Wednesday 13 February 2013

Floating Schools: Building Differently



What if your locality is prone to floods most days of the year? Do you simply call it quits and look for higher/drier ground? Or, maybe take a lesson from those Venetians and opt for a 'floating city"? What if you are poor, or rather "resource-challenged"? Opt for a floating village!

Adeyami's vision .. ...
Surely that is no pipe-dream, especially if you have a committed and resourceful architect like Kunlé Adeyemi on your side. Adeyemi, a Nigerian-born architect who now lives in Holland, (to borrow his own words) "... was inspired, shocked, and motivated" by what he saw as he drove by the Makoko settlement in Lagos, Nigeria. It is a shanty-town on stilts (to beat the almost year-round floods) that about 250,000 people call home. Water is everywhere and canoes are the only vehicles of choice.

... .. and the reality !!
While visiting this water-logged settlement, one request that came to him was to find a solution to the flooding of the little school house. As an architect who "thought out of the box", he felt that the solution lay in "building just a little differently". He could see that stilts were not practical for a lot many reasons, and instead chose to build the school on a floating platform. As an eco-conscious architect, he put in rainwater harvesting, solar power generation and sustainable means of waste disposal. Makoko's revolutionary floating school was ready -- on paper.

With enthusiastic community participation, he started building ... building differently. And now rain or shine, the school keeps the children happy and safe. Adeyami saw the floating school project as a "seed to cultivate a new type of urbanism on water in African cities". The three-storey wooden structure, built of local, cheap wood, is 108 square feet at its base, and 33 feet high, built on a floating deck made of 256 used plastic drums. The school can accommodate about 100 children and the design is simple and inexpensive. He has a vision of applying the technique in the creation of entire floating villages and towns, and serving as a catalyst for such revolutionary approaches to issues like climate change and flooding, energy and waste management, and the squeeze on infrastructure.

With visionaries like Adeyami taking the lead, let us hope it will not be long before we can have simple, practical answers to the many issues that vex people in developing nations.

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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous14 February 2013 at 09:20

    That's a unique thing, very different approach altogether, Prof.

    I don't know as of now, how these ideas have been shared with more people or could be shared. Blogspot is ok? Or something else can help better to make more people read it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous14 February 2013 at 09:23

    In India, more people must see this...we have too many schools and then even too many NGOs....many without clear objectives, missions and more importantly visions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Prof14 February 2013 at 14:44

      Thanks, and yes, Update Locker has a Facebook page under the same name, which would make it easier for those who frequent FB. Do link up, please.

      Surely it is time we changed our whole perspective about many things and started thinking out of the box too.

      Delete
  3. NA26 February 2013 at 17:53

    Sir this idea has been of keen interest to us (civil engineers) since the Sea Goddess visited us in 2004.

    Kerala is well connected by rivers and floating houses were designed somewhat like a house boat; just with emergency supplies.

    Proposal was written to implement it in a large scale to Govt. of Kerala in 2005. I didn't follow it after 2006.

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  4. The Prof1 March 2013 at 14:26

    I remember how the late, revered Laurie Baker had submitted many proposals to the Kerala govt. I tried hunting down some of them-- it has all disappeared to limbo!! These guys are interested only in what is there in anything for them ...

    ReplyDelete

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