Rebel Architecture - Working on Water

John Hill

18. September 2014

Floating School designed by Kunlé Adeyemi. Photo: Iwan Baan

The fifth installment of six episodes in Al Jazeera's Rebel Architecture series travels to Nigeria to look at architect Kunlé Adeyemi's attempt to build a floating theater serving residents of Port Hartcourt.

Adeyemi, an alumnus of OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture, first came to widespread attention when the New York Times published Iwan Baan's photographs of a floating school the architect designed for residents of the Makoko slum in Lagos. The wooden structure sits on a floating platform of nearly 250 barrels; the school rises and falls with the tide, the daily rhythm the area's nearly 90,000 residents live with.

Adeyemi with a model of the floating theater. Photo: Screenshot

Working on Water presents Adeyemi's earlier design for Makoko, but it focuses on the multi-purpose theater he is proposing with Chicoco Radio for Port Hartcourt in the Niger Delta. The 25-minute episode shows, among other things, Adeyemi presenting the design to the community to gain feedback that will shape the final form of the building, even as its future is uncertain.

Watch Working on Water below or at Al Jazeera.