FR: In your opinion, at what point does contemporary art meet architecture?
PO: The meeting point for me is when the viewer or user finds meaning and value in regard to their condition. We believe that design enriches the things that we create. Art and design are interlinked as cultural ‘value assets’.
However, this link is a fine line, as it often falls under the easy blanket of entitled creative self-expression, one that has become devoid of context, form, or user, and is simply about the ‘singular vision’ and the ‘ego’.
But where we see art relating to architecture in our context is in the elevation of an intellectual and cultural value that already has a historical precedence in the discipline of craft and making. This, in addition to using the modern tools and language of art as a vehicle that allows for the critiquing of the status quo, has been engaged in a process of collective becoming, evaluating, re-purposing, and collaboration in order to find new forms of expression and, in turn, a new vernacular. One that, although engaged in the discourse of the machine of modernism, is also reengaged in a localized, pre-colonial African idea of communal purpose, allowing art and architecture to talk to one another in order to enrich our spaces and our lives. Although some might say this idea is dated, it feels relevant to our sense of being as Nigerians and as Africans.
I agree with Peter Zumthor when he talks about discovering, how he finds beauty through working with existing conditions.
‘I try to find out why things here look the way they do and how to make things beautiful. For me it turned out to be about overcoming architectural modernism in which everything had to be new and nothing was supposed to have history.’
In Lagos and Nigeria as a whole, we are still constrained by politics, poverty, poor education, and limited infrastructure, which restricts our ability to develop the exact tools and materials that would ensure the spoils of modernist technology without importation. Yet, at the same time, we are rejecting the possibilities within our own history and imagination that would allow us to find new solutions. In his essay, “Towards a New Culture; Rethinking the African Modern (The Architecture of Demas Nwoko),” Giles Omezi discusses how this renowned artist and architect “sought to resolve in his architecture, a crisis at the heart of contemporary Africa; the nature of its modernity”.
The questions we are currently plagued with as Nigerian architects are those regarding ‘value’ and what architecture should mean to the average Nigerian, or African. I agree with Omezi on the point that it must first start at the place where art and architecture meet, in terms of the cerebral, this requires contemplation.
FR: How do you see the architecture scene in regards to participatory and research-based architecture?
PO: I believe that the best architecture that currently exists on the continent has come from research and participatory engagement. This is not unique to us or the continent, but it is a significant part of our recent history and our current needs. It’s important that we recognize the possibilities of the communal build and that our current research abilities are limited. It’s imperative that both of these areas are given the funding and opportunities needed in order to find solutions for the challenges facing our communities, our urban centres, and our growing population. All of these are a demand on resources, which will inform the nature of the resources available to us in the future and therefore define the architecture we create and the cities we are able to build: where, how, and for whom.
FR: How do you, as a Nigerian architect and art promoter, see the intersections between these two disciplines in Lagos specifically?
PO: For me, the critical space that I and my practice MOE + Art Architecture are interested in exploring is the one regarding the creation of cultural public spaces using interstitial spaces within the urban centre.
In the last 10 years, the Lagos contemporary art scene has been growing at an extraordinary rate, the number of independent galleries, art exhibitions, and fairs continues to have multiplying effects. There is a sense, especially amongst the young, that art provides a possibility for reinvention, self-expression, and identity. Lagos is becoming a city whose relationship with art is starting to define its understanding of parts of itself, finding a voice for mostly the younger generation, who have started to use public infrastructure, sidewalks, walls, parks, roundabouts, buses, etc. to not only showcase their work but to create opportunities for more inclusive dialogue.
Currently, the structure and idea of formal public space itself, its planning and theory as applied within the recent history of the city, serves only as a continuation of the failed historical approach towards creating a city for all by those unwilling to give the city and the places created within it to ‘all’.
Therefore, I’m fascinated by the future of public architecture. Does public space need to exist formally or does the city provide a possible new direction for similar cities of the future? Does the programmed integration of art within public space through community projects and interventions present an opportunity to create civic ownership in a way that resonates within the heart and mind of the individual citizen?
FR: What sort of art spaces are, in your opinion, missing in Lagos?
PO: It’s hard to state categorically what type of art spaces are missing, because that would mean we have already decided what form and direction art should take in Lagos, a city that is still trying to define its art scene. Currently, there is a surge, due to easier access to technology, in photography, film, and performance art, but very few spaces or institutions where these fields can be truly explored. However, my immediate response would be that Lagos needs open, public art spaces created through collaboration. I see these as public spaces or centres created in conjunction with artists, curators, writers, thinkers, hand-in-hand with local communities, as artistic device pieces which allow for exploration and new definitions of not just what art can be but also how it can help articulate aspects of the physical realm in a positive way.
The device, as Foucault says, “is the system of relations between all its heterogeneous elements. But it is also the singular instance where those relations break down, reorganize themselves, turn to other purposes”.
If we are talking about traditional models of western art spaces, then I would say there are lots of spaces that are missing, but I’m not sure if Lagos at present needs a Guggenheim or more formal commercial spaces.
What I do believe will be of benefit to the city are funded spaces and institutions that support artists who are trying to push boundaries, both creatively and intellectually, in addition to smaller-scale, collaborative, experimental, safe spaces for dissent and disengagement from the status quo - decentralized, unfranchised spaces, democratic spaces that are funded, which enable learning, sharing, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and capacity building.
The Echo Lab, currently being developed by A Whitespace Creative Agency, is driven by this desire for cross-multidisciplinary capacity building. It is intended to support and foster young creatives and promote arts, culture, urban development, and media geared towards social impact in Nigeria. This space will be a newly established entity that will provide services to a cross-section of professionals from all around Lagos.
FR: What kind of relationship does the city of Lagos hold with its own architectural heritage?
PO: Most of the city’s architectural heritage lies around in the form of abandoned relics. We can argue about whose heritage are we talking about. For me, it’s the heritage of the city, warts and all. Walking though Lagos Island, Yaba and beyond, it angers me and breaks my heart to see the most important architectural references of not just a country, but a continent, ignored and dilapidated. Buildings that hold so much intellectual and cultural value have been made irrelevant and undervalued in the eyes of the public by a continuous political system
with a seemingly complete lack of respect for, engagement with, or understanding of the importance of history as a significant reference tool for sustainable cultural and urban development.
Our political system fails time and time again to recognise the importance of the city’s historical identity. Being undermined by weak planning laws, unregulated demolition, and poor regulation has allowed for a significant amount of our historical building stock to disappear, during the current 4th Republic. Regeneration or restoration apparently feels like administered kryptonite to the recently self-appointed ruling classes. Who allowed the destruction in September 2016 of Ilojo Bar, a 162-year-old house built by a returning slave, one of the most historical buildings of the Brazilian Quarter, which stood as a heritage site and national monument to pre-independence, only to be demolished due to family squabbles over the sale of the land to a commercial developer, whilst the state remained asleep, disassociated, and unconcerned?
In Lagos, if we continue along under this adopted singular system, driven by the rituals and language of globalism, the premise of ‘new hustles’ and land exploitation as the signifiers for development and success, without ever looking backwards, what value will we ever place on any architectural heritage? Why are our aspirations so concerned with the pursuit of the ‘superficial new’, which often fails to address the real challenges of our urban environment? Challenges whose answers lie in many of our historical buildings, whether it’s classical aesthetics in the Brazilian quarters, an approach to modernism expressed through the experiments in tropical modernism, or the economies of local materiality found, used, and still well-articulated throughout much of our building heritage.
I believe that given an opportunity and the right framework, most Lagosians will engage in a culture of creating historical value. They will acknowledge its value for their lives, environment, and sense of identity. They will choose to preserve it.
FR: How do you think the problematic colonial and post-colonial heritage should be discussed with regards to architecture and urbanism in Lagos?
PO: I’ve always said that the post-colonial city has been reactionary, contradictory, and has always struggled to consolidate and extend ideologically, beyond its colonial influence. The city seems unable to grasp the concept of an idea that it took no participation in creating. Therefore, how it could be discussed or should be discussed remains controversial. The conversation is often said to be difficult but I’m still uncertain why so many people want to shy away from it. Although I acknowledge the problems surrounding the existing global colonial bias, I’m not interested in the problem presented on its own. I’m more interested in the opportunities this discourse presents for innovative new ideas, through interrogation and investigation.
Cities all over the world have been colonised by armies, cultures, etc. and we see the patterns of these invaders as layers of the cities’ identities, acknowledged, expressed, and representative of the history of the cities’ urban typologies, which deserve preservation. Whether we like it or not, historicism continues to be the organising principle of modern culture. When we look at some of the colonial infrastructure that the urban elite doesn’t seem to have a problem with, like the Ikoyi club, a colonial construct which only allowed Nigerian members in 1947, still aspirational for the wealthy and middle classes, we must acknowledge that heritage is selective. But we are not all privy to the process.
There has been a post-independence backlash, coupled with an economic boom in recent years, which has led to a land grab for much of the space previously occupied by colonial architecture. Much has been coopted by government officials, sold, or developed for expensive high-rise, high-density luxury apartments or modern individual private homes.
In assessing our pre- and post-colonial history, the question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from the question of what kind of people we want to be, what kinds of social relations we seek, what relations to nature we cherish, what style of daily life we desire, what kinds of technologies we deem appropriate, and what aesthetic values we hold.
I am still unable to grasp the idea of what the 21st-century city of Lagos is. What represents the modern city and what defines its relationship with the people who live there and the thousands who flock there daily? Where are the footprints of the navigation from the rural fishing island; Brazilian merchant port; to the
creation of the district by colonial forebears; the influence of British urban planning and tropical modernism; post-pan-African independence; the establishment of Lagos as a state of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a succession of post-independence failed republics? Where, ideologically, has the current single-party democracy, in which the state has existed for almost two decades, brought the city, beyond the concept of a city experienced and survived only through self-interest, compromise, and negotiation? Should Eko Atlantic represent the aspiration of our post-colonial ambitions?
FR: What does a place like Ebute-Metta represent to a city like Lagos?
PO: Ebute-Metta is like Lagos Island. It represents an important part of the city’s history as a series of layers and influences, pre- and post-colonial. It feels human in scale and organization and is one of the few areas within Lagos where the pedestrian feels empowered. Ever since the city moved to democratic rule under President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, millions of dollars have been spent on urban regeneration and projects aimed at increasing infrastructure, creating housing, and reducing crime, but the results have been poor. Communities like Makoko on the outlines of Ebute-Metta, despite being granted World Bank loans for upgrading, are being systematically destroyed by successive governments to re-purpose the land as high-value real estate. The ‘lagoon’ stretch, once a neglected and discarded part of the city, is now its aspirational future. The various recent approaches to the complex challenges facing urbanism and regeneration in places like Ebute-Metta need to be reconsidered to ensure a place for all, along with the many complicated land and property ownership scenarios that govern most of the area. One of the major changes facing the area is the selling off of its old building stock by 2nd/3rd generation families of the original owners, a situation further exasperated by the fact that the state has not considered many of these buildings when outlining their new road and drainage infrastructure plans, causing many of them to now lie below road level and become subject to flooding during the rainy season.
In recent years there has been a cultural renaissance in the area, brought on by a new generation of cultural and tech entrepreneurs who have been driven there by real estate prices lower than the now inflated costs and sparse availability of land associated with Victoria Island and Lagos Island. It’ll be interesting to see how the global needs of these industries inform the physical footprint of the area going forward and what guidelines are created to ensure that Ebute-Metta continues to consider within its framework, its existing and historical families, buildings, and communities.
FR: Why do you think the Railway Ebute-Metta compound is considered to contribute even more to the urban fabric of Lagos in spatial terms?
PO: The Railway compound feels very much like part of the old city, but at the same time is also reflective of the gated communities and estates that have been springing up since the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The architecture within the compound illustrates building from the pre- and post-colonial eras, with buildings like the Jaekel House and the Hospital showing the journey from classic colonial architecture to tropical modernism. However, many of the buildings are no longer required or in disrepair.
One of the issues Lagos has failed to deal with is regeneration. The aspiration of many who grew up in areas like Ebute-Metta, Yaba, Surulere, Antoni, etc. in the ‘80s and ‘90s was to move to the new pastures of Ikoyi, Victoria Island and Lekki as they acquired economic independence. The city has always strived to expand towards the new instead of regenerating the old. The Eko Atlantic project is the ultimate expression of this and the antithesis of neighbourhood regeneration.
The compound should be considered as Lagos’ first urban and historical regeneration project engaged in cultural heritage, architectural restoration, and contemporary placemaking. It could present an opportunity for real participatory urban regeneration, working along interdisciplinary lines alongside the existing and extended local communities, as well as the Railway Company. It could form a new heart of the city, perhaps one of its moments for quiet contemplation, using its existing green spaces, historical building, industrial train yards, train paths, signs and objects as nodes for placemaking. An arrival and departure point for travellers from all over the country, a place of learning, creating, and re-purposing.