Littoral Tales: Lagos (Falola 2021)

This thesis explores speculative interventions along Lagos’ Littoral zones woven within complex layers of land, water, and waste. Subverting colonial extractive operations of dredging, drilling and draining, it imagines the social construction of space through interventions that aggregate, accumulate and promote adaptation, to changing environmental conditions such as rising water. Drawings, maps, sections and collages at the urban scale are used as tools to explore the geo-historical development of Lagos, beginning with the colonial period. Narrowing into a locality with an industrial and military history, this thesis presents some interesting challenges: How do we re-interpret and subvert colonial ways of understanding land and sea? How might viewing non-human entities as co-creators of architectural space affect the way we design? How can an architectural understanding of the networks of land, water, and waste at the urban scale support speculation around sustainable and community-driven interventions at the human scale of a neighbourhood?