Press & Publications

Over the last couple months winter storms have lashed the Massachusetts coastline, leading to flooding in Boston and other low-lying towns. As the Globe reported, the storm surges have prompted Boston officials to recast the city’s plans for dealing with rising sea levels. In that process, they might do well to look at similar planning… Continue reading The Boston Globe – MARCH 2013

Architect Kunle Adeyemi explains the logistics of building houses in the village of Makoko, Nigeria – Errol Barnett, CNN Inside Africa

A three-storey floating school will soon be used in Makoko, a poverty stricken community on the flooded coastline of Nigeria’s capital. The new primary school in the Lagos slum is built on a foundation of 256 plastic drums. Powered by solar panels on the roof, it will be able to accommodate more than 100 students.

Someday, whole floating cities could even migrate from one coastal area to another, giving urbanization mobility.

There are no roads or much infrastructure of any kind in the floating world of Makoko, a shantytown flowing out from Lagos, Nigeria’s waterfront. Teetering atop small piers, the maze of tenuous wooden structures is frequently inundated by floods. Like many coastal cities, Lagos’ burgeoning population is faced with the increasing threat of more frequent… Continue reading Architectural Record – March 2013

Unpredictable climate changes along the world’s most vulnerable coastal communities, have produced some fascinating design solutions that test the resiliency of architectural possibilities and the need for adaptation that will produce these changes. The coastal community of Makoko, a slum neighborhood, off the Lagos Lagoon in Lagos, Nigeria, is receiving an upgrade to its current… Continue reading ARCHDAILY – MARCH 2013

The usual approach to building in a flood zone is to put everything on stilts, as many residents of Rockaway, Queens, are considering in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. That’s also been the approach in the slum settlement of Makoko in Lagos, Nigeria, where many residents live in illegal wood shanties propped up on stilts,… Continue reading Architizer – March 2013

MAKOKO, the coastal community in Lagos, hosted dignitaries and members of the international community last week, as a school, which was constructed on the Lagos Lagoon with an amazing input of Dutch marine architecture, was formally opened to the public.

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.