Adaptive reuse in Nigeria & safer streets in London

尼日利亚的适应性再利用和伦敦更安全的街道

The Urbanist

艺术

2024-08-30

29 分钟
PDF

单集简介 ...

How does adaptive reuse differ around the globe? We speak to an expert to uncover how Africa does things differently when it comes to giving a building a second life. We also discuss the feeling of safety for women in cities by way of a recent study into our physical and emotional responses to urban environments. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

单集文稿 ...

  • Hello, and welcome to the Urbanist Monocles program, all about the built environment.

  • I'm your host, Andrew Tuck.

  • Coming up, when the owner of a part of a building is no more alive, his family allows it to die a natural death.

  • When a newborn comes in the next generation, he resurrects the building.

  • So ingrained in our culture, buildings have multiple lives.

  • We're in Nigeria to see how adaptive reuse plays out in a different urban context and how the life and death of a building takes on a new meaning in Africa.

  • The physical environment cannot solve these issues on its own.

  • Even if we design it completely perfectly, it will be surrounded by imperfect women and men.

  • We're back in London to assess how safe our streets feel for women as we review a recent study looking at more than just statistics to paint a picture of our physical and emotional response to the city.

  • All that coming up over the next 30 minutes right here on the Urbanist.

  • With me, Andrew Tuck.

  • Adaptive reuse is one of those urbanism terms that gets rolled out a lot to describe a number of new projects.

  • However, the way in which that term manifests itself into actual urban environments can vary widely according to context.

  • When it comes to African urbanism, the lifespan of a building and what happens when spaces die and are subsequently resurrected can result in a very different reuse case to those that we see in Europe or North America.

  • James Enaidu George is a Nigerian architect and writer and co founder of HTL Africa, an architecture firm which walks the line between technology and tradition.

  • James work is deeply rooted in the adaptive reuse practices, and he recently joined Monocle's Carlotta Rabello to discuss his craft.

  • Let me give you a quick background of why adaptive reuse and adaptive transformation, which is what we call it, have become a very essential part of the architectural language of Africa.

  • After colonization, a fabric of the city was left unused.

  • We built a layer on top of that.

  • This layer that has been built since 1960 is beginning to decay.