Description: The studio began by developing strategies and proposals that address the lifecycle of architecture before, during and after major cultural events in dense urban centers. The site for this project will be FESTAC Town, Lagos, Nigeria. The World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture was the second of an annual celebration hosted by the Nigerian government in Lagos In 1977. The first FESTAC had been hosted by Senegal in Dakar in 1966. The Lagos festival took place over a month, situated primarily at the National Theater, however various fringe sites spread throughout the state and other neighboring states were areas of activity as well. There has not been another FESTAC since 1977. Doxiadis Associates, an architectural and urban planning firm located in Athens, Greece, proposed the development of “FESTAC Town”. It was built in 1975 as a “Planned Residential Estate (PRE)” with the intentions of accommodating the anticipated influx of participants and migratory visitors. It was utilized for the duration of the event, however, it was left in a state of instability; its usage incongruous with the original master plan. The proposed area layout design of Festac town had six major land use classes: Residential, Industrial, Commercial, Recreation, Circulation and Central function zones.
The studio proposed a transformative prosthetic that must be defined by/respond to the body that it will engage. It will consider performance as a paradigm for designing space though its materiality, tectonics, and assembly. This studio will design an ‘Economic Development Zone’, which will accommodate many varying functions. This project will be a continuous structure of public spaces that reinvent Festac and its intentions in built form. It must integrate the existing infrastructure and transform the town into the mini city it was intended to be. The project will be located in the Central function zone, which lies in between the two previously designated residential zones. The built form itself will have to transform to meet its site but also must be able to transform the occupation of the site considering factors that affect socioeconomic evolutions of the existing culture.