We’re very pleased at uncube to be featuring all six episodes of Al Jazeera English’s fine new documentary series Rebel Architecture. Spanning the globe from Spain to Vietnam, Nigeria to Pakistan, and Rio de Janeiro to the Israeli-Palestinian border, each half-hour episode follows an architect pushing the boundaries of the profession, working at the edges of legality and on ways to directly improve living conditions and effect change. This week we see episode five: Reality Bites (directed by Riaan Hendicks), which follows Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi’s attempts to improve the living conditions in Nigeria’s waterside slums with his designs for floating buildings (see his floating school in Makoko in uncube issue No. 17: Construct Africa).
Having spent years on high profile construction projects for museums and international corporations, Nigerian Architect Kunlé Adeyemi, came to realise that architecture needs to be about “people before icons”.
In this episode, we follow him as he encounters difficulties in obtaining planning approval for his floating building prototypes – engineered as solutions to the flooding and overcrowding in the slums of Nigeria’s coastal cities – from local authorities interested only in the construction of multi-billion dollar projects aimed at bringing in investors’ money.
Al Jazeera airs a new episode each Monday at 23.30 (CET) from 18 August - 22 September 2014. For details please visit Rebel Architecture or subscribe to the uncube newsletter, as we will feature each week’s episode here. Watch the entire Episode 5: Reality Bites, directed by Riaan Hendricks, below:
– Leigh Theodore Vlassis