Studio Name: NLÉ Architects (Kunlé Adeyemi)
Client: Community-led, supported by Heinrich Böll Foundation
Area: Approx. 220 square metres
Year: 2013 (prototype), dismantled in 2016
Location: Makoko Waterfront, Lagos Lagoon, Nigeria
Photography Credit: Iwan Baan, NLÉ
Award: Silver Lion Award at Venice Biennale 2016
The average African child dreams of becoming a doctor. Or an engineer. Or just…something that is more often than not said of children with stable feet on dry ground.
But what about the girl who grew up on water? Can a boy in the margins dream too?
In Makoko, school is not always guaranteed, not when water replaces roads and classrooms are a luxury. So, when a structure like the Makoko Floating School showed up, it wasn’t just a structure. It was a bold answer to the quiet questions and dreams of many who lived there.
Makoko is a slum community living in wooden buildings on stilts over the water of Lagos Lagoon in Nigeria. Canoes are the residents’ primary means of transportation. The challenges are significant, socially, economically and not least environmentally in view of changing climate and frequent flooding. In search of an appropriate solution, Amsterdam-based architects NLÉ demonstrated a new form of floating buildings for Makoko and similar water cities in Africa and elsewhere. The initial prototype was a Floating School, addressing appropriately not only building technology but also environmental issues and the everyday lives of people living in Makoko (Riise and Adeyemi, 2015).
Design Philosophy and Planning
The structure was introduced without much luxury. Made from timber and oil drums, it was a modest and functional solution. Designed by Kunlé Adeyemi of Amsterdam-based Design Studio—NLÉ (meaning “at home”), the school was not just about sheltering children; it was about reimagining how architecture could respond to water, poverty, and climate in one breath. It offered an eco-responsive concept: not a fixed ideal, but an evolving response to place and people. Environmentally-responsive architecture is not a fixed ideal, but rather an evolving concept to be redefined with projects. This design approach adapts well to the local climate, topographical features and available resources in terms of settlement pattern, building volume configuration, semi-open and open space arrangement, building materials and construction techniques (Okeke et al, 2019).
Set on a triangular A-frame and rising three stories high, the Floating School offered roughly 220 square metres of usable space. The base level was open—sometimes used as a play area or communal gathering space. The second level held the classrooms. The third was more of an attic space, a roofed platform for workshops or teacher prep. The structure was modular and scalable by design; it could easily be replicated to serve other functions—housing, markets, and health centres. That adaptability was its genius.
Construction and Materials
Built almost entirely by local hands, the structure used inexpensive and available materials: timber sourced from nearby markets and over 250 recycled plastic barrels for buoyancy. Nothing ornamental. Just enough to stay afloat, literally and metaphorically. It was a stripped-down, resource-smart experiment in place-based resilience. As part of the building’s layered purpose, it became a model that could rise with rising waters.
According to research, its construction is one, built on stilts over the Lagos Lagoon, the floating school provides educational facilities for local children while raising awareness about climate change and the importance of preserving wetland ecosystems. Designed to withstand flooding and sea-level rise, the school is a beacon of resilience and sustainability in environmental uncertainty (Nyandega, 2023).
But without romanticising it too much, it did not have a long life. The prototype lived from 2013 to early 2016. On June 7 2016, a heavy rainstorm battered the structure, and it collapsed. The school had already been decommissioned at the time, and thankfully no one was inside. Still, it sparked debates—was it safe enough? Did it serve its community as promised? Did it try to do too much too soon?
Yet, it had already done something many government projects never managed to: show up. For three years, it held classes, hosted children, and floated ideas bigger than itself. In its fall, it triggered the reincarnation of the Makoko Floating School (MFS) in different parts of the world. Notable structures include the MFS II at the Venice Biennale, Italy (2016), MFS III at Minnie, Belgium (2018), and MFS III×3 at Minjiang, China. The school at Makoko might have been dismantled, but the concept lived to sail through..
Sustainability and Legacy
The Makoko Floating School was an excellent prototype and proof of possibility. It stood at the intersection of architecture, community, and environment—an eco-responsive concept in the truest sense. One that saw not just buildings, but lives. Not just a floating home, but an opportunity.
Yet, across these communities, grassroots innovations from Makoko’s floating school to informal waste-to-wealth models reveal localised capacities for climate adaptation. Still, structural barriers, including forced evictions, mismanaged funds, and elite-driven urban planning, obstruct the institutional support these initiatives require. By connecting community responses with broader governance failures, this study exposes the need for inclusive development approaches that position slum residents not as passive recipients of aid but as essential actors in climate resilience (Okibe, 2025).
It forces us to ask: what if the answer to climate architecture isn’t about massive budgets or glass towers—but about architects being thoughtful of nature-based solutions, as well as material and eco-friendly designs? Who would think timber framed in recycled barrels would be enough to float Makoko into the global conversation?
However, according to Seçmen and Ibrahim (2025), there is a critical need for integrated approaches to slum upgrading and waterfront development in Makoko, aligning local efforts with global Sustainable Development targets.
So maybe the next floating school in Africa won’t just rise—it will stay a good length of time.
References:
Adeyemi, K. and Riise, J., 2015. Case study: Makoko floating school. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 13, pp.58–60.
Arquitectura Viva, n.d. Kunlé Adeyemi holding a timber-framed model of the Makoko Floating School. [online] Arquitectura Viva. https://arquitecturaviva.com/articles/an-architect-with-an-eye-on-the-environment
Dezeen, 2014. Makoko Floating School by NLÉ. Dezeen. https://www.dezeen.com/2014/03/25/makoko-floating-school-nigeria-nle/
NLÉ Architects, n.d. Makoko Floating School II (MFS II). NLÉ Works. https://nleworks.com/case/mfsii/
Nyandega, D., 2023. The Floating ‘Urban Village’: Makoko Futures. Architectural Design, 93(1), pp.112–119.
Okeke, F.O., Chukwuali, B.C. and Idoko, A.E., 2019. Environmentally-responsive design: A study of Makoko floating school building. International Journal of Development and Sustainability, 8(8), pp.476–487.
Okibe, S., 2025. Living on the Edge: How Nigeria’s Slum Dwellers are Both Victims and Drivers of Climate Change? International Journal of Environment and Climate Change, 15(6), pp.12–25.
Seçmen, S. and Ibrahim, F.A., 2025. Rethinking sustainable development goals (SDG) for floating slums in African coastal settings: Makoko community in Nigeria. Cities, 159, p.105751.
