According to K. Whiteman, ‘The island is now a bizarre and dysfunctional mix of the wilderness of skyscrapers, street markets, old shops and residences, all under pressure from … area boys’. Today I visited FMA Architects, a large firm based in a penthouse on 15th storey floor in the historic part of Marina, Lagos Island, an area with a high concentration of post-independence-built high rise buildings, some of which are now disfunctional.
A conversation with one of FMA founders revealed the following:
- Babylon hotel: the holy grail of all developers is attaching a hotel to the airport terminal to prevent constant flows of business people, airline crews and internal flights passengers from unnecessarily entering Lagos. According to research, such hotel would be fully occupied even if it has thousands of rooms – lack of space near the centrally based airport surrounded by densely built areas is the problem
- On-site accomodation: Some hotels, like the George pioneered on house accomodation (adding to typical on site power generation and sewage treatment) in order to ensure the staff appearance corresponding to visitors’ expectations (by having staff use hotel laundry, showers, etc)
- Nigerian developments start with infrastructure. As I have previously observed, a road comes first, then the trade around it, temporary settlements, followed by estates and large projects. In the future bridges and roads will be joined by the metro lines, water jetties and possibly cable cars in shaping the future Lagos and determining the places to sand fill and build over. Developments don’t need existing solid land to happen, they need existing infrastructure.
- Planning is fluid and experimental. The plans are adjusted around the more successful infrastructural projects.
- Phased development in Ajah might be a good idea. Where land is currently cheap and not considered as most central / desired place to live, one could begin to developing a hospitality school, later to be combined with an events facility and later a hotel – when the context has changed to become more permanent and infrastructurally robust. Ajah is an interesting location due to construction of jetties (I saw one one near Prince Ojupon’s brother’s site) and possibly the Fourth Mainland Bridge.
Below: views from the FMA penthouse
no.balsa 