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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... View full entry
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] [...] ?” — magazine.atavist.com
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... View full entry
From a self-sustaining city to refurbished-shipping containers, private sector real-estate developers are offering both big and small solutions — BBC News
Nancy Kacungira looks at how entrepreneurs are tackling the housing crisis in Lagos. View full entry
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.”
— naij.com
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... View full entry
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 — theguardian.com
"...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 KoolhaasRelated stories in the Archinect news:Koolhaas guides viewers through bustling Lagos... View full entry
'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.' — The Guardian
More in relation to slums:World's first Slum Museum is coming to MumbaiHousing mobility vs. America's growing slum problemHanoi: is it possible to grow a city without slums?In Lagos the poorest are paying the price of progress View full entry
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. — bustler.net
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:LAGOSBy NLÉ (Lagos, Nigeria and Amsterdam, Netherlands)Zoohaus/Inteligencias Colectivas (Madrid, Spain)HONG... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — Guardian
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. View full entry
