Press & Publications

Makoko, a slum community that straddles Herbert Macaulay, Yaba, and the Lagos Lagoon, will get a much desired reprieve through a regeneration initiative supported by the UNDP. The transformation programme begins with a floating school but the building design could replace their homes, writes Bennett Oghifo

As a way of improving the quality of education in a sustainable way, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is constructing a group of floating schools in Makoko coastal community of Lagos.

NLÉ Architects are pioneering sustainable development and building a floating school in flood-prone Lagos. Led by Nigerian architect Kunle Adeyemi, the new multilevel school will address the community’s issues of poor waste management and land scarcity.

In Lagos, Makoko Slum — where many houses are built on stilts over the polluted, dark waters of the waterfront and lagoon — is perceived as a development blight and hurdle to the city’s development. To counter this perception, and to adapt innovatively to challenging circumstances, an urban planning firm has designed a prototype school… Continue reading Huffington Post – February 2013

Showing welcome concern for the low standard of life of the inhabitants of Makoko coastal community of Lagos, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has started the construction of special “floating schools” for children.

WorldStage Newsonline– A new initiative aimed at assisting the clustered Makoko community area of Lagos, South-West Nigeria to adapt to the effect of climate change has resulted in the construction of a floating school, courtesy of NLE- an architectural firm with the support of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Africa Adaptation Programme and Heinrich Boll Stiftung.

Architecture has always had the ability to shape how we live our lives and our relationship with the surrounding environment. For the residents of Makoko, Lagos in Nigeria, the threat of flooding is a part of their daily existence, with the July 2012 floods in Nigeria killing 363 people and displacing over 2 million residents.

In a geographically changing world where water levels are steadily rising, many coastal and waterfront communities are finding themselves inundated with the problem of adaptive housing solutions that withstand swelling tides and swift currents. flood-proof schemes are floating around most commonly implementing various stilt systems to elevate the structure above predetermined water lines, but even… Continue reading Designboom – March 2013

Design and urbanism practice NLÉ, led by Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi, is building a new multilevel school in Makoko – a region of Nigeria’s most populous city, Lagos. While that doesn’t sound too unusual, the difference here is that in an effort to address the issues of land scarcity and poor waste management that affect the flood-prone area, this school is being built on floating platforms.

Designed for a flood-prone area of Nigeria, this school would keep students in school even after the heaviest rains.

Their canoes drift on the water as piles of rubbish float outside their shacks.
Shabby shacks on stilts, floating waste and rickety boats fill the expanse of murky water.
But for the thousands of poor people forced to live in Nigeria’s infamous Makoko slum in Lagos, this is their home.

For the community of Makoko of Lagos, Nigeria life on the water is nothing new. Prone to flooding, residents have dealt with encroaching waters for generations by building houses on stilts and using canoes as their main source of transport. Now, with the threat of sea level rise from climate change, and developers who want to tear the community down, Makoko is in a state of uncertainty.

On Saturday, June 3, 2006 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Oldcastle Glass will co-host a one-day symposium at the museum entitled “Contamination: Impure Architecture” on opening day of the special exhibition Zaha Hadid, on view at the Guggenheim through October 25, 2006 – bringing together leading architectural theorists and practitioners to discuss the theoretical notion of contamination and architecture. The following roster of international architects and designers are participating: Kunlé Adeyemi, Elizabeth Diller, Zaha Hadid, Sanford Kwinter, Greg Lynn, Gabriele Mastrigli, Alex McDowell, Farshid Moussavi, Patrik Schumacher and Bernard Tschumi. Kunlé Adeyemi’s article ‘Urban Crawl’ was published in the Log Journal 10 of Summer/Fall 2007.

Respite appears to be on the way for sacked residents of Makoko area of Yaba, as an architect, Mr. Kunle Adeyemi, Thursday said he had concluded plans to build a three-story school out of the 16 floating platforms lashed together to enhance the educational needs of the people of the area.

In the waterfront slum of Makoko in Nigeria’s largest city where shacks stand above the murky, fetid water on stilts of cast-aside lumber, an architect thinks the neighborhood should float.

Nigeria architect, designer and ‘urbanist’, Kunle Adeyemi of NLÉ in partnership with the Heinrich Boell Stiftung, has proposed plans to build a three-story school out of 16 floating platforms lashed together, capable of holding 100 students and teachers, in the waterfront slum of Makoko, area of Yaba, Lagos.

Nigerian Architect, Kunle Adeyemi Brings Hope to Makoko Slum with the Floating School Project

Kunlé Adeyemi is appointed as 2011 Callison Distinguished Visiting Lecturer of the University of Washington, teaching and researching ‘The Modern City in the Age of Globalization’ in Chandigarh – India’s first planned modernist city.

“The photography will aim to masterly orchestrate a new mental space in the lives of its people to correctly reveal the great qualities of the cities, to dispel dreadful myths from pleasant realities, to unravel the positive social and cultural operative mechanisms of the city to the people by its people and to other global observers.’

Shenzhen, 22 November 2007 – Officials from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SSE) and local government together with representatives from the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) have broken ground for the construction of the new headquarters for China’s equivalent of the NASDAQ. Founder and Partner of OMA, Rem Koolhaas, OMA’s Managing Partner Victor van der Chijs… Continue reading Shenzhen Stock Exchange Ground Breaking Ceremony – November 2007

A proposal for a floating building in the water community of Makoko, located in the city of Lagos, Nigeria. The project is an innovative approach to address social and physical needs in view of current challenges of climate change and an urbanising African context.

The laudation for the winning entry Butaro Hospital by MASS DESIGN was given by Kunlé Adeyemi, founder of NLÉ Architects, Amsterdam and a member of the Zumtobel 2012 Award jury.

Next to interviews with Saskia Sassen and with the Nigerian-born architect Kunlé Adeyemi, and a series of contributions that discuss Next Urbanism in general, we feature eleven articles that focus specifically on the cities of each of the Next Eleven countries. – MONU Magazine

City Catalyst: Architecture in the Age of Extreme Urbanisation
Alexander Eisenschmidt
• Featured architects: Kunlé Adeyemi/NLE, Atelier Bow-Wow, Jürgen Mayer H, Normal Architecture Office (NAO), Adriaan Geuze/West 8, Ron Witte/WW, UrbanLab, Sean Lally/Weathers, and OMA.

Join us as we engage with a panel of experts constituting the most daring and innovative thinkers on African cities and societies, in a discussion on contemporary solutions to a new century’s challenges and opportunities.

Lagos is Africa’s largest city. Next to the sea, it experiences regular flooding from tropical rains, and water is a way of life for many residents, particularly those in Makoko. People living in this fishing community have built their homes on the water and trade on it. But the area has just one primary school. Nigerian architect Kunle Adeyemi is hoping to build another – one that floats on the water and is powered by solar panels.