‘Design must tackle carbon emission’

You have been attending colloquia over the years. What have architects got from them? The architects come together based on the topic given which is national development, look at how they can bring out problems that bedevil our developmental programmes through architecture and proffer solutions to them. It’s in this light that the colloquium becomes […]

You have been attending colloquia over the years. What have architects got from them?
The architects come together based on the topic given which is national development, look at how they can bring out problems that bedevil our developmental programmes through architecture and proffer solutions to them. It’s in this light that the colloquium becomes a platform where activities for national development are comfortably discussed. At the end of each colloquium, there’s what you call communiqué. The communiqué is summary of the whole activities.

This year’s colloquium discussed sustainability. Every time the question of sourcing building materials locally is discussed yet this message hardly gets to the people.  As a teacher of architecture, don’t you feel something should be done differently?
There’re two aspects here – there’re those in the field based on what we call CPDP. They are supposed to learn these new techniques. So sustainability largely does with not only materials which you get close to you but even the way and manner the materials are produced.
Number one is to do with carbon emission – how do you control carbon emission – to reduce it to the barest minimum so that the ozone layer which has been affected by it and the consequence of the ozone layer which results in what you call global warming is not only apparent but it’s real. We can feel it, we see it. We can see the changes in our whether dramatically. Where you hadn’t flood, you have it now. All this tells you that something is wrong.
That’s why sustainability comes in – to use the materials very close to you and to produce materials with less energy. The large part of what we talked about is what we have like our oil – that is what you call the fossil fuel which is seriously affecting the ozone layer.
There has to be the political will from government. People need to be educated — everybody needs to be educated toward that. But part of it, the design, and the materials – we really need to enhance our materials, we need to enhance the way and manner they are produced so we can have attractive way of managing not only the resources but the best way possible so they can be utilized by all and sundry.
We have our local raw materials but unfortunately our local raw materials haven’t been researched upon properly for them to move to the next level to stand the test of time. Mud is there but it can’t stand the test of time. When you look at the production of cement, how much does it cost? What is the manner you produce it? There’s carbon emission. Therefore, we have to think more positively toward that.
This is colloquium number eight. To what extent has your attendance of these editions impacted on what you’re doing in Kano?
Number one, awareness is created. If you’re not aware of your problems, you haven’t started. It’s increasing awareness. That’s why you see the number of people coming to the colloquium is increasing. People are getting to know more about what are happening in the industry: energy production, sustainability, it now runs into virtually everything. It has to do with energy, materials and how many materials are produced.
Therefore, in Kano, quite a number of people have come. With the number of lectures that have taken place, the CPDP points…what we learnt from there have fully changed…many look forward to not only coming but they’re looking at some of these issues to reduce carbon emission through proper design through proper use of materials in building of residential or commercial or in dustrial [places].
The meeting demanded conversion of architecture departments in environmental science faculty to a full faculty.  How feasible is that?
It’s very feasible and that’s what’s required. One of the reasons is we have what we call other facets of architecture one can specialize in. There’re landscape architecture, history of architecture, urban design. We have interior design. They’re all architecture. Architects can’t change if they don’t have faculty of architecture. They can’t do their best if they’re not given that opportunity.  It’s really worth it. It’s timely and days are gone when you know something general. You have to specialize. Specialization will be demonstrated by the time architecture faculty is established. The world has gone further than where we are. We can’t sit and be looking.

There’s this trend in architecture where students incline to science to the neglect of art part of architecture. What are teachers doing about it?
Technology has come up with so many things. It has come up with things that make some people to be lazy. You can do computer aided design. However, as far as Nigeria is concerned, with respect to ARCON [Architects Registration Council of Nigeria] law, you must do all those things from your first year to finishing B.Sc. Your presentation, your designs must be with your hand, not computerized. You may have a combination but a student can’t do all the things with the computer. It’s not acceptable.
There’s the capacity of the human being when his thinking goes from his brain to hand to fingers during design. It’s like the innate ability of the individual. Relying heavily on use of communication gadgets to do design is controlled.

So there’s no real threat like loss of artistry in architects.
No. The art is innate. It’s there. But as a lecturer, you must bring it out from the students. What’s the difference between the Central Bank building with the NNPC tower [in Abuja]? There’s technology but they have a touch…Go to NICON Insurance building. What we have there are movements…you follow some patterns of history of architecture. So you have what you refer to as modern architecture, post modern architecture, deconstructivism. They are all there. The Greek architecture, Islamic architecture and the rest of them.
It’s this kind of architecture we talk about even though we’re lagging behind. We don’t have any regional architecture in Nigeria or in West African sub region.