Affordable housing resonates as architects commit to regenerating built environment
The need for affordable housing that could address the gap in residential accommodation in Nigeria resonated in the just concluded annual Lagos Architects Forum (LAF) organised by the Lagos State chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Architects (NIA) where these professionals committed to regenerating and reinventing the built environment.
The architects were charged to come up with innovative and contemporary architectural designs to bridge the housing deficit faced by the low-income earners who account for about 70 percent of Nigeria’s population, and are in dire need of accommodation.
Sade Ogunsola, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Development, University of Lagos, who gave this charge in her keynote address at the forum which had as theme, ‘Lagos 8.0: An Architectural Autopoiesis’, opined that buildings must be constructed to speak to, and meet the needs of the people.
Architectural autopoiesis, she explained, was the ability of architecture to recreate or regenerate itself by itself without losing the essence of its originality or nature.
According to her, architects in Nigeria will continue to be regarded as briefcase carrying architects until they are able to regenerate their practice to proffer solution to the housing needs of people down the pyramid who constitute about 70 percent of the population.
Ogunsola, a Professor of Medical Microbiology and Consultant Clinical Microbiologist, who spoke on ‘Relating Autopoiesis to the Built Environment’, informed that autopoiesis applies not only to biological, but also largely to non-biological elements.
“Architecture is an autopoiesis system in itself because it reacts to the environment without changing the fundamentals. Lagos is a city with beautiful architectural edifices”, she noted.
Akinwunmi Ambode, governor, Lagos State, assured at the event that the administration was poised to change the architectural face of Lagos to drive even development.
Ambode, who was represented by the Commissioner, Ministry of Water Front Infrastructure, Lagos State, Ade Akinsanya, disclosed that his administration was working to make Lagos the most livable city in the world.
Fitzgerald Umah, the chairman of the chapter, had in his welcome address, explained that this year’s conference looked to addressing the issues of regeneration, rebuilding, recreating and reinventing the built environment, in the light of the present economic recession.
“LAF is an annual conference organised to enable architects come up with holistic responses to the issues that affect practitioners in the built environment, and to also come up with a communiqué to help government policy direction in infrastructural development”, he explained.
According to him, architects must look inward to proffer solution to consistent building collapse, as they key into government plan for infrastructural development in Lagos.
Tonye Braide, President, Nigerian Institute of Architects in his opening address challenged architects to come up with innovative design capable of helping clients, especially the government to conserve energy.
Braide called on architects to be creative and collaborate with others as the only way to ensure architectural autopoiesis, noting that Lagos drives a new thinking among architects in Nigeria and therefore urged other states to emulate Lagos and ensure even development across Nigeria.