Architects need to redefine themselves within the community in which they live. They need to rethink their relevance in serving the citizenry of Lagos as it is. They need to think ‘Out of the Box’ to ensure that Lagos slum areas are included in the designed built-environment, otherwise, regeneration of true Nigerian Architecture will be impossible and extinction becomes imminent.”
This was the submission of participants and stakeholders in the architecture industry at the just concluded Lagos Architects Forum 2017 tagged: LAF 8.0. It held at the Jasmine and Zinnia Halls, Expo Centre of the Eko Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos. An estimated 2,300 participants from the building construction sector, other industries and parts of the country attended the event.
The theme of the conference, “Lagos 8.0 – An Architectural Autopoiesis,” focused on the issues of regeneration, rebuilding, recreating and re-inventing the built environment in general and addressing housing challenges in particular in the light of the present economic recession in the country.
In a communique at the end of the forum, architects were urged to reposition themselves and their profession as the driver of the new revolution. This should be with a view to moving the state to a new pedestal that will solve the myriad of housing challenges being faced by the low income groups, and indeed the slum areas of the state.
Given the prevailing economic challenges in the country, stakeholders also urged architects not to only serve the elite, who can afford to pay for their services, but extend their services to the low and middle income citizens, who constitute more than 70 per cent of the populace. Engaging in this, it is believed, will have collateral advantages of being more relevant to the society, help in reducing the slums and blighted areas and in the long run, create suitable jobs for architects.
Participants at the conference also admonished architects to be in the vanguard of leading advocacy to form lasting policies that affect the built environment and its current challenges, as the issue of homelessness remains an embarrassment to the nation and indeed the megacity of Lagos State. Architects were also urged to think “out of the box” in producing practical and affordable blueprints that had scientific and empirical data basis in solving the ‘Nigerian Problem’ in a contextual way.
Stakeholders at the conference also had words for the government: Government needs to ensure that well trained, qualified and registered relevant professionals, architects, engineers and planners were deployed for the task of enforcing efficient control systems for vetting, processing and approval of design drawings, ahead.
The communique also noted the continuous exponential increase in Lagos State population and the challenges of land for development matter and called on the government to muster all political will for the provision of real affordable and sustainable housing for the vulnerable, the poor and the low income citizenry.
The communique further held that in view of the on-going economic recession and the astronomical increase in the cost of imported building materials, stakeholders in the construction and built environment were urged to engage more pro-actively in the research and development of local building materials, such as bamboo for structural work and lateritic clay soil for stabilised bricks on a commercial basis. This, they said, is necessary, as no housing solution can be sustainable on the current or floating foreign exchange rates.
Earlier in her keynote address at the conference, a former Provost, College of Medicine and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Development) University of Lagos, Prof. Sade Ogunsola, who spoke on the topic:“AnArchitectural Autopoiesis- the Linkage of the built environment to non-living social autopoietic systems”, said autopoietic systems included second level social systems made up of societies, organisations and interactions. “They reproduce themselves from within themselves, a recursive reproduction of its elements through its elements, meaning that architects as part of non-living autopoietic systems have no option but to reorganise themselves irrespective of their different school of thoughts,” she explained.
Ogunsola said from various extrapolation, Lagos will have a population of 300 million people by 2050 and become the third largest city in the world by then. Given this situation, she said what should be of concern is how architects plan to cope with these large numbers, especially as 70 per cent of the population live in the slums.
“Architects are, therefore, by implication, responding to only 30 per cent of the population and in reality only a third of this number. If architects do not regenerate themselves and attend to the 70 per cent of Lagosians who require decent and healthy shelter even within their present existing environment, they would have failed in the autopoietic social system in which they operate,” she submitted.