nations, he devised a floating school: a low-cost three-story A-frame, buoyed by about 250 plastic barrels, with a 1,000-square-foot play area, classrooms, rainwater collection and composting toilets. Made to serve 100 elementary-school children, the building provides a flexible and robust prototype for housing and other potential structures. In Iwan Baan’s mystical photographs, Makoko emerges as a kind of crazy-quilt grid. The school, just opened, stands apart, its peak rising above the rest of the settlement, like a lighthouse.

Michael Kimmelman, NYT

In Lagos the poorest are paying the price of progress

2013-03-05T14:00:00-05:00

The Lagos state commissioner for housing, Adedeji Olatubosun Jeje, provided a different version of events. “It’s a regeneration of a slum,” he said. “We gave enough notification. The government intends to develop 1,008 housing units. What we removed was just shanties.

Adam Nossiter covers recent slum clearance efforts led by the governor of Lagos, Babatunde Fashola. As Lagos aims to become a premier business center, the city’s poor and homeless are becoming the government’s enemy. Last week, parts of Badia East (with perhaps 10,000 residents) were demolished while last summer the floating neighborhood of Makoko (which was home to perhaps 30,000). In total activists estimate upwards of a million people have been forcibly ejected from their homes over the last 15 years.

Africa's First Plastic Bottle House Rises in Nigeria

2011-11-07T15:07:21-05:00

The Development Association for Renewable Energies (DARE) – an NGO based in Nigeria – is almost finished with an incredible two-bedroom bungalow entirely out of plastic bottles. Although many in Kaduna were dubious when the project began construction in June this year, the nearly-complete home is bullet and fireproof, earthquake resistant, and maintains a comfortable interior temperature of 64 degrees fahrenheit year round.