Rem Koolhaas is in Love with Lagos

Some people who are close to me know I have a secret love for architecture. As a child, for a period I really wanted to be an architect. Then I noticed the amount of math involved and the dream faded quickly.

However, I am still in love with architecture and urban planning and one of my favorite names in the business is Rem Koolhaas, a world-renowned Dutch architect and a professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at Harvard University. Seriously, this guy has some of the sickest buildings I have seen, and if I am blessed with tons of money, I would love for him to design my house. (BTW, he has a building on the Illinois Institute of Technology's campus, for my Chicago peeps. During the day, pretty much anyone can walk in and see this rather chic and colorful display of academia.)

So, what does this man have with Lagos? Well, I discovered there's an entire documentary that was made nearly 8 years ago about his Lagos love, rightly and simply titled "Lagos/Koolhaas." Below is a bit of it I found on YouTube.



More interesting than this video was also some of the highlights in the description of the documentary on the filmmakers' website. This stood out to me:

"...In most North American cities we grumble about the traffic and turn up the CD. In Lagos, traffic jams are such an overwhelming feature of the city that they have become a key marketplace. When the cars stop, the trading begins. Or, as Koolhaas's report puts it, "the ubiquitous traffic jam: lulled in congestion, captive to the road's breadth, and thriving with entrepreneurial activity.'"

This is such a brilliant insight to an urban situation or problem and goes directly to some of the things I have told people that feel more comfortable not leaving their city (sometimes even their neighborhood). When we go outside of where we have been most of our lives, we begin to see different perspectives on life. Of course, Koolhaas has cool in his name, so his insight was not surprising to me.

I think what is more important is someone of his prominence in the world of architecture and urban planning is looking to Lagos (a city that is getting closer to world class status, but still has a lot to fix up in regard to infrastructure) as inspiration to solve problems in already world-class metropolises. Is this showing the Western World that Africa is not as backward as they think? Maybe it even shows that it is more forward or progressive than the West?