Press & Publications

Makoko Floating School was featured in the Swedish magazine Ingenjören, a publication for the national Swedish Engineers Association, p. 20.

An article “On the Waterfront” was published in Mark, an architectural magazine from Amsterdam. An extensive article includes an interview with Kunlé Adeyemi and Iwan Baan’s photography, pp. 134-141. “What’s important is that Makoko as a community now has a global audience.”

Makoko Floating School was featured in the German magazine Architektur, p. 27.

Makoko Floating School featured in Arqa – Portuguese Contemporary Architecture and Art Magazine, pp. 100-105.

When the Makoko Floating School was completed in March 2013, it received wildly enthusiastic critical acclaim from the international news media. The simple A-frame structure, buoyed by recycled plastic barrels in a lagoon in Lagos, Nigeria, was designed by NLÉ, a Lagos- and Amsterdam-based studio founded by the architect Kunlé Adeyemi.

The twelve winning projects of the Holcim Awards 2014 Africa Middle East focus mainly on enhancing social and environmental resilience, as well as the economy of construction.

… The idea that urban planning could build upon citizen action, rather than consisting of imposed boulevards or housing blocks (as with the urban renewal that originally gutted Roxbury) is gaining traction. The Museum of Modern Art, which has exhibited its fair share of top-down architectural proposals, amplifies that conversation with “Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities” opening Nov. 22.

The latest episode of Al Jazeera’s Rebel Architecture takes us to Nigeria, where architect Kunlé Adeyemi has designed floating buildings to help solve overcrowding and flooding in the country’s waterside slums. “I am constantly inspired by solutions we discover in everyday life in the world’s developing cities,” he says. Yet, despite his studio NLÉ’s easy-to-build, low-cost, sustainable prototype for a floating building, Adeyemi still struggles to get approval for their construction from the local authorities. This 25-minute episode follows Adeyemi as he seeks to implement his floating buildings.

In the waterside slums of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, 480,000 residents face the threat of displacement as the government seeks to redevelop their land, claiming urban renewal is necessary for economic development. But Kunlé Adeyemi has an alternative solution. He envisages a city of floating homes that would allow residents to remain within their community, and safe from rising tides, while at the same time improving the quality of their lives.

“Ripple Effect: Education and the next generation” is the theme of TEDxEuston Salon 2014. We have put together another set of amazing speakers that will challenge you in different ways!