SIMPLY SOUTH
makoko floating school by nlé
We are vey happy to start a new collaboration with Rosewood Magazine, a proud narrator of stories that matter, connecting singular subjects to a global audience. This young magazine focus on creativity on the African continent and trends in general.
There is a branch in architecture that is pretentiously treating both the interior and exterior of the house from a solution-oriented design, tailoring precisely both the house and the situation it arises from. Its pretensions go far beyond exhibitionistic or aesthetical spectacles.
Premises in counting while talking about this kind of architecture are sustainability, relativity to extreme conditions such as social and economic ones. The houses are then allowed to derive their own singular typography from those features, included in the start equation. The results are sometimes mercantile, sometimes of philanthropic nature. The resources are often limited, locally produced and by experience challenging to work with. However, those challenges didn’t appear to NLÉWORK as unobtainable, while working on Makoko floating school.
Nlé is an Amsterdam and Lagos based architecture and design unit, with focus on urbanism and city development, founded by Kunlé Adeyemi. Makoko floating school project started out as a self initiated project by the company in 2011, but later on received research funds from Heinrich Boll Stiftung, and construction funds from the federal ministry of environment Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP).
Makoko is one of Lagos’ poorest regions, with somewhere around 100,000 inhabitants, which, due to shortage of land, chose to build a great deal of their housing on water. Without a sustainable infrastructure to support this type of housing area, there is a huge risk of natural disasters such as fires and floodings.
Nléworks started to reflect on this issues back in 2011, and took on the initiative to build Makoko’s first sustainable floating house with the help of the Makoko residents. The idea is to create a safe, versatile house with a primary function as school, there after a clinic center, as well as community center. Our hope is that this brilliant initiative and continued work will give the habitants of Makoko a solid foundation to continue to grow, and to build a sustainable future on.
Text: Rosewood Magazine
Photo: Courtesy of Iwan Baan via Archdaily
