In Defense of Much More, 2010, James George and ACE Nigeria

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IN DEFENCE OF MUCH_MORE™

0. A SERIES OF SEEMINGLY UNRELATED EVENTSIn 1809, Canson discovered the tracing paper. His invention

had the most profound effect on architecture. It is hisinvention that created completeness® in our work. Our

architecture in Africa is incomplete. A fragment. Working

parts are delineated and then left bare. A simple argument

voids that architectural approach – the human Body.

There is the issue of the Rukikian®. Rukikian= deformative

urban change. This is a characteristic of Lagos. Here is an

example: in Northern Nigeria, indomie noodles joints are a

thing of necessity. They are shut off by 11pm. Lagos

encouraged the importation of these joints over the Niger, and deformed them.... in the North, they are a pure deformation

(we are not a noodles culture). In Lagos, you see them lined

up at the front of a club all night.

Additionally, in continuation of the idea of the zero space,

we arrive at a process of limits. Our lives are set as limits.

Limits between objects and times. And this is also the process

of conceiving urban architecture. It will be proved that

architecture is the tension set up between two known variables

in an in-between or zero-space, and this tension, played outin light, is the only true concretization of architectural

principle.

Abu-Ishaq-as-Sahili... Spanish Muslim, African Architect. This

is the epitome of Rukikian®ness. His Spanishness passed

through a deformative process that led him to the beginnings

of an African Architecture.

Much_More™ is a concept of value. A series of anecdotes aimed

at achieving much more from less. It is pushing the envelopeof availability to create an impossible and maybe unneeded

dream. It is the Rukikian® response to architecture by a

generation of clientele who are not, by the way earning

much_more®.



1. GENERAL THEORY

PREDICTIONS

Lagos will have to grow within itself. Courtyards and rooftops

will soon become the new urban plots in the city. How do weconceive such an urbanism?

LIMITS

To refuse to accept that a city can be expanded without

affecting it... that a city can grow without destruction at

its heart. The centre of Lagos has no communal spaces. Is

destruction not the solution to create breathing space? The

centre of Lagos typifies a typology of incompleteness. Lagos

is therefore our site.

THEORY

To trace history through Lagos. To find Historic and Economic

precedents, and the process by which they create architectural

typologies. To understand these typologies and intervene in

existing urban spaces with them.

VALUE

Urban Renewal: a program of land development in areas of

moderate to high density urban land use. Usually extremely

controversial and has often involved destruction of

businesses, the demolition of priceless historic structures,

relocation of people and use of eminent domain.

Urban renewal is done to increase value, and densify. To add

life. When an urban area is regenerated it is expected that

the said regeneration will provide better business spaces,

free land pockets and increase habitation possibilities.



IMPROMPTU + CHAOS-SCALE URBANISM

Our architecture is incomplete. A fragment. The organs exist

in isolation, exposed without a protective skin. Nigerian

buildings strip architecture of all its urban and social

responsibilities and present a BARE BOX®. A bare box that

should be hidden from the surface. Hence the architectural

response that creates buildings is not complex enough;

especially because architecture is created by the very issues

that are divorced by the Nigerian Architect. Architecture is

not cheap....A building is a rich mix of urban activities in a

packet. Our architecture is not complex enough. In the

traditional Tiv dwelling, there is a building typology

referred to as the Ateh. It is an extremely complex program

solved with a single space, a space that is in itselftransformable, and transforms itself to answer to the need at

the moment. It is a packet of urbanisms or a corridor of

activity.

Nigerian traditional architecture should not be translated in

the context of what has been built. There is a theoretical

intent that underlies it. The life of the typical African is

entrenched in stories and dreams. We are, as Ben Okri

described, Homo Fabula. The failure is merely technological.

In the North, the Hausas kept attempting to create, as aresult of their culture, a corridor of activities (a free

space where the propensity of activity occurrence is high) and

what has become known as the traditional Hausa compound house

is the result of these attempts.

Impromptu and Chaos-scale urbanism are typified by three(3)

themes:

Densification

Symbiosis and Organisms.

In the scheme of things, they are defined and function as

their dictionary meanings to create completeness® in urban

architecture.

Architecture is a bold art, bold and audacious. The pyramids

were built along with every other masterpiece of human

civilisation as a machine for sheer boldness... or much_more™.



to Kurmin Rukiki... you remember my promise? At that Tausayis’

hard face softened with joy. He asked: is this how you have

suffered?’(Page 77)

A Rukikian object is a machine for generating deformative

change

URBAN CULTURE

Architecture is a highly technological and expensive art. We

have a responsibility to keep it expensive. Urban areas are a

story of the builders of the areas. Urbanism is a collection

of activities that go on to form architecture. If architecture

is a reflection of the story of a people and their urbanareas, then our lives in this country are very bleak,

considering the present architectural output.

LOVE LETTER

Dear Lagos,

There are too many hold-ups here. Absolutely no open space. We

might have to leave Lagos to create a new Lagos. Your smell isunbearable, your ‘charm’ unquestionable. Yet under these

bridges and in those urban corridors, lie the architectural

typologies for our future. This, in itself is contradictory.

So many architects here. No buildings. No theory. Nor

philosophy or discourse. Lagos, oft-times it amuses me to

wonder what a Lagos Philosopher and his corresponding

philosophy will be.

LANDSCAPE[ING]

THERE IS NO more landscape. Landscape as a detached object

will not suffice in Africa. There is no more space moreover it

has been proven over the years that we cannot maintain the

grass.

The ground is for building, where this can be afforded. All

landscape areas on a development plan for Africa should rather



be landing pads for Mega-buildings. There is no space for

grass, only buildings. Tall buildings, large buildings,

unbelievable buildings.

There must hence be a new landscape. Not on the roofs of our

buildings. These cannot be maintained. We therefore assertthat our buildings will immerse themselves into the urban

condition as green belts and urban forests. Where a green belt

is needed, we conjoin a series of vertical forests. Therefore,

we densify the land as we create green breaks... MUCH_MORE™.

The ground is for buildings only. Plants, parks and green

belts must become integrated into the forms that represent our

architectural thought.

VIRTUAL REALITY

Disappearance of objects. They first become thinner and more

efficient, and then they become hologrammic. This is the basic

determinant of space for the future. Our homes have too many

spaces. What will the house be after objects disappear and

their holograms take over?

ARCHITECTURE

Architecture is an international art. Contemporary

Architecture will be Rukikian® (an export after considerable

deformation). It has started. It started in the 15th century.

Abu- Ishaq- as Sahili, the Spaniard was the harbinger of the

process. He brought the mud brick to Hausa land and thiscreated an architectural response that was at once tropical

and beautiful. Of course the Hausas built beauties pre-Sahili,

but the mud brick WAS THE PRECURSOR OF ARCHITECTURE HERE.

They took the mud brick and through a Rukikian® process and

created a version of it suited to their architectural

thought.... the tubali brick. Then they created master pieces.

Masterpieces that were fragments, not of the city, but of

themselves. Fragments of themselves. The house became a mini

city with master-pieces. It became a ‘place’.



We assert therefore that it is this Rukikian® Process that

will create a new architecture that will embrace and solve all

the challenges of living in this part of the world this 21st

century. The house of tomorrow will be ‘a place’, and as such

we assert that Hausa Traditional Architecture is the harbinger

of the home of the 21st century.

FREETOWN

Design is an art of liberation. To design is to liberate

objects from the normal density associated with them. It is an

activity that leads to the point where nothing can be possibly

added or taken from an object. From this definition, there was

an African Architecture and not design.

We therefore assert that design should be irresponsible. It

should be centred right where drawing meets unbuildability. It

should consist of shards’, broken walls, jarred openings.

FRAGMENTS

Our architecture should be a fragment. Not of the city, but of

itself. A dark forest of ideas. A dark forest. Kurmin Rukiki.

Rukikian®. One of the most prominent ideas that relates all

cultures is how things are misconstrued. How objects and data

aren’t properly seen and are badly interpreted. Lagos is the

greatest victim. Lagos, through a Rukikian® Process is a

generator of futuristic typologies that are fragments

themselves.

URBANITECT

A city that cannot conceive of its future perishes in the

present. It is the function of the Urbanitect to find these

‘futures’.



RESISTANCE

The distinction of the slave (F. Nietzsche: Zarathustra)...’

The architecture scene in Lagos is resistant. It resists ideas

and foreigners. Rem Koolhaas has still not built in Lagos.

Lagos, a city of 17.5 million people must be forced into the21st century. Architecture will evolve only from the tension

between what exists and our musings for the future, which have

been obtained from Lagos itself. Therefore, again, we state

that urbanism is a series of tensions sparked off by non-

considerable interruptions between what exists and forcefully

place non-rational dense urban packets.

LANGUAGE

All great architectural responses in Nigeria have been

responded to in Hausa. The most clear and philosophically

correct architecture in this part of the world has been built

in the North, the language being Hausa. The Hausa North is the

first to create architecture from a deformative process off a

more advanced system (that is to say that the Rukikian® has

been understood and reused severally in the North for many

years now), and it is in the North that the architectural

response has moved on from sheer necessity. The sheer clarityof the language itself towards the case of building ( the

phrase a haka shi haka is not repeated in any form anywhere

else)in comparism to every other Nigerian Language leads us to

assert that HAUSA IS THE LANGUAGE OF GREAT NIGERIAN ARCHITECTURE,

and YORUBA, THE LANGUAGE OF ITS MUSIC.

ARROGANCE®

An attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or

assumptions (2011 Merriam-Webster inc)

Technology by all means. The world and the architecture

thereof is predicated by a finite amount of technology at

every time. The act of unnecessary architectural gymnastics to

force the hand of technology (architecture itself never

understands this technology) ruins not only architecture

itself but the act of thinking (about it). It stagnates the

progress of architectural thinking, and retards its process

and leaves us in a muddle that can’t be resolved. This act isone of arrogance®. It is the need to be ahead by all means, to



be weird and intellectual with architecture by all means. Now

due to this arrogance® we assert that the new basic unit for

urbanistic conceptions for Africa should be a 20-storey

volume. The 20 storey has been completely resolved in Europe.

It is time for us here, by a Rukikian process to adopt this

object into our architectural vocabulary. As architects in

Africa, we heretofore demand that our least conceptions must

be urbanistic in nature and the 20-storey volume is the tubali

brick for this exercise. We demand that our urbanism be

reworked completely in the light of technological arrogance®

that only architects can provide. Our architecture must ask

fundamental questions and open itself up to our streets... it

must become much more!

2. MUCH_MORE ARCHITECTURE: TERMINOLOGYESTATES®

Area of rural, privately owned property that includes a large residence. Encarta Dictionaries

2009

Dense urban enclosures. Mini suburbs with their own amenities

totally independent of a nonexistent city grid. Estates in

Africa are a group of Super-People hiding their sheer

difference from the urban area that made them... the epitome

of Much_More™. At the moment, to design in Africa is an

exercise in practicality. Especially spatially, there is no

additive or waste. The design is lean. This usually is taken

for granted in estates. Yet as it seems, the typical Nigerian

Estate is the showroom for Much_More™. Estates have been

redefined in Africa. They are now an area of urban, privately

owned properties that includes several individually owned

private residences, fenced into an urban whole.

CONTINUANCE®

Or how to turn existing infrastructure to estates®. To

continue urban infrastructure is the art of symbiotic

additions created from systematic interpretation of needs and

other data including present conditions. For any existing

urban area in Africa to expand logically, we assert that a

process of continuance® must be evoked. (See much more tales

for details)



LIVEABLE®

The ability for new frontiers of habitation to be discovered

in an urban architecture created from a process of

continuance. Or the ability for architecture to emanate from

typologies that have grown impromptu due to the historical andeconomic precedents surrounding urban infrastructure. It is a

reference for the discovery of new architectural frontiers.

20 STOREY®S

This is a response to the idea of estates. Since in defence of

much more, here in Africa, (where land is abundant to a point

of waste) we group families of people together in walled areasin the city, and these areas have a good density, that

supports a kind of urban life, it might as well be done

better. Therefore, we have reinvented and are ready to re-

engineer into our urbanism, this 20 storey module. Why?

Because it is there and not properly used in Europe. This is

Rukikian®.

ZERO SPACE®

A zero element® is one that is unaffected by the Rukikian®

process in design. It is an element whose alteration doesn’t

affect the structure of a building but can alter its

semantics. In a large scale design based on repetition, it can

create variety in a single theme. The zero space® is therefore

a space without an identified use, that completes a design by

wrapping itself like a clam around it. The zero space is an

element that makes architecture tropical, brings in light and

air into the heart of the space.

3D

Due to the proliferation of three dimensional design software,

and BIMs, buildings and urban areas designed recently here,

are constantly been presented either as they look when we fly

by them, or miraculously, how a rat or an insect sees them. We

set cameras below or above eye level. The views set to eye

level are usually the most uninteresting. Our eyes seedistortion and we suddenly are reminded of beauty. This poses



a moral question... are architects ashamed of how humans see

their work or do architects see humans as rats or birds?

Now, due to this distortion, it will be fine to ask the

following

1. Is what we see with our 60 degree cone pf vision theabsolute truth?

2. If we see distorted forms from perspectives as beautiful,why do we not create distorted primitives that correct

our vision?

3. Is the square really square?4. What is square? A chance meeting of four lines whose

apparent angle of intersection is 90 degrees on our plane

of distorted vision?

5. How does the existence of fractal dimensions affect thisapparent intersection of lines?

GRIDS®

There is a need to create a sense of order and alignment in

plans. This is the conventional use of grids. We use grids on

the other hand to find the links between objects and ideas.

Grids® are philosophical connections. We therefore assert thata grid will evolve as a response to the ideology of a design.

That creating grids is a philosophical act that binds our

ideas with the traditions of ancient Africa. A line drawn over

an abyss. Grids® are no more objects for scheduling

construction, but elements for the philosophical definition of

our architecture.

GROUPING®

For the sake of money, in a place where there is a constant

lack of it, it is necessary for every element created to have

multiple uses. Groupings are a function of Historical

Precedents. To Group® is to stretch the function of an object

with respect to what can be achieved with it in the

environment in question. All the elements designed should have

double meanings. This is the lesson from Lagos. A bridge is

not just a bridge, it is a strip of commerce and a support for

impromptu habitation, so also windows, doors etc. Grouping isthe act of forcing an object to serve several spaces, or a



space to serve several uses. The Tiv Ateh hut is the perfect

example of this phenomenon.

RENTED SUPPORT®

A support for a structural continuation on existing

infrastructure that falls out of the confines of the

infrastructural object. Usually, these supports are designed

to exist on land that is leased or rented and the land is

usually about a square meter.

STREAMLINE®

a. To improve the appearance or efficiency of; modernize

b. To organize

c. To simplify

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary 2011

To streamline® is to reduce an object from its Euclidean form

to a form dictated by maximum efficiency and the best space-

use.

3. MUCH_MORE TALESTo learn to hear with one’s eyes and see with ones ears.... in

Africa now, we must learn to build empty shells and inhabit

them later. We must learn not to bother for meaning just yet.

SCENARIOS

To further emphasize the 20 storey module and its uses, we

present some scenarios, one existing in Lagos, and the otherfictional

MENDE MARYLAND BRIDGE OR BESIDE

There is no light in Nigeria. Due to the mass of light points

and the inefficient machinery for light in the country, it is

almost impossible to have light for more than a few hours a

day. Therefore, no matter how resolved our 20 storey® is, it

is almost impossible to maintain in this terrain if it stands

up vertically. The question is simple... where do we go from



here? The present situation of Mende Maryland is delineated

below:

Population :( Ikeja has a population of 370000) about 100,000

Present Condition: Mende is reached by a bye-pass off theMende Bridge. This road runs the entire strip of the area. The

sides of this road are plastered with impromptu commerce, and

this usually causes a bottle-neck in the morning and late

evening.

Cost of Accommodation: single room without kitchen and shared

toilet – N80000 P/A, self contained studio flat – N250000 p/a,

2 bedrooms and single toilet- N450000 p/a, 3 bedrooms with

singe toilet- N600000p/a, house with compound space-N1000000

p/a (all data have been obtained by field surveys by the authors between 2008 and 2010)

Status of Social housing : No conscious effort towards social

housing. A large amount of estates®.

Availability of Land : existing but dilapidated buildings

usually have to be demolished for new structures when they are

sold. These are the most available lands. They are not

necessarily Brownfield sites. Greenfield sites are sparingly

available.

Present Condition of Electricity: Same as everywhere else in

urban Lagos (Yet Mende is the home of a power sub-station):

erratic and available only after 12 hours of darkness.

Present Condition of running water: Boreholes are needed. The

tanks adjoined are usually enormous enough to take and save

water for 12hours at least. Even in communal housing projects

of up to 8 flats, the tanks themselves are arranged like

estates®

Daily Migration Pattern: a lot of inhabitants here work on the

Island and its environs. Mende has very little business areas.

These areas aren’t official mostly; therefore it is not rare

to see homes converted into shops and offices. This is due to

the high value of land.

Roads: Mende has a ring road that touches Ikorodu road at 2

places; one before the Mende bridge and the other far after.

There is a good link to two BRT stops ( the Bus Rapid

transport system or the Lagos city bus service run by the



Government of the State since 2008), and the furthest walk

from a BRT stop is about 25 minutes.

Security: in the last few years security has diminished in

Mende. This can be blamed on the absence of light at

predictable times daily. There are no street lights on themain streets, therefore when shops bounding these streets shut

down by 9pm, the street becomes a black hole.

OBSERVATIONS

1. The sides of the major spine-road are plastered withimpromptu commerce, and this usually causes a bottle-neck

in the morning and late evening.

2. No social housing and high cost of accommodation3. A large amount of estates®.4. Greenfield sites are sparingly available.5. Load Shedding from light source6. Boreholes are needed. The tanks adjoined are usually

enormous enough to take and save water for 12hours at

least.

7. A lot of inhabitants here work on the Island and itsenvirons

8. There is a good link to two BRT stops, and the furthestwalk from a BRT stop is about 25 minutes.

9. In the last few years security has diminished in Mende.SOLUTONS

Deplore two 20 storey®s on the both sides of the Mende Bridge.

The most logical way will be to create 2 individual towers

connected to themselves with a constantly ramping social and

business hub. But it has been established that there is NO

LIGHT.

What if we make the 20 storey® horizontal and tilt it at anangle?

We then encircle a proliferation of these objects that connect

the pedestrians at the St. Agnes side to the OandO side with a

zero-space®.

We end up with a series of streamline®d 3 storey sites for

social housing estates® interacting with structured impromptu

shopping, on the bridge, exactly 5 minutes walk from two BRT

stops.



This simple process amplifies the Rukikian nature of the

architecture we should be developing. It has taken the 20

storey® module, and through a recognisable Rukikian process

(no light etc), re-invented it for the situation as exists.

4. CONCLUSIONS



From the notes, it is clear that there is a language in an

advancing stage that describes a process that can as well

become architecture. The ideas that are carried forward are

predicated on the correction of the misconception about

architecture – that it is cheap. We have delineated a

phenomenon, and its elements. It is a hope that this will

spread beyond architecture.

In Defense of Much More, 2010, James George and ACE Nigeria

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