Photo courtesy: www.theguardianlifemagazine.blogspot.com
Architecture has the potential to do much more than just delineate
spaces for human activities, in truth; architecture can create
excitement and bring new energy to a community. That much did the
design sleuthe find out while chatting with James George on his self
styled ‘twist cube’ design for the Guaranty Trust Bank branch in
Lawanson, Surulere, Lagos; which has since completion become a head
turning spectacle in the ever bustling neighbourhood. It is not
always that you encounter a building that makes you look again,
especially in the seediest parts of Lagos, James George tells us why
and how he set out to do what he did with the building.
AA: There's been some excitement over a particular branch of Guaranty
Trust Bank (GTB) in Lawanson, Surulere got any clues what the static
is all about?
JG: I’m wondering, I’ve had a few calls at odd times about the design
and how some concerned individuals think it’s collapsing. I just laugh
it off. What do you think?
AA: Word has it that you are responsible for the urban disturbance,
what's the history? What role did you play?
JG: I hear that too... I was approached by Yaba based Line Smiths
Design Associates (LSDA), to provide a response to a place that has
developed in a certain way. I imagined that the area would grow in a
certain way, in the next few years. This is what I describe as an
Urban Architecture or Urbanitecture. The building already existed as a
shop. The question was how to take a boring shop design into a future
that has no such buildings... the response was the twist cube
AA: Can we infer from that, that your imagination led you to a future
where Lawanson will be populated with buildings that appear to be
collapsing? Were you trying to create an ironically ‘iconic’ reference
to the history of collapsed buildings in Lagos?...okay, what really is
the twist cube?
JG: The twist cube is an allegorical reference to the GTB logo. It
says that the readings of the GTB cube that go on to form its
architecture are assumed to have reached an end.
The idea is speed. And excitement. That part of Lawanson is always
congested. The building provides excitement, and enjoyment to the
static viewer. Architecture should provide enjoyment to the onlooker.
People always need to be surprised... Lagos needs to provide surprise
for 17.5 million people; or 8 million depending on where you look at
it from! (Laughs).
AA: So the design intention was not simply to give a notion of a
collapsing building as many concerned citizens have assumed? Is that
'collapsed building' feel something serendipititious or evidence of a
gap between your original design intentions and the ability of the
builders to interprete those thoughts from the drawings?
JG: I wanted to cover up the existing building with a sign post and
create some movement around that area. the area was quite dull and
monotonous before the interruption caused by the twist cube. I
actually set out to create a slant at the angle that the builders
built it to. The twist cube is one of the rare occurences in the
profession in this country what we set out to do was obtained to a
very close degree. It’s alarming and audacious, and clear. These
metaphors, in addition to the layering of other ideas are the thoughts
that go to form my architecture there. The LSDA ensured that what we
thought of first was what we got in the end. Kudos to those fellas.
They sure can build. (Laughs).
AA: The building has been described as one of the more arresting
attempts at deconstruction on the design scene in these parts, I
picked up a little book on Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum -one of
the better known temples to deconstruction - in Berlin last year and
in it, an attempt was made to explain deconstruction:
”The deconstructivist architects are similar in their approach,
although they have different architectural styles and do not define
themselves as a group. But they, too, try to break up the foundations
of a modernism that has become static, a rational geometry that has
become a dogma. Their work is no longert centered just on the finished
building- in their complex building plans and sketches the process of
designing itself becomes the central theme. Their buildings
deliberately show the disparate character of their parts.”
Where would you place your work as typified by the Twist Cube within
this mileu?
JG: Hmm, the built form of the twist cube has been described as
deconstructivist? I prefer ‘responsive’. Our architecture in Africa is
naturally deconstructivist. The insistence on the non Euclidean
geometry, that caused the deconstructivist eureka moment in Europe is
common place in our traditional architecture. This is the reason why I
cannot align my thought process to that of the Libeskinds and
Eisenmans of this world. They learnt fractal geometry, but as Africans
we are born with the ability to see all the fractal dimensions of
time. This has been so from our religious responses to our social
outlook. Deconstruction, as they call it is another African response
that has been theorized and pimped out by European intellectualism.
Here, non linearity is natural, and indeed spiritual. I have not
deconstructed a building, i have only created an African Temple of
Banking in the lines of Susan Wenger’s Oshogbo architectural
responses. If this is not African, I dont see what else is...
-by Ayodele Arigbabu
dreamarts.designagency@gmail.com
