[A]FA Lagos Legacy by [Applied] Foreign Affairs

[a]FA LAGOS LEGACY

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION [applied] Foreign Affairs, Legacy 1995 05 Project Brief | Baerbel Mueller 06 Panorama Photo of the Nigerian Railway Compound 08 Lagos, from the Megacity to the Pepperfarm | Abosede Goerge 10 Conversation on Heritage and Future | Mogbolahan Ajala, Sola Akintunde, 12 Stefanie Theuretzbacher PROJECTS Tracing the Story of the Nigerian Railway | Toms Kampars 21 Interstices | Adeola Olagunju 37 Carriage | Tito Aderemi-Ibitola 47 Hanging out with Nature | Stephanie Rizaj 57 Existing Works | Nature 65 Ori | Aderemi Adegbite and Jon Krizan 69 Ivy | Cansu ErgĂźn 79 Memories Matter | Katerina Joannides 87 This House is not for Sale | Mathias Juul Frost 97 Handle with Care | Frida Robles 109 WIDER DISCOURSE Creative Participation in the Urban Renewal of Lagos | Papa Omotayo in Conversation with Frida Robles Negotiating City Spaces | Olamide Udoma-Ejorh Terrain Vague in Lagos? | Frida Robles Fragrant of the Old contoured with the New | Oyindamola Fakeye The Nature of Memory | Dare Dan The [a]FA Lagos Legacy Lab Feb 2017 | Amritt Flora

118 124 126 128 130 134

EVENTS Schedule of Lab 138 Meetings and Reviews 140 Public Viewing 146 CVs 150 Impressum/Credits/Funding 152

[a]FA Lagos Legacy 2017

The [a]FA Lagos Legacy lab is a joint project between [applied] Foreign Affairs, Institute of Architecture, University of Applied Arts Vienna and Legacy 1995.

LABORATORY

HOST

[APPLIED] FOREIGN AFFAIRS

LEGACY 1995

[applied] Foreign Affairs is a laboratory at the Institute of Architecture of the University of Applied Arts Vienna that investigates spatial, infrastructural, environmental, and cultural phenomena in rural and urban sub-Saharan Africa. A series of talks introduces students to the spatial diversity and cultural vibrancy of the contemporary African condition, followed by workshops which focus on the status and potential of a specific region or situation. Projects center around distinct questions, or clear missions, and culminate in field trips and residencies through which mappings, rural growth patterns, visionary art spaces, and relational physical interventions are produced. The process of relating and making is conceptualized in a reactive and slowed-down manner.

Formed in 1995 by a group of professionals, LEGACY has watched itself become the foremost historical and environmental interest group of Nigeria. The objective is gathering committed men and women, Nigerians and non-Nigerians, for the common cause of preserving and promoting the character and appearance of historic monuments, the environment, and cultural entities in all parts of Nigeria. LEGACY is presently based within the Nigerian Railway Compound in Ebute-Metta, Lagos, with its headquarters located at Jaekel House, a piece of colonial architecture dating back to the beginnings of the railways in Nigeria in 1898. This very beautiful 119-year-old house was restored in 2010 by LEGACYÂ´s founder Prof. John Godwin, and is currently serving as a mini-railway museum that has also served as the set for various media productions. Further, LEGACY organizes walkabouts, train excursions, and road trips to create and heighten awareness of historically significant places of interest around the country, culminating in being technical partners to the British Council-backed Open House Lagos 2016 (openhouselagos.com) which trains volunteer tour guides.

The outcome of each lab is presented in different formats and contexts, both on the African continent and in Europe. [a]FA is performed in collaboration with international guests, teaching staff of the Institute of Architecture, and partner universities. [a]FA is commissioned by NGOs, cultural institutions, artist collectives, and individuals. Conventional relationships between client, community, and architect; teacher and student; studio, university, and field are questioned. Conditions of uncertainty and fragility are embraced. At best, spatial and programmatic hybrids of diverse ownerships emerge.

[a]FA Lagos Legacy 2017

PROJECT BRIEF BY BAERBEL MUELLER All at the same time, Lagos is constantly growing and renewing itself, and teetering on the edge of a possible crisis. Lagos is shaped by extreme contrasts. Lagos is ambiguous. Lagos is vibrant. Lagos is demanding. The most pressing issues are the lack of space and transportation: There seems to be no escape from a fate of (often dysfunctional) urbanity. Against this backdrop, and informed by Legacy 1995´s agenda, its dedication to the built heritage of Lagos, and its location, at the Nigerian Railway Compound in Ebute-Metta, [a]FA Lagos Legacy has been conceptualized as a joint laboratory with a speculative and artistic approach. The intention was to identify the potential of the railway compound as a kind of enchanted terrain with intriguing, abandoned structures in the middle of Lagos Mainland. Legacy’s Running Shed was the “node” of interest from which the lab was started in a playful, transdisciplinary manner. Navigating between field research, spatial articulations, and artistic interventions, questions of urbanity, space, history, identity, and agency were addressed. As a conceptual starting point, the lab centered around three topics: Heritage, Scale, and Terrain Vague. Based on these notions, participants were asked to map the fragility, beauty, and potential of the given site. An interdisciplinary team of architecture and art students, young architects, and Lagosbased artists collaborated on ad-hoc projects that were realized in digital and physical forms, and shown to the public at the end of a two-week onsite lab that took place in February 2017. Working on these spatial and ephemeral interventions served as a kind of trial arrangement. It was possible to experience the pure scale of the given space, and its potential for future programming.

The space was envisioned as a recreational, creative, and shared space for diverse user groups, beyond commercially driven or exclusive interests.

TERRAIN VAGUE With the coining of the French term “Terrain Vague” (1995), architect and philosopher Ignasi de Solà-Morales demonstrated his interest in the concept of absence in the contemporary metropolis. This interest focuses on abandoned areas, obsolete and unproductive spaces and buildings, often undefined and without specific limits, places to which he applies the French term terrain vague. Regarding the generalized tendency to “reincorporate” these places into the productive logic of the city by transforming them into reconstructed spaces, de Solà-Morales insists on the value of their state of ruin and lack of productivity. Only in this way they can manifest themselves as spaces of freedom that serve as an alternative to the lucrative reality prevailing in the capitalist city. Meaning essentially ‘non-design’, Terrain Vague is a compelling concept, powerful in its ability to theorize on the margins of the ordered world, offering the opportunity to investigate existing urban phenomena of indeterminacy – both spatial and social – and to learn from this existing urban condition. It is about forces instead of forms, the incorporated instead of the distant, the haptic instead of the optic, and the rhizomatic instead of the figurative. “The role of the architect is inevitably problematic. Architecture’s destiny has always been colonization, the imposing of limits, order, and form […].” “How can architecture act in the terrain

* Sources: http://atributosurbanos.es/en/terms/terrain-vague/ http://landscapeandurbanism.blogspot.co.at/2011/07/source-terrain-vague-de-sola-morales.html

vague without becoming an aggressive instrument of power and abstract reason? Undoubtedly, through attention to continuity: not the continuity of the planned, efficient, and legitimized city, but of the flows, the energies, the rhythms established by the passing of time and the loss of limits... ” (Ignasi de Solà-Morales, 1995)

HERITAGE Based on Legacy 1995´s interest in and knowledge of Lagos´s built heritage, we looked at the notion of heritage in the context of the Nigerian Railway Compound in terms of the following aspects: History – or rather, histories – as heritage, referring to events or processes that have a special meaning in collective memory; a site as heritage having a value of being of political, military, cultural, or social national importance to the history of that nation; monuments from industrial culture as industrial heritage; cultural heritage as the legacy of physical artefacts and intangible attributes of a group or society; fauna and flora, landscape and landforms understood as natural heritage. SCALE “Scale is not a limited concept, it overcomes borders and in reality, scale is collapsing, making the nano into the global, and beyond.” (Hannah Le Roux). We investigated the Nigeria Railway Compound, starting from the Running Shed as an architectural object of the Railway Compound as an ensemble, area, and urban island; an island located in the middle of Lagos as a megacity, which again is a national and continental waypoint, with a railroad track leading to Kano… We identified the spatial relationships, proportions, connections, and effects through cross-readings within a full spectrum of scales. Operating

within this spectrum and within scale shifts implies a shift from top-down planning and object-defined architecture to relational approaches, which are so desperately needed to understand and react to the contemporary (African) urban condition. CONCEPT The onsite lab was structured in four stages: Perception / Conception / Translation / (Re) Presentation. Perception: The team of architects and artists explored the given terrain through walks, maps, talks, documents, and narrations, followed by further individual encounters whereby what was perceived was documented through the medium of photography or video (camera, smartphone), sketches, or text. Conception: Based on the previously identified (spatial) intensities, atmospheres, and facts, each participant worked on a concept for an investigation – either individually, or in collaboration. Translation: The proposed concept was translated into pieces of work which were then developed individually, or as a group project. The medium of expression was defined according to the respective topic. (Re)Presentation: The projects – or works in progress – were shown and shared with a wider audience at the very end of the laboratory. This publication was produced in order to collect and archive the works, and document the lab and the public event that took place on February 25, 2017 in and around the Running Shed.

* Sources: http://ufolog.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/48643515-de-Sola-Morales-I-Terrain-Vague.pdf Originally published in ‘Anyplace’ - edited by Cynthia C. Davidson (1995)

Drone panorama

[a]FA Lagos Legacy 2017

LAGOS FROM THE PEPPERFARM TO THE MEGACITY BY ABOSEDE GEORGE When one speaks of Lagos, Nigeria, one could be referring to any one of three places— its most historic region, Lagos Island; metropolitan Lagos, which includes the urbanized parts of the island and the mainland; or Lagos State, which includes the urban and rural areas of the state. All these Lagos-es exist in a spatial relationship to one another, as well as a temporal one, meaning that one Lagos comes after another in a historical sequence. What follows, however, is not a comprehensive history but an outline of how Lagos began and what it has been. The oldest settlements in Lagos State are Lagos Island, Iddo, and Ebute-Metta. The recorded origins of human settlement there date back to the 15th century, when these places were still marshy islands thick with wildlife and mangrove forests, and populated by small communities of fisher folk from the Awori ethnic group. By the middle of the 17th century, Lagos had become a tributary state of the powerful Benin Empire. But as vassals at the outer reaches of the empire, the Obas of Lagos would inevitably erode as a result of this constraint on their full autonomy. During the 18th century, Lagos came out from under Benin rule. During the reign of Oba Akinsemoyin, a more independent Lagos entered the Atlantic slave trade as a middleman state, trading goods for people with Portuguese slave traders. This new extractive economy enriched the elites, while also expanding the population of marginalized people in Lagos. A monarchical feud in the early to mid-19th century would bring an end to Lagos’s independence. In the dispute between two claimants to the throne, Kosoko and Akitoye, Oba Akitoye entered into a treaty of protection

with the British which involved trading Lagos’s full sovereignty for the backing of Britain’s military power. Akitoye’s victory won him the throne of Lagos, but in the process, Lagos was converted from an independent polity into a new British colony in West Africa. The advent of the British colonial period witnessed another phase of growth and diversification of the population of Lagos. In the mid-19th century, migrant communities from Sierra Leone, Cuba, Brazil, and other Yoruba diasporas appeared and took up residency in distinct areas of Lagos Island, which was at that point also known as Lagos Colony. In 1914, two neighboring British colonial territories, the Northern Protectorate and the Southern Protectorate, were amalgamated to form the single colonial territory of Nigeria. Against the protests of African nationalists, Lagos was named as the colonial capital of this new formation. Within this new capital, colonial officials sought to practice racial segregation in political, economic, social, and even spiritual life. The development of Ikoyi, planned as a Europeans-only quarter, was a clear spatial manifestation of this racial ideology. The development of Ikoyi began to create a Europeans-only quarter in Lagos. To insulate Ikoyi from African presences, a canal with two manned bridges was carved into Lagos Island in order to separate the new European quarter from the African areas of the town. This project was completed by 1923. Some of the justification that had been given for these spatial segregation policies had to do with concerns about sanitation and public health. Both segregation in urban planning and slum clearances were carried out in the name of public health concerns. For example, between 1924 and 1930, the co-

lonial state demolished a series of native settlements, citing a need to control the spread of bubonic plague. In the 1950s, the practice of settlement clearances was revisited, but this time by an African-led Lagos Executive Development Board. Nigeria gained its independence from British colonial rule in the year 1960. With the independence of Nigeria, Lagos, whose population was about 700,000, was named as the federal capital territory. This made Lagos the seat of federal political and military power, as well as a major center of media and economic power in the nation. The FCT was not a state however, and Lagos indigenes were denied the prerogatives of state citizenship that most Nigerians enjoyed in their home states. It was not until 1967, following the intensive lobbying of nationalists, that Lagos State was formally established as a state within the republic. Over the latter part of the 20th century, the population of Lagos State continued to grow, as did its territorial reach. New bridges connecting the island with various parts of the mainland were opened in order to integrate Lagos State more fully. In 1975, Eko Bridge was opened. The Third Mainland Bridge followed in 1990. By 1990, the population was estimated to be almost 5 million. It is important to note that during much of this growth phase, Nigeria was a military dictatorship. From 1966- 1979, and then again from 1983- 1988, Nigeria came under the control of a series of military rulers, interspersed with two brief periods of civilian rule. One was the four-year period of Governor Lateef Jakande from 1979- 1983. During Jakandeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time, a number of mass housing projects were constructed, as well as many public institutions like hospitals and schools. From the time of the Benin Kingdom into the

[a]FA Lagos Legacy 2017

era of British rule and through to the birth of independent Nigeria, Lagos had been a seat of political and military power. All that was changed in 1991 when the federal capital was relocated to the new planned city of Abuja. The more things changed the more they stayed the same. Clearances continued through the final years of the 20th century. One notorious case was the 1992 clearance of the Maroko community to create an exclusive Victoria Island extension. In 1999, Lagos returned to civilian rule when Bola Tinubu became governor of Lagos State, inaugurating the current phase of democratic rule. While Lagos has seen the growth of middle and aspiring classes in the democratic period, it has also seen the continuation of marginalizing practices. For example, in 2006, the Lekki Free Trade Zone was established and work began on creating a new city of gated estates for Lagos elites. In 2012, the Makoko community was notoriously razed to make way for exclusive waterfront real estate. In 2013, the Eko Atlantic City project was established and work began on constructing a new city that would bean outgrowth of Lagos, but also distinct from Lagos in that it was meantfor wealthy diaspora Nigerians and others. The history of Lagos is long and complex and ongoing. The city has been influenced by several different kinds of regimes: the Benin monarchy, the independent monarchy, British colonial rule, the Nigerian federal republic, military rule, democratic rule. It has grown from a tiny collection of fishing villages to the most densely populated urban agglomeration on the continent. What next for Lagos?

CONVERSATION ON HERITAGE AND FUTURE WITH MOGBOLAHAN AJALA, SOLA AKINTUNDE, STEFANIE THEURETZBACHER ST: Could you briefly explain what the purpose of Legacy 1995 is and its relation to Lagos? SA: I would like to travel back in time and imagine the group of people that formed Legacy: what did they have in mind? I imagine that they found Lagos and Nigeria, as a whole, to be without a sense of identity, with no tangible Nigerian culture, basically because most of the history and the culture before colonization had been lost. Legacy wanted to share this history so that people can get a sense of where they come from, and how to continue from there. Lagos is the case study for all of this because we are in Lagos; if it doesn’t happen in Lagos it is not happening anywhere. MA: It was about rediscovering the city at a time when its population had surpassed its development in terms of physical entities. Legacy was made up of architects, journalists, urban planners, thinking about how to best re-orientate people regarding the heritage of Lagos, about what there was in the colonial period, in the early independence periods, and what could now be done in terms of preservation and restoration, trying to bring all these old existing buildings back into modern-day life. So Legacy, in the context of Lagos, was about restoring the values that once existed there. ST: The question for me is of which history to preserve. Is it the pre-colonial, colonial, or post-independence history that we should relate to in the field of culture and built environment? There is not much documentation or research available regarding pre-colonial architecture. But there are many examples of

tropical architecture from the ‘60s through the ‘80s that explore topics which are very relevant in terms of the Nigerian cultural context and environment. The buildings have a potential that could be further developed or learned from. A people’s identity changes over time and can also be reinvented and reshaped by everyone who is living it. In this sense, I am asking myself if the British heritage is the best one for us to relate to. Speaking of heritage, what is the current situation regarding architectural heritage in Nigeria and especially in Lagos? MA: Firstly, there is no one particular architectural style, the architecture is mostly driven by economics. We are still in a period where architecture is finding itself, we are still finding our architecture as a tropical city, we are still looking for an architecture of Lagos because it hasn’t yet found its own architecture. SA: I would say architectural heritage is still a romantic idea, it is not yet a practical one. Every participant of Legacy’s activities likes the idea but the group still can’t work because there is no record of the materials that our ancestors used 300 years ago. The bestkept examples are colonial pieces, and that is definitely not the beginning of our history. This is all that is left, and so, I insist, it is a romantic notion. ST: We have observed that Lagosians are striving for whatever looks new or foreign. ‘Old’ is out of fashion. It is the opposite of what is happening in Europe, where furniture is made to look vintage and second hand shops are booming. Buildings represent social status and we can only stand by and watch while precious Brazilian-style buildings are being demolished, and new villas in Lekki are coming up - with borrowed elements from

ancient Greece, almost like a Nigerian renaissance. So yes, heritage is a complex topic, especially when thinking it in a postcolonial context like Nigeria. SA: It is trying to make efforts, trying to preserve what we find, trying to learn the lessons and to teach them to other people. It is a gradual thing. It is not necessary, but it is the idea that you have to return to beforehand, you have to grasp the past before you continue further. It is there, but it is happening slowly, hopefully we will make some progress. MA: Roughly 80% of the youth have never been on a rail system. So, the railway is now being regarded as heritage and is being translated into our daily vernacular lives. Heritage has not yet been translated into modern times for people, so we are orientating our programs in that direction. ST: The Ebute-Metta railway compound is a walled-off urban island in the midst of the very dense urban fabric of Yaba. It has basically remained untouched by all the recent developments around it, like the growing IT sector in Yabacon Valley. Built by the British colonial administration, the compound is filled with old train infrastructure, outdated steam engines, the ruined villas of former railway employees, and administrative buildings, most of which date back to the late 19th century and early 20th century. In your opinion, what is the architectonic value of the railway compound? MA: I think it is a gold mine. I think we need to create more use for that space and try as much as possible to keep it in its current shape, to improve its components but keep it up as it is. The use must be kept and then

[a]FA Lagos Legacy 2017

applied to additional uses, so that the value would be in finding a policy, maybe some other form of power or influence, to keep the Ebute-Metta environment as it is, against the new Lagos urban developer approach through which everything gets destroyed and no one restores or renovates, but only demolishes and rebuilds. SA: I would say that the railway compound is a museum in itself, it is an architecture museum and a technology museum. As we have said, it needs to be something that people study and experience regularly as part of their curriculum. The buildings were well thought out in the railway compound: the components, the structure, the walling, the flooring. You get to these buildings and you realize that someone had spent hours thinking about how to put them together. It is hard to find that large a collection of buildings anywhere in Nigeria and the fact that it is in Lagos helps. It is still a relatively functioning establishment and a lot could be taught about it, everybody should see it because there is so much to learn from it. ST: Its biggest value is urban and cultural. Lagos is growing, becoming more congested every day, and there is hardly any space left to breath or think. The railway compound is a valuable remnant of tranquillity, vegetation, with buildings that function through natural ventilation, and most importantly, big empty halls: spaces that can be reclaimed by a generation that is thriving by shaping society through artistic and cultural activities, a generation that wants to engage in a critical dialogue, or simply wants to have a garden for a movie night or picnic. How do you envision this place and Legacyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activities in the future? SA: Well, we have a couple of buildings that

were given to us and we are doing all we can to try to use these buildings, to tell these stories. The Running Shed, I would say, is the most important building that we have, it was our choice to have a museum there in the future, exhibition space. We have here a frame, for interdisciplinary education where all kinds of people come to visit. One doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to travel out of the country to see these things, they are here. We hope that we can get more and more people to experience this place and then get them interested in working with Legacy. MA: The [a]FA Lagos Legacy lab concluded recently by receiving international recognition for this space. Perhaps we can partake in a more international conversation on what heritage, legacy and the railway as a tripartite reflective act is. We want to continue academic programs, social programs: things that we think can affect the society, especially the youth. Fortunately, the railway compound is situated nearby the axis of the educational district of Lagos, the Yaba-Ebute-Metta axis. We see ourselves as being a facilitator, catalysts for new heritage programs, new creative consultations that could then influence governments in society and hopefully even the private sector. ST: So, you as architects of the younger generation, how do you see the intersections between heritage and new ideas, more contemporary readings? MA: I am an architect that works in the public sector, my idea of the job is that it is actually about boosting policy, I do a lot of supervision and advisory work for the public sector in terms of what we should build, where should we build. Policy from my perspective is the most important thing, policy is like a bible. We think about where we can enforce policy in order to affect the psyches of people, because here in Lagos people respect

government, people regard the government as a big brother, in a good way; so we think that when this big brother can make the right policy it will really be solid. SA: I wish for a scenario in which you are not kept away from what the older generations had created to develop the character of Nigeria. I hope for that gap to be filled. We found good architects in the 1980s but you find nothing else up to now, even when there are good students or good young architects. There is almost a 50-year gap in the knowledge registry. I still find a lot of new buildings uncomfortable to live and stay in, because the idea of comfort, climate comfort and general comfort, has been learned, but the knowledge behind it hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t reach us yet, so you have to experiment or keep producing rubbish or hope that you bump into it by mistake. There are more problems to solve now than the problems that had to be solved before. Hopefully we can better fill that gap in one way or another. ST: You are planning on re-using the Running Shed, how exactly do you envision doing that? SA: We have designs because a lot of Legacy members are architects. We want to use the space and have a railway museum. We just want to keep it as a frame, structured as it is, so that it is flexible enough to do anything we need it to. In terms of how the specific structure will be done, to be honest, we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know that yet, we just have a vision and keep taking it as it comes, taking the discussion as it comes as long as it is in line with our vision: to make it a nodal point for the arts in Nigeria. MA: The Running Shed is a design workshop, a design school in a way. We have used it for design events, workshops, and other forms of engagement. It is going to be our exhibition

space for entities exploring the city and it is going to be our way of saying: if there is anyone interested in doing any form of design expression, call us and we will find a way to exhibit your work. We have been doing that over the last few months. We are growing, a lot of people are starting to recognize what we have, it is a unique space and we are keen on doing more experimentation. ST: What could the new Running Shed give to Lagos in the near future? MA: There is no near future, the future is now. We are a bunch of young professionals trying to define our identities in this internet age. The Running Shed opens its doors to those who want to express themselves. It is an open shed. It is not a typology, you can do anything, and people have come to do all sorts of things. By embracing concepts, ideas, and projects, we are defining this new Lagos. We are still exploring. What do people want? We are not just conducting a survey, we are sampling, and we hold reviews to look at what has been done. We are still identifying what this could be, in the meantime, we are still letting it be an empty space for people to just express themselves in. SA: You mentioned functions, what it is. Right now it is nothing. It is just a big space and we really can do anything with it. It has multiple purposes. It is plasticine. One minute it is a market with a festival and master classes in one corner, the other second it is a site for a photo festival, an art exhibition, another time it is where people just walk around and do walking tours, it is a playground, it is a kitchen, people live there, it is a canvas for Nature Boy’s work. So the uses that we have tried out, the options, the experiences we have had are part of our process of trying to find a clearer vision. We have a vision, but these experiences are a way of experimenting with

[a]FA Lagos Legacy 2017

the vision, its spatial use, it will help us decide or understand better what the final use should be. This is our design process. ST: For what other disciplines would it be beneficial to undertake this project, in your opinion? MA: One of the things we’ve learned from global education is that there is something called ‘design thinking,’ which crosses all disciplines. So, if you understand what design thinking means, you are welcome. We are also trying to use this medium, design thinking, to connect the old with the new. We are very open to people who understand the process of thinking in shapes, in processes, in concepts. Design thinking is our code language for any profession. SA: Historians, artists, singers, whoever, can help us re-understand that Nigerian culture, identity. Whoever can help us communicate that idea is who the Running Shed is for. We have our vision and anything that falls in line with that vision is welcome. ST: What is the value of the people and the inhabitants when thinking about heritage? SA: The stories of the inhabitants of the Running Shed are an important part of whatever we are about to do there. Before we start doing the restoration, it is important to keep them as close as possible and learn how to use the space from them: what did they do to the space to make it livable, to make it usable? They definitely understand the area more than we do, no matter how good we are at our profession. For example, Legacy works with railways retirees because they have lived the history we are trying to document. When they talk about their experiences, for us it is history but for them it is their lives. And it is the same with the buildings that we are trying

to restore. For the Running Shed, we try to invite its inhabitants to participate in any work that we have to do: to clean, to secure stuff, there are artists, dancers, singers. They are a group of young people and we are a group of young people as well, so we try to get them to be part of the activities. They live there; it is like a second skin for them. MA: Rather than looking at it from that micro scale, I’ll try to look at it from a macro scale: how can people feel heritage is relevant? Over the last few months we’ve had some of the young people come to our facilities, mainly the Jaekel House. Some use them for motion pictures or documentaries, others for excursions. We see that creating an avenue for them to come and engage is one of the ways. Many of the people that come to our spaces are regularly surprised; they hadn’t known there was a place like this in Lagos. We tie that need to heritage, because then they see: this is a place that has been around for more than 100 years, that means we can also keep our buildings for a long period of time. We try to sensitize them to the real concept of heritage as we understand it, and little by little, we are reaching out to people. ST: If you reflect on the outcomes, limits, and potentials of the collaboration with the [a] FA Lagos Legacy lab, what thoughts can you share with us? SA: It was a physical glimpse of things that had been imagined. Because one of the things that had been imagined for the space was to leave it big and empty as it is and have different groups come, do whatever they like with it; for people to do all sorts of installations, to try to create whatever vibe they are trying to sell to the users. It was a glimpse into one of the possibilities of art installations, and having people walk around and experience, each one in its own context, in its own corner, as part of this big space. I would say this particu-

lar lab gave us many experiences at the same time: we had Tito doing performance art, we had Stephanie doing something with textile, we had Cansu doing something totally creative, we had Katerina doing some installation that was like a billboard, a corporate communication. And, of course, Aderemi and Jon’s installation offered something traditional, even pre-colonial, mixing that with this kind of futuristic space was also an experience. It was just a mixture of all kinds of creativity. It gave us many glimpses at once. MA: I saw there was no plan from us as Legacy, as hosts. We were more observers. There was so much magic going on and we felt we should actually get more involved, finding the right beats. For instance, I was in the jury for the first review and the presentation just blew me away, as a “normal” architect I do drawings on A3 sheets, with drawing shades, lines, weights, etc. I started to see presentations in video, in film, in dissertations, it was totally different from what I was expecting. I would really like to continue this engagement and actually get more involved in the planning. I’m thinking of a larger communal engagement, an adoption, having more stakeholders being involved. One of the things we took away as Legacy is that habit can create a policy for restoration. We took this opportunity to say: we are the number one entity for restoration in the country and we still do not have a proper restoration system. This led to expedition, made us start to think about our role, our involvement. This was high design thinking for us, we enjoyed every single moment we shared with [a]FA and we think that the Lagos Legacy Lab is something that we must continue. We even think that we should build a curriculum for professionals, for policy. Those pockets of thinking can be expanded, can be extended to the size of the city, actually using that thinking to affect the market women on the roadside, the mechanics shops, the food sellers, the workers – these aspects that seem to belong to Lagos and

other cities like Lagos. Having some tangibles to show to large stakeholders was what I think was missing, but in terms of delivery, I think it was brilliant. Those two weeks felt like a month, even more than a month.

[a]FA Lagos Legacy 2017

PROJECTS

[a]FA Lagos Legacy 2017

TRACING THE STORY OF NIGERIAN RAILWAY | Toms Kampars The story of the Nigerian railway started in the second half of the 19th century. For decades, it served as a backbone for the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development. Markets and settlements developed along the railway tracks, both in Lagos and the rest of Nigeria. Nowadays, the railway has lost its economic relevance, although the infrastructure still remains. The Running Shed at the Ebute-Metta railway compound is a living reminder of the past, as it shelters old trains and wagons that were once actively serving the Nigerian railway. One of the trains that has no carriage on top provides a space for an open platform, whose purpose is to provide insight into the railway heritage that is still present in Lagos and Nigeria. 12 maps, printed on fabric, which represent various time periods and on three different scales, are suspended on a string over the platform, while the floor is equipped with a long, continuous bench that becomes a shared stage for community use. Hopefully one day, this platform and the story it tells will be put on tracks moving all through the routes of Nigeria.

[a]FA Lagos Legacy 2017

The site of interest

In the archives

[a]FA Lagos Legacy 2017

Nigeria

1851

1861

Lagos becomes British protectorate

1901

Nigeria becomes part of British Empire

Annexation of Lagos

Railway

1914

Amalgamation of southern and northern part of Nigeria

1898

1915

Nigerian railway established Connecting Lagos-Jebba and Baro-Kano lines

Timeline

1960

1999

Nigeria gains independence

Nigeria regains democratic governance

Nigeria joins OPEC

1955

1966

Passing of NRC act

Reached maximum extent of Nigerian railway - 3505 km

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1988

2002

NRC bankcrupcy declared

2012 Lagos-Kano railway line re-established

Railway service stopped again

1850

1900

1901

1911

1916

1927

1950

1966

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2017

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1900

50m

The railway compound in Lagos, established by the British at the turn of the 19th century, marked the beginning of Nigeriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s railway infrastructure.

2017

50m

Today, the compound remains mostly separated from the rest of the city, which has been densely developed far into Lagos Mainland.

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1900

1km

The first settlements in the city were on Lagos Island. After the establishment of the Nigerian railway and the railway compound, the city began to grow on the mainland, mostly along the train tracks.

2015

1km

Today, the urban sprawl of Lagos has reached an unprecedented scale whereas the railway tracks, which were established more than a hundred years ago, still remain in place.

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1901

100km

At the beginning of the 20th century, an intensive construction of railway tracks began. The Lagos-Ibadan railway line was the first one to be completed, in 1901.

2017

100km

Currently, the NRC has ambitious plans to build new connections between the eastern and western and southern and central regions of Nigeria.

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INTERSTICES | Adeola Olagunju My project explores the human body as a terrain vague. I looked at the materiality of motions and emotions, drawing on railway commute experiences of people in Lagos. Observing the mundane and seemingly eventless, the focus is on the interplay between material infrastructures of movement and emotional mindscapes. How do feelings of anxiety, boredom and euphoria surface in situations of waiting or daydreaming? The body, in the event of transition between public and private realms, ultimately generates networks of in-between spaces; this act of transition redefines limits in space. Thus, the in-between embraces not only notions of openness, porosity, breach and relationship, but also those of process and transformation.

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Video stills

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CARRIAGE | Tito Aderemi-Ibitola IRON CLAD (GIF series): The young men who have claimed the Running Shed as their place to ‘chill’, see themselves as protectors of the old carriages. They bring vitality to the rusted railway museum. Their dreams extend past the constraints of their situation and their aspirations as large as those who first mapped the Nigerian railway system. Iron Clad is a series of repeated instance of the young men in their space while animated colorful stars erupt from seemingly innocuous items and backgrounds, the boys continue undeterred. E MA DA ‘LERU (Sound Installation): Members of the local community who utilize the Running Shed as a living space tell their stories through music, devised sound, poetry, and collected interview. NO LOVE IN NIGERIA (sound installation): Colonial, government, light and white: A group of young men discuss the implication of venal government of Nigeria. Though jest, mawkish condoning, and earnest integration they ponder: Why is Nigeria the way it is? Why do black men seem to suffer? Who will fix this country? And what is the future of the youth?

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Iron clad

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SELECTED TRANSCRIPTIONS E MA DA LERU I look for money every day Spoken words of Officer Chris: I want to blow one day Every day is my ballin’ So we made this place to be a lively place I want to see the happy day now, there are people keeping here very and I want to be a killer soon now, you will boys will full here, playhold up hold up, don’t stop ooo ing ball, football so, it’s now a community pray to god for more ooo that people begin to know that, ah, this --place is existing. If not many people comIn this evil life that we live, there is always a ing in here, immediately they see here, its light, always a path to take up outside like a surprise to them say does this kind of a place exist in this compound. That they --have been here for the past twenty years. Somebody go dey da’le ru They never know that this kind of a place Somebody go dey tun ‘le se exist here and they call it museum, a muAbeg time dey go seum means a place where old things that Somebody go dey da’le ru have been used are being kept for future Somebody go dey tun ‘le se purposes. It’s lively now, sometimes we Abeg calm down have light we enjoy normal life. You, someEh re re times in Lagos, all fingers are not equal. Eh re re re o While others are living in mansion, they preE fara ba le fer darkness - where say “I’m in Lagos” they O ro ro are ready to live any where sleep anywhere O ro ro ro o provided they say, I am in Lagos. They don’t E fa ra bale bother where they are living, they can live --anywhere and continue with their business. We are inside town. and I believe that the The way you look into my eyes place is no longer what it was like when I Na you dey there, Omo wa n bi wa first came in here, when I entered here. Je k’a se die I’ m African Money I would give you Don’t do nothing baby I would give you Don’t do nothing baby I would give you I would give you Wetin you see ooo Na blessing my brother Pray and keep working Abeg look o, I am an African soul soul Something dey worry you Olori ‘re ko de ma jo jo jo

NO LOVE IN NIGERIA A conversation on Colonialism, Government Light and White William J: Me, I know African man can do something better than this. We are still trying. When things start moving forward. We see so many things, do so many things, in this Nigeria. Look this train and the train at this day now, passing, it’s almost the same thing. You understand me? Almost the same thing. There is no new train. Nothing. All our people out there they are just doing anyhow, when they give them money. It’s like this guy our former president he gave (a committee) money to buy 16 trains to be working on this train line they buy five, the remaining money they shuck it. Inside the five now, the five trains that is moving in Nigeria. Two is spoilt, and people going here here (he points a short distance apart) they will wait for that one (train) to go and drop people come back to come and pick you to go and drop you too. One train is working for 5 days, there remains 2 trains, they just go and keep it and don’t know what they want to go and do with that one. The normal train is working now is 2 trains. Why? It’s not suppose to be like that. William J: I can’t say because we are blacks. You know, white people don’t think like us. Me, that’s what I believe. Yes, black people can go… see if white people sit like this now, and one black came into their midst they can be (he gestures abrasively) ‘why this black nigga…!?’ You understand now? But we black? If any white come into our side, we like to relate with them, talk to them. But them, they believe we don’t have anything up there (points to his head) you understand? They believe we don’t have anything in our brain to do, you understand? But now, I’m thinking now, them they are knowing that ‘oh, these black people?

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They have something to do’ and me, I believe in my own generation, this generation, so many things, We will do so many things. Everyday of my life, I use to see so many talents. So many people, I can’t see say, if I start telling you all the talent I have already seen in my life. A lot. There’s one guy I see. This sand like this, this place like this, the guy buy pure water, it’s water in nylon, the guy pour it on the ground. Use it to draw medusa, the Versace. I swear to all mighty God, when he finished. The thing looked like the carved it from the ground! It looked real! And do you know the worst part? The guy is in the real ghetto. For that guy, I wish I had money. I know he can do so many things. For him to do that, my head burst! Everybody that day didn’t know what to do. I wanted to cry that day. An Exchange Between William Jay (W), Nature (N), and the Other Boys W: Look this train. I can tell you that is the train that bring Queen Elisabeth. I’ve already to South Africa museum before. When I get to South Africa museum. Where they pack their train? Fuck. We are not half at all. We don’t reach there. Their train is clean! It’s old train, oh! But they maintain everything. N: That’s because they consist of half white half black. W: You can’t go to South Africa and see something like this rust. No. You can’t see it, o. Rust in a museum in South Africa? No. It’s african country too, but you can’t see that. But look Nigeria, even South Africa is not up to our standard in money. We are talking about money, they are not up to our standard. The problem is that we are the ones that first get independence. We get our

independence fast. And we get our independence all this Nigerian people all this abubaka this, these people they want to live. Everybody want to make money. Everybody want to chop money. It’s Abacha that use to pack money! He pack money with trailer. Trailer, bros! You know how trailer big. Nigerian money FULL. Pack trailer every Saturday pack 6 trailer. Nigeria’s money! All the states bringing the money. One person is packing it. N: look at the youth, the youths are just wasting. Thats why all these opportunities when we see them. We try to participate. We like to show our talent. Boy: Look at Nature, now. If he is to be an american citizen. He would have boomed up! All: yes, now! Boy: But this is Nigeria. W: No black has not go to the moon? Have you heard any black to the moon. If you see the best thing in the world, its white people. You can’t see any blacks there. N: There are great men who are black. W: We aren’t talking about greatness. But the great men who are black it’s only (entertainment) industry. Its white man that will sit down look at us doing our style singing, comedy, everything… we only have industry. That’s black. After entertainment, nothing, nothing. N: Yeah. W: In America, there’s only one black man that is rich. Why? And a lot of black is there. And they make money from industry. If they want to see black, if they (white people) want to enjoy black, they enjoy is through (entertainment). Through music, through comedy, through acting, they enjoy us through that. N: I’ve seen Africans who have invented things! You can’t talk the good nd leave the bad. Every

black man can create things. If you look at it at this surface it will look like we are racist. We are all the same thing. This whites are gifted the blacks are gifted. Everybody gifted. But the things of this world has driven us to a state where we don’t want to understand ourselves and we don’t want to see the truth. W: Don’t let me lie, you are right. The only problem we have is that there is no love in Africa. No love in Nigeria. N: There is love. W: If there is love, guy, you are not suppose to be here, look if they gave everybody 2 million Naira. Swear to go all mighty, Nigeria money is not going to shake! I’m telling you! Everybody, just anyhow person, 2 million naira! But because Af-ri-ca that Africa! Boy 2: Most Nigerian leaders are black men, with black mentalities. N: There are two types of Africans, those with normal civilised minds and those with the other side of the minds. The blacks with the white mind and the blacks with the black mind. The blacks with the good. The blacks with the bad. White represents a lot of things. Peace hope love. W: There is no love in Nigeria. N: Speak for yourself. I choose only to see good. There is love W: The reason why I said there is no love in Nigeria. I have my own reason, you have your own reason. Me, I don’t know every bodies mind, I just know my own mind. I have love for everybody. But for example, we have 1 big brother in our family. The guy came out with first class. When he get to the company he want to work. When the boss look at him they see first class. ‘No. no, we can’t take you!’ Because the boss is not first class. Because they believe first class people will talk the money they want to collect, the post they want to be in Nigeria! Why do we do that for black like us? A white

man can leave his seat! Say, I’ve already done this. Look at this seat, this normal seat like this. White man can leave this seat and say to another one sit down here. And be watching (out), looking front, say ‘anything that happens, don’t worry, I’ll be by your back’ white man will stand say ‘don’t worry be going’ but black man when he says ‘don’t worry’ be going I’ll be by your back, don’t go o! Nobody wants to die! Before all this colonialism and all that we use to use all this king and the rest. And think of it, the way they operate then, It allows your ruler to be greedy. And now, what is disturbing us is greediness. I’m proud of my county but Nigeria is fucked up! N: You are part of these people who are fucked up with it too! W: All these people pack our money! Colonial mentality! Using for theirselves! Im a youth! This is a youth! There is nothing for us! No work! N: Which work are you waiting for? Are you waiting for government to come to your door! Oya here is something to do! W: Fuck the government! N: Eh! Then what are you say! How can a Nigerian youth, go to school, primary, secondary, go to university, finish NYSC and still depends on the government? It’s annoying! W: it’s annoying! What are you waiting for? N: Yes, I’m not in school. But the little I have I wish to impact it into others, so they will be able to help themselves too.

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HANGING OUT WITH NATURE | Stephanie Rizay Liana sticks, fabric strings made out of cleaning rags/second-hand T-shirts When entering the Running Shed for the first time, it leaves one with a sense of fascination. It is hard to capture the spatial situation: there are the high ceilings, the unsizeable dimensions, the old trains from different decades, and the people who have appropriated the space – those who know the shed best. One of them is Nature Boy. “I am known as “Nature Boy”, I live here in the railway compound. I came here eight years ago and what I have learned from this place has gotten me this far. I do art for living. That’s what I do. I do graffiti, illustrations and paintings, too. It gave me a lot of experience and now I like to explore more. I could use my experience to help other people innovate, potentiate the creativity of the youth and let them see that life is not just all about struggle, but also about what you have got in your hand and what you can do with it.”

be able to observe any situation. Like a hammock. A platform that can serve as both, a place of communication, a meeting point, and a stage, as well as a retreat. Hanging out with Nature is a 4-7m stage, a hammock hanging down from the ceiling of the Running Shed. It is made out of liana sticks and 400 cleaning rags, which are second-hand T-shirts. These were cut into fabric strings. Two traditional crafts were interwoven: The Austrian Fleckerlteppich, a carpet made out of old fabric and the Nigerian basket weaving. The piece creates a place and a waypoint within the Running Shed. There are two levels, one to observe any situation, to get some distance from everyday life, the other one as a meeting point for exchanging experiences and a stage for every talent. It is interesting what happens to an artwork in which there is so much of yourself, when you leave it on its own. Sometimes the change is important, in order to be able to see different aspects, it always has to move, to move on.

As a child, I always wanted to be as high as the ceiling in order to have a good view and

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Cutting second hand blue T-shirts

Weaving samples

Weaving the hammocks at Maryland

Hammock released from the weaving frame

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EXISTING WORKS | Nature (Boy) I do graffiti to improve and inspire Nigeria. Not to think art as hobby, but as a means of sending a positive message to other people. Graffiti consists not merely of drawing but also colors; each color has a different meaning. Each symbol or drawing makes a different kind of sense.

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Grined Chalk on iron

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ORI | Aderemi Adegbite and Jon Krizan Like many regions around the world, Lagos has undergone a social evolution from an agrarian society, a cultivation of the surrounding primeval ecosystem, toward a service economy, where humans survive via consumption and exchange. In this unprecedented historical shift no longer do humans often require a direct relationship with the ‘land’, but rather instead encounter a direct relationship to services. As a result many residents of Lagos no longer have an interactive relationship with the landscape, and only perceive it as a spectacle. The Railway compound around the EbuteMetta and Yaba area of Lagos has fortuitously maintained its opulent landscape, providing visitors with the opportunity to encounter native naturogenic systems that would have otherwise been disintegrated by roads and buildings in the development of Lagos. The premise of the installation was to reintroduce a relationship with naturogenic nature in Lagos through Yoruba culture, in order to provide viewers with a greater connection to it than just a spectacular cognition.

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Yorubaland was the prior region within West Africa, spanning Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, and previously cultivated much of the area of Lagos before European settlers commandeered it. The peoples of Yoruba culture practiced an agrarian lifestyle, and for that their religion was deeply rooted with an understanding of Nature. Although much of the traditional understanding has been lost due to the inculcation of Christianity and Islam throughout Lagos, Yoruba’s spiritual connection is still celebrated today. Aderemi and Jon explored Yoruba’s traditional perception of nature as a powerful canon for engaging viewers. The installation utilizes elements from the traditional Yoruba ceremony, a practice of appeasing nature to reignite ones inner-being, and situates them next to a naturogenic garden that was discovered within the Running Shed. The piece has two schematic parts, the first consisting of traditional spiritual elements, and the second being nature circumscribed by a white curtain. Together a dialogue is illuminated between objects of spiritual value within the space and the spirit itself in nature.

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Owo Eyo | Cowrie is the basic element used for Ifa divination. There are other elements used for Ifa divination but they are only used on rare occasions or for certain patients who have undergone Ifa initiation.

Ojo Ologbo | Cat Eye is used as one of the items for spiritual medications.

Igbin | Snail is used in the process of spiritual cleansing to profess comfort and self sufficiency during spiritual cleansing.

Eyin | Palm Nut was used in the installation as an embodiment of several elements/items that are used for cleansing and medication in the Yoruba mystical world. Eyin produces palm oil and palm nut that are used for major sacrifices and medications. Palm nuts with more than three holes at the top are used for Ifa divination in difficult cases and for the Ifa initiates.

Eja-Aro | Cat Fist is a special fish used for Ibori (inner-ahead cleansing). However, eja-ojiji (electric fish) is all used for the same purposes. This will be ascertained during Ifa divination on which fish is the best for the patient in question.

Eyele | Pigeon is considered as a symbol of peace and in the process of spiritual cleansing (Ibo+ORI = “Ibori”) it is used to profess peace in the life of the patient.

Atare | Alligator Pepper is used for bless prayers. It’s an important item for spiritual cleansing (Ibori).

Agbalumo | African Apple/Cherry the seed is used in the process of Ifa divinization.

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Aadun | Maize Snack this snack is made with maize flower, salt and palm oil. It is item that is included in certain sacrifices because it is considered as one of the food for the gods.

Oyin | Honey is natural used in prayers for good and joyful moments. And since Ibori is all about good professes in the patientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life, Oyin is very important.

Orogbo | Bitter Kola is used for prayers that rebuke bitterness of life. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an essential item for prayers in the Yoruba culture for spiritual cleansing.

Ori | Shea Butter Used to prepare spiritual soups and also used as a substance of calmness.

Omi | Water is an essential part of existence and this is the reason why itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to have it during the Inner-Head (Ibori) cleansing to use Omi to clean the head of every bad lucks and user in good lucks in the life of the patient.

Okete | Bush Rat is said to be the first Ifa priest in the Ifa mythology. This rat is used for various sacrifices to appease the gods and also for some spiritually inclined medications.

Obi Abata | Kola nut is used for prayers against bad luck and death. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an essential item for prayers in the Yoruba tradition for spiritual cleansing. Also, Obi Abata (three parts kola nut) can be use for divination, which is the process during Ibori.

Oga | Chameleon this creature is used in various medications by Babalawo (Ifa priest) or Onisegun (local pharmacist) for spiritual liberation.

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1. Naturgenic garden (before installation) 2. Yoruba shrine 3. Yoruba priest

Burkina Faso

Benin Nigeria

CĂ´te d'Ivoire

Ghana

Togo Y O R U B A L A N D

Lagos

Camaroon

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IVY | CANSU ERGÜN This spatial installation is formed by the patterns that Lagos has been imprinting onto me: from its streets, its people, what they wear, what they sell, what they carry, and how they uniquely stage these with their individual patterns in the markets along the tracks. As one of the most common objects of Lagos’ daily life transfigures, the patterns continuously articulate themselves into the shed, acting as an element of nature, vegetating within Lagos’ anthropocenic landscape.

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MEMORIES MATTER | Katerina Joannides The Running Shed is perceived as a mystical, empty stage, a cinematic void within the city, collecting memories, events and happenings. Adjacent to it stands a billboard, hanging over the wall that separates the site from chaotic Lagos. This intermediate entity acts as a flagship, a representation of the space within the Running Shed, a showcase of its rich, atmospheric spatial quality. Casting the negative space between two traincoaches and displaying it on the billboard for the world to see, brings the interior to the exterior and turns the collected memories into tangible matter. The memories are substantialised, condensed, and made visible, as a fragment of previously undistinguished space; the negative into the positive, the forgotten into the reclaimed.

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The stage

The event

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The naked train

The first layer

The cast

The construction site

The cast in progress 01

The cast in progress 02

Cast texture

The cast in transit

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View from the running shed

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View from the street

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THIS HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE | Mathias Juul Frost This house is not for sale explores the transformation of spatial intentionality, the value of unearthed potential, allowing for its “being nothing”, liberating the perception and everyday use of the space and allowing it to stay as an informal architectural gesture. At a certain point, the space was a defined, functional structure which transformed over time into being a place of relief, as people perceive it now. It has become open-ended with a spatial direction. I was certain that the key to opening a space was to unlock its potential, but I realized that the beauty of the structure layin the struggle between being something and being nothing. Therefore, its value was grounded in the non-utilization of its obvious potential, instead serving as a juxtaposition of multiple intentions.

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Through witnessing and hanging out with the guys at the shed, it became clear to me that the project was about elaborating and amplifying the value of that particular space. The project cannot avoid being an overlay, an intervention within the space, but can also be understood as part of the juxtaposition, as long as the project also remains an underlay. This was expressed by exhibiting the space on behalf of the space, through photography and text; the space was explored in the same way that it was exhibited. Five photos and two texts were printed on aluminum and scattered around the space, freestanding. The exhibition itself dissolved during the night, and has now been dispersed further out. Unfortunately, we live in a time in which we are dependent on answers. The beauty of this space lies in the absence – neither providing nor demanding answers.

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Intention is the beginning, which dissolves itself through the beginning of the next. When choices limit themselves in opposition, intentions move freely, creating juxtapositions, absorbing a variety of tangents, transcending into a vector with direction. The traces of past intentions are perceived alongside present and future ones, amplifying the ambiguity that lies in the space. Intention inhabits multiple focuses, and has the ability to redirect itself in the occurring action, preserving the tension that forms out of overlapping intentions. The building is materialised intention, where intention has dissolved but left its spatial specificity. An architectural gesture with direction, a once programmed structure, has become a wanderer. The past intention acts as a present spatial outline, a backdrop framing possibility for non-use. The non-utility of the structure, its â&#x20AC;&#x153;nothingnessâ&#x20AC;?, provides a liberty for the perception of the space and therefore its everyday usage. In this being nothing lies a constant urge to become something, an unfolded potential that in it-self upholds value, keeping the space in constant friction between potential and decay.

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Evuarherhe Michaelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home

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HANDLE WITH CARE | Frida Robles My body in and of itself is a mosaic of heritages: my mouth, my hair, my skin color, not to mention the language with which I express myself and my beliefs. We are thrown into the world with an inheritance, for the “colonized”, this inheritance is even more complex. Franz Fanon insists that “the colonized man is a political creature in the most global sense of the term”, and he couldn’t be more right. The history of many peoples was suddenly fragmented by a foreign language, a political scheme, a religion, and Julia Kristeva emphasizes our innate foreignness. Handle with Care is a warning asking us to address our self-reflections, our fragile identities, understanding that we all are already foreigners.

*All text fragments were taken from the book Foreigners to Ourselves by Julia Kristeva

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*All text fragments by Julia Kristeva

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WIDER DISCOURSE

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CREATIVE PARTICIPATION IN THE URBAN RENEWAL OF LAGOS PAPA OMOTAYO IN CONVERSATION WITH FRIDA ROBLES 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

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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 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

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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”.

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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: wwMost 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

Lagosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 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.

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NEGOTIATING CITY SPACES BY OLAMIDE UDOMA-EJORH In a Lagos market, the journey truly begins once you spot what you came for. Captivated by a bright yellow and blue fabric with psychedelic patterns, you walk towards the stall. The shopkeeper notices you and breaks the spell with her words. She shouts at you, trying to entice you further by telling you where her fabrics are from and how genuine they are. It is weird, because although you are still across the road, you hear her speaking just to you. You block out the horns, the shouting, spitting, drilling, you block out Lagos and you continue to your destination; an Ankara stall with a little woman making gestures at you. She meets you as you step up on to the pavement and before you say anything, she shouts at her ‘sister’ to take down the exact fabric you have been eyeing. You say “How much?” and the game kicks off. She replies with the same question while adding some niceties: “My beautiful sister, how much?” You are not sure where to go from here, so you look for help in the faces of the ladies and men selling wares nearby, but all you meet are blank stares. No one to help. Since she didn’t want to start the negotiations, you decide to throw a number out, with a little bit of cheek. This little lady wearing a dark blue head wrap is not impressed at the low price you quote, although she laughs and throws her head back, but her eyes say it all. This is going to be a long back-and-forth to ensure that either she makes a profit or you get a bargain. This way of negotiating in a market is how the worth of heritage buildings, spaces, or artifacts in Lagos are similarly negotiated. These negotiations take place between landowners, property developers, the Lagos State Government, communities, artists, historians, and, rarely, the residents or users of a space. These negotiations are not hinged around the value or worth of a heritage building but instead how much profit one can receive. This can clearly be seen in

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the example of Ilojo Bar. Ilojo Bar was a Brazilian-style historic building located near Tinubu Square in Lagos Island, Lagos State, Nigeria. It was originally built as a bar and restaurant in 1855 by the Fernandez family, who employed returning ex-slaves who had mastered the art of building while in South America. Ilojo Bar was subsequently sold to Alfred Omolana Oláìyá of the Oláìyá family in 1933 and was declared a national monument in 1956 by the National Commission for Museums and Monuments. After many years of neglect, the building was torn down on Sunday, September 11, 2016. Leading up to the demolition, it was understood that the building had been declared structurally unfit for habitation by the state government, who had given the Oláìyá family an ultimatum to either pull down the building or else the state government would. The family, who felt threatened, took the matter into their own hands and applied for a permit to have the building demolished. Even though the information that had been unearthed about Ilojo Bar is still under investigation, there was a clear tussle that took place between the state and the family. The value of the building was constantly being negotiated. By asking for it to be demolished, the state government declared the value of this monumental building of Nigerian-Brazilian heritage to be close to nothing. Even within the family, some members wanted to sell it to a developer, while others were pushing for the building to become a museum. Such negotiations do not take place quickly, they take years of back and forth, usually leading to neglect or demolition. There are so many similarly contested spaces for which the value of Nigerian and specifically Lagosian heritage is constantly being negotiated. Before the final death of these spaces, you can find them untouched for many years. Spaces whose use has changed, without changing their form, but rather due to a change in occupancy. Ghostly spaces that sit beautiful and tranquil. In-between spaces that encom-

pass the history and lives lived there. These spaces allow for imagination and at times leave us feeling like time has stopped. There is value in these almost-dead spaces. But in our daily lives, as Lagosians, do we truly see these spaces for what they are and the potential they hold? The urban development message that the state government pushes on both the local and international media is an aspiration towards being a modern city, a megacity, a shiny and glossy city where there are no flaws or blemishes. However, this city has no soul, no diversity, no culture, and no heritage. This is not the right approach for a multicultural city, where culture is very important. A light needs to go on to change the way Lagosians (on all levels of society) value our heritage. Whether we decide to focus on restoration and renovation, like with Legacy 1995, the Nigerian historical and environmental interest group, or appreciate the terrain vague, a switch must be flipped for the spaces that hold our history to be negotiated in a way that benefits not just one party but all parties and the city as a whole.

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TERRAIN VAGUE IN LAGOS? BY FRIDA ROBLES A text is only understood when it is walked. The ideas that you read become tangible as soon as they become part of your inner dialogue, of your daily walks. This is to say that every idea has a personal story. Every building, every text. For ideas require time to go through a transition passage into action, into materiality. Ideas, apart from time, also require a shape to find themselves and this shape normally can emerge through a language. Ignaside Solá-Morales understood - and practiced - both the architectonic and the philosophical languages. It makes me wonder why it was that Solá-Morales chose these two languages; maybe due to this in-between character of professions – philosophy and architecture – as both create beauty out of a structure that aims to understand and inhabit the world, but also strives to find the mystery and poetry it hides. Both philosophy and architecture are a framework for thinking the world, both respect a tradition that combines freedom with structure. The aim of philosophy is the construction of concepts; the aim of architecture is the display of a concept into space. I can only imagine the thoughts that went through Solá-Morales’ mind whenever he would walk from a philosophy class to another in the architecture department. This – I imagine – became his professional rhythm, going from theory to praxis, from praxis to theory, until they melted into the singularity that are Solá-Morales’s texts and buildings. “Sorry, I am already late! I’m stuck in traffic,” I had to tell a person I had an appointment with. “Welcome to Lagos,” he replied. “You will need to follow my instructions,” he warned me. “OK, so take a bike from E Centre, tell them you are going to Morocco. It’s 200 Naira. When you get to Morocco, take another bike to Popoola Street. It’s number 5. A green two-story building with a black

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roof and a black gate.” He made me repeat Popo-olaa few times so that people would understand what I was saying, where I was aiming to go. There I was, I had a map of words that would lead me to a destination. I hadn’t pointed out any of those words in a map, my destination could have been in the south, in the north, or in the east for all that matter. It was already night and I was new to the place. I went out of the hotel where I was staying and I walked to the informal motorbike station across the street. The motorbike system in Lagos is astounding; young drivers with passengers on their backs know every shortcut, every narrow street, and every fake bridge of their assigned territory. It could be said that they own their respective part of this big city. Each city provokes a different rhythm in its walker, and it makes me think that each city may also set a different rhythm of thinking. It will never be the same to walk through Vienna in the middle of the night as it would be to walk the streets of Mexico City’s downtown – my natal city. I will never fully understand how is it that Viennese streets can become so quiet, so open, so coldly friendly when you walk them at 3am. Riding that motorbike in Lagos Mainland was a strange form of “walking” a city, if I could be allowed such a jump. I ponder on whether the vertiginous rhythm of motorbikes talks closely to the rhythm of a city like Lagos. Lagos has the most amount of information of any city that I have walked so far: posters, people, cars, motorbikes, third-floor standing mannequins, lights, signs, fruits, textiles, mirrors, sounds… You can enter a quasi state of trance; as if the city itself would otherwise overflow the self. In his text “Terrain Vague”, Solá-Morales suggests that photography has been the medium par excellence for representing and remembering cities. “Because we have

already seen or are going to see some of these places, we consume this semiological mechanism of communication, and the memories that we accumulate through direct experience, through narratives, or through the simple accumulation of new signals, produce our imagination of the city.”1 That is his starting point for pondering upon the fascination of the terrain vague in contemporary cities, linking it with the freedom of non-identity, non-productivity, non-expectation as a form of resistance to the capitalist logic of usage of space. Lagos has not been primordially narrated by photographic images, the narrative of the city is not that of the encounter with the already seen, it doesn’t follow the logic of a romantic wanderer – like Paris or Solá-Morales’s Barcelona would. Lagos imposes itself in a vertiginous rhythm in which its buildings are in constant reformation, demolition, reconstruction. Lagos is vibrant, informal, it is always vague in terms of urban rigidity. The terrain vague in Lagos cannot last long, the space is always being contested. Jumping back to the motorbike ride, I remember how I would be fascinated by the fluidity of Lagos, by how one street was connected to the other and how the terrain would change in a gradual yet fast manner. In some parts of the city, like Barriga (where Popoola street is located), the ground is wavy. I dare to say that the fascination of Lagos doesn’t lay in the vagueness of a territory but rather on its perseverance. The fascination of the Ebute-Metta railway compound to visitors is not only that of the potentiality of a space but of how it, surprisingly, has resisted being a participant in the ongoing Lagosian urban transformation. The fact that most of its buildings have been standing for longer than 100 years is becoming close to incredible. The temporality of this city is vertiginous as well. The surprise is hidden in the perseverance of the space’s character – that is the enigma. How to remain a foreigner to the overflowing urban

dialogue? Maybe the element of surprise of the Ebute-Metta railway company is that it became a subject of photography in which the space is never narrated in photographic terms. This railway compound functions as a terrain vague if, as Solá-Morales read sit, “these strange places exist outside the city’s effective circuits and productive structures.”2 Even when Lagos challenges the idea of the “photographic” city, the railway compound, on the other hand, opens the door for new urban and architecture possibilities. As Solá-Morales puts its, every architectonical gesture is an imposing one, a gesture of limits. So then, how can we think the space of the railway compound at Ebute-Metta without it being an imposing or colonizing act? How to play with its unexpected character of functioning both as a “photograph” from the past and as terrain vague? At the end of the text, Solá-Morales suggests that a fluid architecture, one that could react to the beauty and mystery of terrain vagues would be one that follows the logic of the space, that continues the dynamics of these particular spaces that already contradict the hegemonic and productive urban spaces. “Undoubtedly, through attention to continuity: not the continuity of the planned, efficient and legitimated city but of the flows, the energies, the rhythms established by the passing of time and the loss of limits.”3 If we were to seriously partake in this idea then we would need to think about the symbiotic relationship that is always present between the city and its buildings, the city and its inhabitants; to think the city as an organic entity which functions on different, parallel scales. To follow the vagueness of the Ebute-Metta railway compound would be to follow its greenery, to allow for rustiness, to re-think heritage, to question colonial structures, to allow for emptiness, and to play with temporality.

* Sources: 1

Ignasi de Solá-Morales, Terrain Vague, p.119

Solá-Morales, Terrain Vague, p. 120

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Ignasi de Solá-Morales, Terrain Vague, p.123

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FRAGMENTS OF THE OLD CONTOURED WITH THE NEW BY OYINDAMOLA FAKEYE Coined as the Silicon Valley of Lagos, Yaba has been rebranded into Lagos’s startup and technology hub, drawing attention to the future of the area. As one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods, it has a long history and remnants of a colonial past. Pieces of its railway almost peek out behind walls, as children play ‘hide and seek’, weary of the possibility of being discovered – though not at first. The railway was an important means of transport for the British for moving goods to and from Lagos and the rest of the country. However, following Nigeria’s independence, the railway fell into disuse. Though some of the train routes have been reopened, people have abandoned the tracks in favour of transportation by road. The Ebute-Metta railway compound, though long past its glory days, has in some ways experienced a reawakening. The restored train routes, complete with modern train carriages and other rehabilitation projects such as Legacy 1995, which are currently engaged in the documentation and preservation of historic materials within the compound, have beckoned new users. Lagos, a metropolis of over 20 million people, is currently being expanded through the reclamation of land by the Atlantic Ocean. This expansion has overshadowed opportunities for redevelopment in already established towns in the state, but as the rich move into the new developments, it is the poor who have taken ownership of the abandoned spaces, giving birth to new communities. Having grown up in Harrow, England, railways have long been a part of my identity. Heading to school, work, church or family visits, I loved and at the same time dreaded my daily commutes. Living at the end of a train line, I have become accustomed to viewing stations not only as stops, but * References: http://atributosurbanos.es/en/terms/terrain-vague/

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as a space binding the diverse identities of all those who fall within its scape into one communal unit. Over the years, families and communities have not just passed through the Ebute-Metta railway compound, journey bound, but have also made the site their final stop, setting up homes and social amenities within its unused spaces. The recently concluded [a]FA Legacy Lab was aimed at examining the railway compound as it related to Scale, Heritage, and Terrain Vague. It was the Ignasi de Solà-Morales-coined term ‘terrain vague’, focused on “abandoned areas, on obsolete and unproductive spaces and buildings, often undefined and without specific limits”, which fascinated me. Otherwise abandoned, these train carriages and the railway shed have become the village square for the residents who currently utilise the space. Carriages flicker between social and living zones and a hierarchy of order lingers about the communal areas. Here, children are bathed while others run around their makeshift football pitch, laughter is heard, and much is discussed. It was important that the project did not disrupt the community but instead reacted to its demands through architectural and artistic means. However, according to Solà-Morales, it was impossible for an architectural intervention to occur without impacting the environment quite drastically. It was his belief that “When architecture and urban design project their desire onto a vacant space, a terrain vague, they seem incapable of doing anything other than introducing violent transformations, changing estrangement into citizenship, and striving at all costs to dissolve the uncontaminated magic of the obsolete in the realism of efficacy”. Stephanie Rizai’s “Hanging out with Nature” played on the idea of home and social space by producing hammocks “where people could chill” – a description attributed to the shed by the young men who used the

space. It would be interesting to see what they would make of the installation and the recycled material used to create the structure. Would the hammocks be a permanent intervention or merely a visiting piece and could this be described as the violent transformation that Solà-Morales was describing in his essay? “Carriage”, a film by Tito Aderemi-Ibitola, which captures conversations on government, power, and colonialism, was screened within the abandoned train carriages. We became familiar with the cast – members of the community, Nature, KS Owo ni Koko, Idris, and others, who performed and became exhibition guides in a way during the public viewing. Two weeks earlier, their knowledge of the shed was shared with the excited participating artists and architects exploring the space for the first time. None of the magic of the shed was lost as the lab allowed for the participants to spend time in dialogue with the communities, documenting collective histories, current and previous utilisation of the space, as well as their hopes for the future. Some of the conversations were unspoken, exploring the collision of various visual narratives told through displays of tropical fruit, Ankara fabric stalls, and even bags of water that were hawked as commuters made their way along the rail line. Cansu Ergun’s “Ivy” was a sculptural interpretation of her discovery of the city, a mettise of her pre- and post-Lagos Legacy Lab experience. She was able to capture the imprint of the city’s kaleidoscopic quality in a 3D pattern that made its way through the vegetation into the confines of the shed. Despite all the chaos that is often attributed to the city of Lagos, guests were invited to experience a moment of calm in the “Ori” installation by Aderemi Adegbite and Jon Krizan, although an air of tension still remained. A heavy rock hanging dangerously close to the delicate foray below and a pathway lined with caged animals weary of their fate

threatened what otherwise would have been a serene moment. Such was the balance of Nature in its human, environmental, and spiritual form that left some guests hoping that the ‘gods were appeased’. The opportunity for students to draw inspiration from the communities, cultures, and environment they encountered via the [a]FA lab encourages a contemporary dialogue that can be documented and referenced as Africa continues to assert itself within positive global narratives. Baerbel Mueller and her team have embarked on an exciting journey that opens the eyes of young architects to an intimate discovery of Sub-Saharan Africa as makers and historians.

* References: Ignasi de Solá-Morales Rubio, “Terrain Vague”, in: Cynthia Davidson (ed.), Anyplace, Anyone Corporation, MIT Press, New York/Cambridge, Mass. 1995, pp. 118-123.

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THE NATURE OF MEMORY BY DARE DAN

“Memory is a serious fiction” - Simon Njami I don’t know when I started remembering as a child. Could it be when I hid my fingers from the flaming candle ‘cause it burnt the first time? Or when my mouth watered like that of Ivan Pavlov’s dog at the sight of a bottle of Coke? Or was that I mastering Fear and Desire, and not learning to remember in actuality? But I remember two mothers´ fighting over their children’s fight, and the next minute, the two children start to play again, sharing toys and laughter and forgetting they just had a fight. Whereas, for the women, it is the beginning of a lifetime discord. They’ll always remember the pellets of abuse thrown at each other; assailing one another, despite the fact that the basis of their fight has long been erased. I also remember reconciliation as a form of a forgetting exercise; the lofty quest to unremember a supposed faulty encounter with a person or a circumstance in an effort to reestablish an affair gone sour. At the [a]FA /[applied] Foreign Affairs exhibition in Lagos, the luminous evening is almost wrapping up the event when a friend, for the second time that evening, tells us of an installation, not within the immediate premise where all others are, but somewhere on the outside. She was taking us there earlier when her phone rang and she had to run with the promise that she’d be back. We wait. This time, it’s the phone again and she needs to dash home to be back later. But we can’t wait this time, so she points out a direction and we troll. The event, which is by the [a]FA Lagos Legacy lab, is a joint project by [applied] Foreign Affairs, Institute of Architecture, University of Applied Arts Vienna with Legacy 1995.

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The objective is to gather committed people for the common cause of preserving and promoting the character and appearance of historic monuments, the environment and cultural entities in all parts of Nigeria. A subsidiary of Legacy 1995 is based within the Nigerian Railways compound in Ebute-Metta, Lagos, where the event is holding. And the works we’re seeing, are by Adeola Olagunju, Aderemi Adegbite, Cansu Ergün, Frida Robles, Jon Krizan, Katerina Johannides, Mathias Juul Frost, Stephanie Rizaj, Tito Aderemi-Ibitola and Toms Kampars— a mix of Nigerian, European and South American artists and architects, curated by Baerbel Mueller and Stefanie Theuretzbacher. I’m with a girlfriend. She has been excited since she came in here. It is an open event and spirited people are everywhere sighting and—in some cases, meditating—on deep aesthetical and spiritual installations. Children, too, are everywhere; they’re mostly children of the staffers of the old Nigerian Railway Corporation. They’re running and riding monocycle of varying heights; falling, sweating and happy. The venue is spacious and beautifully absurd—just as the art pieces. We see a set-up that must have been inspired by a Yoruba cosmology, the religion deity of Ifa. Another installation, hanging up on a tree, mixes up the greenery of a plant and that of plastic—Plant or Plastic, you almost can’t tell at first sight; something about the modern way of life I guess: modern inventions taking up nature. There are a couple of abandoned trains here and there, too. This place has a history; it still habours the smell and touch of colonialism. Some of the artists used the dilapidating locomotives to home their projects, making colourless graffiti on their bodies and installing electronic visuals in the old cabinets. The wheels of the trains haven’t moved an inch in decades. They’ve taken the

colours of grim decaying rocks, looking stolidly unmovable. We (everyone and the trains) are under a wide, long and high shed,—It used to be a departure station for the trains I guess—giving the premise a darker colour of the evening, indigo. Again and again, my guest thanks me for inviting her. She says there is a way what she sees here feeds her mind. In what ways? I don’t ask. I had invited her so we can catch up after a long time without seeing each other. And catching up—I believe—is what we’re doing. We take the direction we’re told. To see the installation on the outside, we go through a damaged barbed wire and into another section of the compound. A man in brown uniform stretches out on a chair. He has a cane with him. He is shouting at a bunch of children to leave an entrance which will be our own exit to the said installation. We greet the man and ask where this piece of installation might be. “Go out to the street”, he says. “…and keep to the right as you walk. You’ll find the place. Just keep to your right!”

at the abutting of dream and reality. We want so badly as many entries to epiphanies as possible. Some of us forget too often and pay the price—I’m such. We are getting lost but we don’t mind; we’re enjoying each other’s company all along. She is wearing a pair of brown rimmed glasses I’ve always known her with. But I don’t know her eye defect. “What’s the name of your defect?” I ask. She says it. I’ve never heard of the type. “…and how does it impair your sight?” “The cornea causes blood or other fluids to build up and prevent the retina from properly filtering light. Light is blocked and fluid builds up causing sudden loss of vision. But the severity of vision loss depends on where the blockage or clot occurred. For me, it is by atherosclerosis.” She is a fast speaker. She levitates over the eye medical terminologies as though she’s an ophthalmologist, an expert.

We thank our man and exit the compound. The children are there, by the gate, desiring still to join their mates at the main event. We walk and keep to our right.

“Sounds quite complex,” I say.

To remember is to pick the bits and pieces; to pitch members of a past together in making a single unit; a module of the event. To remember is to engage one of the human’s most interesting ability.

“It’s right there on my face; I bear the disease,” she responds jokingly, pointing out her eyes.

Some of us beat ourselves hard to remember; would pay a million bucks to roam the void of our sleep, picking things and elating

“You look to me as the best candidate to play hide and seek with”. I tease. “I simply just ask that you hand me your glasses and then you

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“How did you get to know all this?”

We laugh.

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look for me”. She irks and chases me up the street. I outrun her by a yard or so. At the time, we forget to maintain the right. When I allow her to catch up with me, she jabs me in the rib and I hold her hands. She says she must hit me the second time for mocking her. I allow a second time, and then a third. It hurts a little but I laugh all the same. She then says she won’t play with me again, childishly. And what I feel she means is that she won’t be serious with me again. At that moment, pouting her lips at me, she looks very beautiful and I like her. I want to tell her but I don’t. We are back strolling and chatting and maintaining the right.

I began being conscious of the ability to remember as a young teenager. My uncle and I would sit hunchback over a scrabble board. With tiles dancing in our minds as well as out of the bag and between our fingers, we would set out to beat each other at the game of letters and numbers. He’d beat me—he always did. But the game, after dropping the last tile, wasn’t the end for him: He would review it, tile by tile, pointing out my weakest move as well as my strongest; the highest earning two-letter word, the premiums and words making their debuts on the board. In the process, he would teach. But none of these interested me as much as his ability to replay the game we had played a day before—Word for word, linking the elements rightly on the board, he would replay the exact unit of the game we had the previous day. At no time did I fall short of being totally amazed at this seemingly magical ability. I tried it a couple of times, too: bringing alive a dead game; recapturing a moment wholly and replicating his stunning ability to remember. But I never for once did find my way around the magic. We’re giving up on finding the installation on the outside by the right. We’re getting lost in the dim evening night and we don’t care ‘cause we are catching up. Then we meet two guys we had left at the main event earli-

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er. They, too, are looking for the installation on the outside, and since they have a better description, we follow them. Soon we’re there; apparently, my friend and I passed by it in its obscurity while chasing, chatting and ‘catching up’.

Memories are dancing tiny lights; they are a legion of luminous shadows. The most potent challenge for many merchants of memories is to make floodlights of phantasmagoric hues; focus a still beam to read meaning of a fixed time and place not present; things not at sight, thereby making sense out of time washed away in the sea of a past, and deny memory its nature by gripping firmly a slippery and evasive postexistence. The art piece is installed in an abandoned shipping container. It is dark on the inside except for the moonlight streaming in through the numerous rust at its top. Roped with a peculiar feeling, one totally different from what I had felt for the other installations, I feel nighttime further makes it look like we found the place at the right time. The roof of the container let the blue sky in on the framed mirrors hanging from jagged edges of the corrugated iron. The mirrors hang at a different depth into the air in the empty and worn-out container. They reflect nothing but night. The whole scene is a simulacrum of memory; the silent and irregular rotation of shadowy images and reflections from the mirrors, which turn gently from gravity and the little air that can wound-up their edges. I walk into the container and, for a split second, feel myself walking in my own mind. You’re in many places at a time, reflecting, like a spirit, and it is night so you can’t tell how many of you is watching you. There are texts on the mirrors, written in white paints. They shy away from sight like timid memories. One can never pay attention for too long; cannot finish reading a text before it turns silently and voluntarily away like a maiden, like a new bride. Another text-onmirror approaches the same way one turns away: slowly and silently before it ever

gets to be fully read. Many memories have escaped me this way. And even when you hold still the mirror and read the text to the end, the meaning, like a difficult joke, like an antic, still disguises in the mind, leaving you staid. I hold out, pick on one of them and read:

“ The force of time is a dream making love to absence.” I think about it. Another reads: “Between the two pathetic show of courage and humiliation against which he is fused by the clashes of others, the foreigner persists.” Again, I think about it. The artist is not here—she certainly didn’t set the installation to be seen at night like this. The writer, too, is not here—I doubt if she set her words to be read on mirrors. So I am free to own the sphere this very moment. The other guys have left. And maybe my friend knows something is working up on in me; she keeps her calm and simply watches as I walk up and down in the container like one would rove in his or her mind.

This is how memory comes to one: naked, yet incomplete. Perhaps this is why this installation must be away, here, hidden; why it must be an unfulfilled promise, searched, missed, lost in hope, retraced, and found by chance. I would later learn that the artist is Frida Robles, an essayist and visual artist from Mexico, and the words are that of Julia Kristeva, a Bulgarian-French philosopher and psychoanalyst.

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THE [a]FA LAGOS LEGACY LAB FEB 2017 BY AMRITT FLORA The acquisition of knowledge and experience can be a strange and slippery thing. Something that seems so obvious and yet can be undertaken in the most subtle or unnoticeable ways. We understand education as a fundamental process of growing our minds and abilities but more often than not the process has become straightjacketed within the constraints of a narrow focus. A way of measuring and categorising. An expectation set to criteria rather than a broad sense of discovery of both the world and the self. Anyone who has spent any time teaching knows that learning is far more than the sum of knowledge in books or exams. The context and the time are equally important. The strategies and techniques, analysis, synthesis and application across subjects as well as failures are all part of the complexity that allows knowledge to become useful. Disturbing the status quo and moving out of comfort zones is a recognized way of re-evaluating your perceptions. Learning is a constant process over our lives, it comes in fits and starts, with ease and reluctance. Some acquired knowledge is not useful until years have passed, others almost redundant as soon as acquired but necessary non the less. As a lecturer in design, the role is as much about exposure and nurturing observation as passing on basic tenets. A good educator is one who is a facilitator of discovery and is willing to be challenged and over taken by the future that is in the hands of their students. A good educator should be providing tools and guidance rather than rigid answers.

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During the last week of February 2017, [applied] Foreign Affairs based in the Institute of Architecture of the University of Applied Arts Vienna came with nine students to work on an installation project in the Railway Compound in Lagos Nigeria. I was invited as an Architect and Educator who had worked with Legacy on the railway compound whilst being based in Lagos with Middlesex University. As a senior lecturer for over a decade, I had experience of similar projects and field trips with my own students and was conscious of the contextual disturbance that students would experience and how this was as important as the project itself. In addition the short time in this new situation would challenge the ability to absorb the realities of life in such a complex city. In these contexts and with most students never having been in any similar location before, the advise was mostly about focusing down on the vast array of new experiences and visual stimulus. To allow for projects that would take the many potentials and allow for an achievable outcome, whilst simultaneously providing seeds for a key reference point in the life of these young people. The context of such work is as much about learning to cope with basic constraints that you are unfamiliar with. Learning to work with parameters that seem ridiculous to someone working in Europe. Learning to never take for granted, or presuming something can be done without finding out accurate information. Not layering on ideas and behaviours from one context directly onto a very different one without paying attention. Understanding how the nature of the work and the audience are both vital to the outcome.

All of these notions should be part of our everyday thinking as designers and artists but often we skate over them. If the students are able to take these experiences with them into their own practices, wherever they may be, then the visit will have been a success beyond the quality of the exhibited work. The workshop and installations are part of a sequence of events that seek to reinvigorate a historic and semi derelict industrial compound. The international dimension that was brought and the cross disciplinary approach was a reminder of what is achievable. The collaborations showed once more, how much we need to look outward and be open rather than inward and isolated. How much we have to learn from re-situating ourselves and asking questions about the way we work and think. I hope that all of the students will look back at this time and reflect on how it changed them. Whether it made them want to work in similar contexts or never experience such a thing again are both equally valid. The exposure was what counted and the nurturing of their view of the world they find themselves in. It also allows for an understanding of the essence of your project or idea, which parts are necessary and which are superfluous. Where can you make compromises to achieve the overall goal. It also demands reflection on what is, rather than what might have been and seeking out how more of the latter could have been achieved.

When I return to my home in central London from Lagos I always admire the peace and quiet order, the relative silence that is rush hour. Lagos makes you re-adjust your reference points to such a degree that London feels like a small town. My hope is that the students who visited will go back to Vienna and their home cities and be equally able to see with fresh eyes their more familiar environments and recognise what makes such things possible. To recognise how many complex systems come into play to achieve things they have previously taken for granted. Their practice and their work will never be the same following this visit, as any other experience in their lives changes them everyday. Their work in Lagos has given them knowledge and experience which they may find hard to recreate. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s influence a little slippery to define. That lack of definition should be satisfaction enough.

Lagos is a tough, vibrant, chaotic city. It has an overwhelming rawness and dense humanity that can challenge the perceptions of anyone used to a more benign and ordered place. It takes time to absorb its peculiarities and the individualism that permeates a city of twenty million people.

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EVENTS

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SCHEDULE OF LAB DATE

LOCATION

PROGRAM

FEB 10

VIE - LOS

Arrival Baerbel Mueller and Frida Robles

FEB 11

Lagos

Preparations and meeting with Legacy 1995

FEB 12

VIE - LOS

Arrival [a]FA team

FEB 14 Lagos Lagos city tour: Lagos Island by Stefanie Theuretzbacher (Freedom Park, City Hall – Goethe Institute, Lagos Island, TInubu Square, Balogun Market) Evening lecture: The History of Lagos by Dr. Abosede George (6:00pm) FEB 14 Railway Introduction by Legacy 1995 Compound Lecture: The Nigeria Railway by Khadijah Aroyewun-Adekomiya Portfolio presentations and prospect by each lab participant FEB 15 Railway PERCEPTION: Compound* Individually exploring the railway compound FEB 16 Railway CONCEPTION: Compound* Individual or team definition of first project ideas Visit by the Austrian Ambassador´s wife Stefanie Senfter FEB 17 Railway PERCEPTION and CONCEPTION : Compound* Individual site exploration and project definition TRAIN RIDE (2:00pm) FEB 18 Railway Compound*

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Review with Olamide Udoma-Ejorh, Amritt Flora, Papa Omotayo, Oyindamola Fakeye (11:00am)

FEB 19

Lagos

Lagos city tour: Jazzhole, Eco Atlantic

FEB 20

Railway Compound*

PRODUCTION: Work on individual or team projects

FEB 21 Railway PRODUCTION and TRANSLATION: Compound* Definition of physical/ digital outcome of the projects FEB 22

Railway Compound*

PRODUCTION and TRANSLATION: Work on physical/ digital translation of the projects

FEB 23

Railway Compound*

PRODUCTION and TRANSLATION: Work on physical/ digital outcome of the projects

FEB 24 Railway PRODUCTION and TRANSLATION: Compound* Work of physical/ digital form of the projects Set-up of presentation/ installation/ event at the running shed FEB 25 Railway Compound

PRESENTATION | public event (4:00pm)

FEB 26

Reflection/ free day/ evening departure

LOS - VIE

* Daily schedule: Morning session 9:00am-12:30pm, lunch break 12:30pm-1.30pm, afternoon session: 1:30pm-7:00pm

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MEETINGS AND REVIEWS

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RAILWAY ARCHIVE, TRAIN RIDE

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REVIEWS AND WORK IN PROGRESS

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PUBLIC VIEWING

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SET- UP PLAN

3 1 4

Entrance

5 6

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TRACING THE STORY OF NIGERIAN RAILWAY | Toms Kampars

INTERSTICES | Adeola Olagunju

CARRIAGE | Tito Aderemi-Ibitola

HANGING OUT WITH NATURE | Stephanie Rizaj

ORI | Aderemi Adegbite and Jon Krizan

IVY | Cansu ErgÃ¼n

MEMORIES MATTER | Katerina Joannides

THIS HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE | Mathias Juul Frost

HANDLE WITH CARE | Frida Robles

10 EXISTING WORKS | Nature

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CVS BAERBEL MUELLER is an architect and founder of nav_s baerbel mueller (navigations in the field of architecture and urban research within diverse cultural contexts), which has focused on projects located in Ghana and the DRC since 2002. She is head of the [applied] Foreign Affairs lab at the Institute of Architecture, University of Applied Arts Vienna. In 2015 she received the Ars Docendi State Award for excellence in teaching, in 2017 she edited [applied] Foreign Affairs - investigation spatial phenomena in rural and urban Sub-Saharan Africa. STEFANIE THEURETZBACHER has been working as an architect since graduating from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Departing from her professional initiation in avant-garde architectural firms in Vienna, her focus shifted towards the African continent; she is currently based in Lagos, Nigeria, where she co-founded her own architectural firm, Studio Elementals. Besides being commissioned in several projects in Lagos and Abuja, she works as a project architect on a UNIDO building project in Erbil, Iraq since 2016 for [a]FA. FRIDA ROBLES is an essayist artist with a bachelor degree in History (Mexico City) and a master’s degree from the University of Applied Arts (Vienna). Recently she wrote her first book entitled “All love letters are ghost stories” with the support of the FONCA Young Creators Scholarship (2015-2016). In her work essays can take the form of street performances, texts, still or moving images and are a philosophical approach to the unknown and the basis for artistic thought. CANSU ERGÜN, born 1989 in Turkey, is a student of Site Specific Art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She holds a bachelor in landscape architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of the Istanbul Technical University. JON KRIZAN was born in the United States in 1989, and is currently a masters student in Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Studio Sejima. He received his bachelor’s degree in Architecture from SUNY at Buffalo, United States, studied at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany, and participated in the M.arch 1 program at UCLA, United States. In addition he has professional architectural experience from Singapore, Los Angeles, and Kathmandu, Nepal. His research often deals with the cognitive relationship between Architecture and Naturogenic Landscape. KATERINA JOANNIDES, currently a Master student of Architecture in Studio Sejima at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She was born in 1991 in Cyprus, and received her Bachelor in Architecture from Central Saint Martins College of the University of the Arts London. In addition, she has professional experience from architectural firms in Copenhagen, Rome, Mallorca and Nicosia and also has exhibited in London, Vienna and the Venice Architecture Biennale. MATHIAS JUUL FROST, born 1990 in Denmark, is a master student of Architecture, at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He holds a bachelor in urban design, and had two abroad semesters at Saint Martins London and Malmø Høgskola studying graphic design etc. Further he worked at Allies and Morrison architects in London, and at Juul Frost arkitekter in Copen-

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hagen. STEPHANIE RIZAJ, born 1989 in Austria, is an artist and a fashion designer. Currently, she is a master student of transarts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her side specific installations are dealing with the relation between the viewer and the space. In parallel, she is working on her first fashion collection of her recently founded label SRIZA. Stephanie received numerous prices, such as the Austrian Fashion Association AFA support collection (2016); Startstipendium, BKA Austria (2015); Nomination Austrian Fashion Prize, (2014); Cash for Culture, City of Vienna (2013) 1st Prize, Viennese Festival Week Design Competition (2011); Scholarship for academic excellence, University of Arts and Design Linz (2011); 2nd Prize, Young Creative Chevrolet Design Competition (2011). TOMS KAMPARS, born in 1990, is an architect from Latvia. Currently, he is a master student of architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna under Kazuyo Sejima. His experience includes 4 years of practice in various disciplines in architecture, which he gained while working as an architect and designer for international firms, such as Henning Larsen Architects in Copenhagen and Heatherwick Studio in London. Toms has also been responsible for many architectural competitions and proposals while working for almost 2 years in the Riga-based firm Sarma Norde Architects. ADEOLA OLAGUNJU is a Nigerian artist who lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria. After obtaining a degree in Fine and Applied Arts (Graphic Design) in 2009, Adeola worked as a Graphic Artist for Advertising Agencies in Lagos. Working Primarily with Photography, her artistic practice encompasses a range of medium; including Video, Painting, and Collage. She explores themes around her environment, self and memory with a documentary and conceptual approach. She has participated in Photography Master Classes and numerous exhibitions. She was the recipient of the Lagos Photo Festival Award in 2012, and the Young Art Fund Amsterdam Award in 2013. ADEREMI ADEGBITE, born in 1982 in Ebute-Metta, Lagos, Nigeria, is a multimedia artist whose preferred mediums are photography and video. Adegbite’s current focus questions individual realities and truth(s) that stretch(es) across the societal fabric as constants for an elastic socio-system. He is interested in how past experiences of being part of a family reshape the individual’s present conditions, and serve as catalysts for “the” surrealistic future. The psychological effect of the idea “one for all, all for one,” is at the centre of his new interventions achieved through photography, video art and recently, installation. TITO ADEREMI-IBITOLA is a Lagos-based multimedia artist working primarily in video/performance. Her works focus on the intersection of gender, race, and ethnicity. She has been featured in the Transatlantic Visual Exchange, VAN Lagos, Videonale, Lagos theatre festival, Art 21- platform exhibition, amongst others. Born in Lagos, Nigeria her family emigrated from the country to the United States when she was seven years old. She graduated from Allegheny College in 2014 with a Bachelors of Arts Degree in Communication, TV/Film Production and a minor in Political Science. She returned back to Nigeria that year for the first time since her family left the nation. She is based in Lagos where she is living and working.

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IMPRESSUM | CREDITS | FUNDING [a]FA LAGOS LEGACY LAB 2017 Teaching: Baerbel Mueller, Frida Robles, Stefanie Theuretzbacher Head: Baerbel Mueller Partnering institution: Legacy 1995 Local organization [a]FA: Stefanie Theuretzbacher Local organization Legacy: Sola Akintunde, Mogbolahan Ajala Guest review with: Olamide Udoma-Ejorh, Amritt Flora, Papa Omotayo, Oyindamola Fakeye PUBLIC VIEWING Works by: Adeola Olagunju, Aderemi Adegbite, Cansu ErgĂźn, Frida Robles, Jon Krizan, Katerina Joannides, Mathias Juul Frost, Stephanie Rizaj, Tito Aderemi-Ibitola, Toms Kampars Curated by: Baerbel Mueller and Stefanie Theuretzbacher DOCUMENTATION Editorial team: Baerbel Mueller, Frida Robles, Stefanie Theuretzbacher Graphic design: Stefanie Theuretzbacher Proof reading: Janima Nam Photographic documentation: Allyn Gaestel

www.dieangewandte.at/en/applied_foreign_affairs www.facebook.com/aFA.appliedforeignaffairs www.legacy1995.org.ng

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PHOTO CREDITS P 1: P 8-9: P 22-23: P 28-29: P 38-45: P 48-49: P 54-55: P 58-59: P 60-61: P 62-63: P 66-71: P 72-75: P 76-77: P 80-81: P 82-83: P 84-85: P 88-95: P 98-104: P 105: P 106-107: P 110-111: P 112-113: P 114-115: P 140-141: P 142: P 143: P 144-145: P 146-147:

Baerbel Mueller Toms Kampars Toms Kampars Allyn Gaestel Allyn Gaestel Allyn Gaestel Allyn Gaestel Allyn Gaestel Baerbel Mueller Stephany Rizaj; Baerbel Mueller Allyn Gaestel Aderemi Adegbite Jon Krizan Allyn Gaestel Baerbel Mueller; Frida Robles Allyn Gaestel Katerina Joannides Mattias Juul Frost Allyn Gaestel Mattias Juul Frost Emeka Okereke Allyn Gaestel Emeka Okereke Baerbel Mueller; Frida Robles Frida Robles Baerbel Mueller; Frida Robles Baerbel Mueller; Frida Robles Allyn Gaestel

With the kind support of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Embassy of Austria in Abuja and the Goethe Institute Lagos.

INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTURE

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