Henry Akubuiro
The Eddy Eguavoen Foundation, organisers of Lagos: City of Water, an architecture competition, has called for entries from recent graduates and students of architecture to design innovative building, structure, master plan or nay design solution for the future of Lagos on water.
According to the foundation, contestants are encouraged to respond to the threat of sea-level rise and the project must make significant use of water space, whether floating, submerged and suspended over water.
The competition is open to all local and international architecture students or recent graduates of about a year, and encourages different levels of detail and development. Contestants’ projects should be a concept that presents a possible solution or it could be a very detailed master plan that presents a vision for a community of the future for Lagos.
Entries for the competition can be completed via the website, www.voenassociates.com/foundation; which will close by August 10, 2020. Judging criteria include concept, creativity, presentation and sustainability.
Twenty finalists will be shortlisted at the close of the entries while first to third position winners will win a cash prize of 700 euros, 400 euros and 200 euros respectively.
Established in January, 2020, the Eddy Eguavoen Foundation is an NGO that pushes for innovation in Nigerian Architecture through an annual design competition, setting up of design workshops and building for communities-in-need.
The organisation is named after the late Edwin Ehi Eguavoen, an accomplished Nigerian Architect who ran his architecture firm, Voen Associates, for over 30 years. Voen Associates is still active and the implementation of this organisation is a way of honoring his legacy while pushing for progress in Nigerian Architecture.
In August 2019, CNN published an article listing the top cities that are prone to excessive flooding due to the coming rise in sea levels. Lagos was one of them. One solution, which was mentioned by Andrew Yang during the American Democratic debate in 2019, is to move to higher land.
In the case of Lagos, this would be the mainland in areas such as Ikeja, which is already densely populated. Rather than move away from the water, why not embrace it and continue to develop the city with the water? This is what led to the theme of the first Eddy Eguavoen Foundation Architecture Competition; Lagos: City on Water.