<INTERVIEW> As part of our ongoing curiosity into urban spaces, we’re always keen to hear the narratives of those on the ground, reflecting on their practice and local perspectives, providing a platform for comparative analysis with other global urbanist narratives.
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Ka’ssa INTERVIEW with STEPHEN AJADI
On a walkabout around the University of Lagos (Unilag) campus (2017), Ka’ssa co-founder Aminat Laval Agoro came across Stephen Ajadi’s poster presentation of his Lady Marina architectural project. Struck by his poetic metaphor of Lagos we tracked him down on Insta and asked him to elaborate on the project as well as his wider practice and insights into urbanist discourses on the Continent.
We discuss context conscious strategies of developing Lagos as a smart city as opposed to the technologically digital-driven initiative of Lagos as some kind of potential sci-fi project, using data collection (such as space syntax, visibility, human entropy, wind load, soil stability and solar radiation) to predict and prevent certain poor, un-inclusive planning and the eye is an evasive machine.
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Ka’ssa: How do you see yourself as an urbanist?
Stephen Ajadi [SA]: Well, first of all, I am an architect, but in the last few years, my work has transcended the scale and jurisdiction of architecture into that of planning. I had some further education in economics and planning and I guess it opened up my curiosity. I am also preoccupied with issues and projects of planning among other things. Typically, I do not think planning makes one an urbanist, but in my case, planning has drawn my curiosity to urbanism and in turn, urbanisation. It is the biggest environmental discourse currently and many other environmental issues can be linked to urbanisation and its process. I am curious about this global change, how it progresses and what it means.
[Ka’ssa]: What are some of the themes/guiding principles that are central to your practice?
[SA]: I lead a think tank called the African Collaborative Institute of Design. It is often called ACID. We do not have a specific manifesto. We stay practical but also highly experimental and protean. Our projects are driven by a number of specific factors. Our core interest is in the development of the environment, the lives of people and sustenance of various ways of life that benefit humanity. Africa is mostly a focus, but we have a global outlook that keeps in mind the issue of Africa as a participator in the global scope of the environment. Through architecture, circular economics and planning, we try to speculate, study, and engage the environment across time, space and culture…and across the entire value chain of the built environment. We want to ask questions just as much as we can answer other questions. Sometimes we try to reveal problems, other times we try to solve them. There are times we do both.
[Ka’ssa]: Please describe your favourite entrance.
[SA]: I do not know what you mean… Are you talking about an entrance to a piece of architecture?
[Ka’ssa]: Yes. You could interpret it that way.
[SA]: This is a weird question <laughs>. I do not have a favourite entrance. I think entrances usher in varying levels of experience in different scenarios. Usually the question is: ‘to celebrate or not to celebrate?’. But this is not the only notion towards an entrance. How about to mourn, to evade, to engulf, and so on? An entrance exists in any piece of architecture; you cannot not have an entrance. Even if there are no doors or windows —if it were a building. The eye enters a building and sees into it. The eye is an evasive machine you cannot keep out. Whether accurately or not, the eye ends up seeing something: It assumes, it speculates, it prophesies, it reports, it hates, it loves. An entrance that recognises this truth and tries to engage with its eventuality, either consciously or unconsciously is probably a type of entrance I might fancy. I have hardly thought about your question until now, so I am not really sure. It has always been a subconscious concern I guess. I do agree that the way architecture is entered is important.
[Ka’ssa]: Please elaborate on your Lady Marina architectural project.
[SA]: The Lady Marina project, was created in 2013 as a proposal for a hotelier with a global network. The Lagos marina was the site and I was concerned, really concerned, about the advent of such a typology at the location. I decided a pure hotel will be less than adequate, maybe even a bit selfish. The economy of land with respect to the spatial needs of the Lagos marina in the context of the people who perform activities there was a big consideration. It later came down to a cluster of typologies—a mixed use that will attempt to satisfy the social and physical needs of the area. This needed to be done with an economic approach to keep the interest of the client. However, the agreement that the project developed as a statement of urban inclusivity was unwavering. It wasn’t specifically for the lower class, but every social class in the city will be able to democratically engage it in one way or another. What I wanted was clear, I did not want a mammoth zombie existing only for financial gain.
‘Lady Marina overlaps architecture, urban transport and big data in a confluence that results not only in an environmentally conscious vertically mixed-typology cluster, but a burgeoning restorative organism within the city.’
Lady Marina is not just a Tower. She marks the spawning of many new infrastructure daughters of Lagos for the next generation. The building is fashioned after the cancellous bone’s extension and connective propensities. This opens up possibilities of large vertical masses with minimal physical footprints on real estate. With the current and impending population situation, and for the sake of medium to high income commercial and residential shelter, considering low income engagement, the tower capitalizes on two of the most down-played resources in the city: transportation and data. These resources are engaged in the tower with a motive of redirecting the city towards a sustainable economy of information.
Prior to Lady Marina, information had not really enjoyed attention in the framework of a circular economy in African cities. There was no notion of circular economy in the country. The plan for the project is to provide sustainable information as a platform for forging infrastructures that can withstand the population load of the city. ACID posits that if a lot of relevant information can be perpetually derived from medium to high income regions, it can contribute to the ease of fostering inclusivity within Lagos city. Lady Marina overlaps architecture, urban transport and big data in a confluence that results not only in an environmentally conscious vertically mixed-typology cluster, but a burgeoning restorative organism within the city. Daily, over 2 million vehicles animate the streets of Lagos alongside about 9 million pedestrians. Lady Marina’s geometry is computationally and algorithmically orchestrated to respond to strategic sides beyond the marina to gather data. The information it acquires include: space syntax, visibility, human entropy, wind load, soil stability and solar radiation. Data at such scale can help study pedestrian and vehicular behaviour as well as predict and prevent certain poor, un-inclusive planning. Cutting edge membrane sensor technology combined with advanced piezoelectric interventions generate data and energy from human activities that occur within and around the tower. Lady Marina is therefore able to map and suggest possible urban behaviour ranging from a city wide scale to that of her occupants. She is designed to foster land economy and data mining that perpetuate product planning lifecycles through sustainable business partnerships and the repurposing of real estate in connection to products and services. The tower, in essence, attempts to initiate a people-conscious, responsible infrastructure economy with high proliferation propensities for sustainable development. Like I said, spawning daughters of Lagos for the next generation.
I am explaining Lady Marina here in the context of planning and the city. This is not an architectural narrative of the project. That is another discussion entirely.
[Ka’ssa]: Africa rising stands as counter narrative to the Afro pessimism that has been the prism through which Africa has been defined in the eyes of the world. Aspirations for western ideals and western modes of doing underpinned by the ‘get rich or die trying’ ethos, remain central to this new found optimism. What in your opinion and your experience gets left behind as African urban transformations yield to global, neoliberal logics of transformation and aspiration? Or what is gained? [decide which half of the question you wish to answer and answer it]
[SA]: This is quite an interesting discourse and it is a volatile debate in Nigerian urbanism now. With this question, the idea of a smart city comes to mind. The ethos and raison d’être of western cities have always been a prime factor in the development of some modern African cities. There are very positive prospects in developing a smart city, but the idea of what is ‘smart’ has to be taken into consideration. No city is the same in totality, the dynamics of culture, space and time are signatures that bring about uniqueness in cities. In western cities, the advent of the ‘smart’ largely came through technology, the internet and the applications of both in various typologies of infrastructure and systems. The gap is the issue of African cities taking literally— this western approach of ‘smartness’ as a model to develop after. It is true that, like all cities, our cities can be smarter but we hardly need as much digitalisation as the western world. Our cultural and sociological frameworks require a different approach to smartness. It is exhausting to see how some engineers and information technologists approach a new democratisation of the digital in African cities. Sometimes they force certain technological innovations on the people even when the acceptance and developmental return is negligible. I think what gets left behind when African cities yield to the wrong idiosyncrasies of other global cities is much. The identity of the African city is always at stake in such cases. Most African cities are yet to fully recover from the colonial era state of mind. This loss or conflict of identity has the risk of being cascaded down to future generations. Globalisation and urbanisation can be developmental if received and channelled well. No one is an island, cities shouldn’t be zoned off from others. Sustainable development is communicable. Care must however be taken to decide what influences African cities into environmental, social, economic and political actions.
[Ka’ssa]: We’re coming to your city, what would you advise us not to miss?
[SA]: I won’t define a way for a visitor to see a city. In a way you decide to see it…see it. The most important thing is an open mind. It is often good to craft our own narrative while allowing the narrative of the city to engulf us as well. The simultaneity is very important. This allows us to understand the lives of other people and more so, ourselves, in a different context.
After the terms ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’, ‘smart’ seems to be the new most promiscuous word in the built environment.
[Ka’ssa]: Please describe trajectories and trends you’ve come across in Africa or an African city that you’ve found interesting.
[SA]: The most interesting trend as I have mentioned is the new craze of the ‘smart’ city. It is very interesting. I am currently leading a project on Lagos, Nigeria in this context. I feel people need to be educated before things get out of hand. The western ‘smart’ is not the African ‘smart’. The diversity is even more complicated. An unsavoury manifestation of this is the creation of cities within cities, I have witnessed Lagos begin to exhibit this. I think this is only possible in some organic developmental way that may border on mutation. Even this is farfetched. The philosophy of the ‘smart’ is endangered by popular culture and misconception. A worse development is its use as a business tag-line, a sales tool. After the terms ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’, ‘smart’ seems to be the new most promiscuous word in the built environment.
[Ka’ssa]: What’s the most useful - or the most unusual - thing you’ve bought off a street vendor in an African city?
[SA]: A bamboo mug at a market in Accra.
[Ka’ssa]: Thinking of movement, travel and inhabiting spaces with-out (in a globalised yet increasingly insular world), how does this influence your thinking and practice within African spaces… if at all?
[SA]: As I move through cities within Nigeria and in the continent at large, I try to keep track of the people and how they have made, and continue to make their environments. It is hard to know how exactly these things influence one’s thinking. Some insights and images borrow deep into the subconscious. These I have come to realize—in my own case— are the powerful images and insights. So whether we are doing a mosque in Casablanca, a church in Accra or a new environment for Internally Displaced People in Abuja, as we work in and through African spaces, the images and insights we acquire subconsciously inform us, call us to question, scare us, empower us, and more refreshingly…inspire us.
[Ka’ssa]: There’s no Cape Town without the beach front; no Lagos without the lagoon; no Accra without azonto; no Lilongwe without NGO’s… [Complete the sentence for your (or your favourite) African city].
[SA]: <laughs>, is this a trick question? I do not think I agree with the Lagos symbolism. I find it tedious to present my own though. When it comes to symbolism, people sometimes see what they want to see. For instance, there was a portrayal of Lagos in the ‘Captain America: Civil War’ movie. It was inaccurate and largely flawed. I think I might agree that there is no Lagos without the rush, but what I think really makes Lagos, are the Lagosians in it.
‘The aim is to uncover and develop culture and context conscious strategies of developing Lagos as a smart city as opposed to the technologically digital-driven initiative of Lagos as some kind of potential sci-fi project.’
[Ka’ssa]: Is there an urbanism project which you’re involved (be it in the realm of design, architecture etc) that you’d like to share with us?
[SA]: There is this funded research project I mentioned earlier. It is about interrogating the city of Lagos as a smart city. The research deploys groups of urbanists, architects, culture enthusiasts, engineers, and artists to look into various themes of the city that can be made smarter. We are all trying to work through this craze of ‘smartness’ with the Lagos identity still intact. The aim is to uncover and develop culture and context conscious strategies of developing Lagos as a smart city as opposed to the technologically digital-driven initiative of Lagos as some kind of potential sci-fi project. It is very helpful to have the assistance, administration and support of platforms such as the Henrich Boll foundation and the Lagos Urban Network. With networked partnerships, more is always achieved especially when it comes to urban projects.
Another project is the reintegration of internally displaced people into urbanity. It is called the ‘Scatter’ project. Scatter is done in collaboration with another architect called Ade Shokunbi. It is not an architecture project. It is an urban planning project. This is because architecture simply cannot solve internal displacement. It however has an architectural intervention worked into the framework which is the provision of temporary houses for one of the camps in Abuja. They are called the Penumbra houses. The project started almost two years ago and it is aimed at developing a practical framework for integrating Internally Displaced People into new urban contexts. There have been a few proposed recommendations but few go beyond the superficial point of generalising internal displacement in a region.
ACID has carried out field studies all over northern Nigeria, trying to understand the state of IDPs in the country as well as linking forces and factors such as ethno-religious conflict, natural disasters, gender issues, politics, urbanism.
[Ka’ssa]: What should be the next question? In our encounters across the globe we meet makers, breakers, urbanists, vendors, artists, bus drivers, security guards, thinkers, tinkerers, madams what question would you like us to ask them next - keeping urbanism and Africa in mind?
[SA]: I will like to know if people nowadays actually stop to ponder about the city they live, not the country… the city. If they do, I will like to know why, and probably, how.
