De/Reconstructing
Oworonshoki
Lagos

Summer Semester 24
Urban design studio
ECTS 12.5

Phase 1: Research + model making
Phase 2: Individual projects
Phase 3: Joint project
Phase 4: Structural policy actions

+ Model of the whole area in the scale 1:500
+ Master plan showing the overall project
+ Detailed planning of the individual projects
+ Digital presentation

Professor Fabienne Hoelzel
Academic Associate Lisa Dautel

In the summer semester 2024, we will develop a reconstruction plan for the community of Oworonshoki, Lagos, Nigeria.

In a brutal state and elite induced clearance at the end of July 2023, several communities within the neighborhood Oworonshoki were demolished, resulting in the loss of at least 7,000 houses. People lost not only their homes and belongings, including documents of all kinds, but also their livelihoods. The rationale behind the brutal action is greed for land and obviously a different "vision" of how Lagos should look like as "modern" city. The poor have become the obsessions of a small and economic elite, perceived as the obstacle to the modern-day Lagos.

In this studio, we will try to produce a framework of urban design principles that meet the needs of everybody, not only those of few. Aspects include gender-responsive urban design and room for self-constructed houses.

In the center of the urban design studio production is a large model at a scale of 1:500, in which all strategies, projects, and the political and social processes will be visualized.