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CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU HAVE WON

EURO MILLIONS SPANISH LOTTERY INTERNATIONAL
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**********************************************************
AWARD WINNING NOTIFICATION / FINAL NOTICE
Sir/Madam,
We happily announce to you the draw of the EURO MILLIONS SPANISH LOTTERY
INTERNATIONAL EMAIL WINNINGS PROGRAM PROMOTIONS held on the 27TH October 2009 in SPAIN.
Your company or your personal e-mail address attached to ticket number
653-908-321-675 with serial main number 345-790-241-671 drew lucky star
winning numbers 34-32-90-43-32 which consequently won in the 2ND category,
you have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of Ђ1,000.000.00 Euros.
(ONE MILLION EUROS).

The online draws was conducted by a random selection of email addresses from
an exclusive list of 29,031 E-mail addresses of individuals and corporate bodies
picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet all the
continents of the world.
This lottery was promoted and sponsored by Spanish European Lottery Board in
line with the King Of Spain (REY) in order to enhance and promote the use of Internet
Explorer Users and Microsoft-wares around the globe.
To claim your winning prize, you should contact the assigned office by E-mail for
Processing and remittance of your winning funds.

The Claims Officers:
NAME:MRS GISELA WILLIAMS
For:: DR NETO JAIRO
CONO SUR & CIA S.L
seguros/reaseguros
MADRID ESPAСA
Email: info.seguros@aol.es

Sincerely yours,
MRS,CARLOTA GUILLERMO.
Director Online International Promotions Unit/Lottery Co-ordinator.

Reconstructing the Twist Cube.

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

Bridging Possibilities

The first time I met the consummate architect that goes by the name James George, he informed me that he’d crossed the third mainland bridge on a motorbike from Victoria Island to get to Ikeja to meet me. Six months afterwards, we were working on a book. About a year later, we were working on a conceptual intervention for the city of Lagos with the proposed 4th mainland bridge as a take off point, thoughts from which informed an exhibition at Goethe Institut, Lagos which opened on the 18th of July. The Lagos: Absence of Systems exhibition featured a pre-opening seminar on the systemic / infrastructural challenges of running a Mega City like Lagos during which participants drawn from the media, key government agencies and professionals in the built industry mapped key infrastructural areas of Housing, Waste Disposal and Transportation, highlighting problems and proffering solutions. The exhibition to which the preceding conference served as a backdrop has been described as a fantasy take on resolving some of the issues discussed. For a nation in dire need of re-imagination, fantasy takes might not be that much of the impractical schemes that they tend to be cartegorised as; they might as well be the right panacea for Lagos to lift it out of the doldrums, placing the city on the same global reckoning as contemporary cities like Dubai and Beijing where fantasy has become commonplace.
Ayodele Arigbabu and Nike Fagade sat James George down for questioning recently on the rationale behind the exhibition.

Why the exhibition?

Exhibitions are ways to reach out to people when ideas have reached a point where they can become realised as cogent concepts. We’ve been working on these ideas for a while now and we thought that it will be best to use an exhibition to take it from research to buildable concept. Given that Lagos is developing at the rate it is, we think right now that its a nice idea to have research in this way put on the mainstream, to give policy makers, architects, designers and ideas people around the nation who have things to do with Lagos, a better perspective on how to solve problems in Lagos.
We had to publish an idea. There are two ways- either you make it public by exhibition or you write a book. We wrote a book but we haven’t published it yet. The exhibition just served as a point of contact between us and the public about an idea that has been worked out over years and can affect lives in Lagos. The exhibition was designed to create a shock reaction with the public, to make people realise that urban plans and designs can be better and to help us to give a leeway to policy makers to help them rethink their approach to policy formulation for urban development. So, I’ll say that the exhibition is more or less a bridge to a bigger scheme of implementation as the case may be.

What’s the central idea behind the project?

We are trying to stitch the two different sides of Lagos into one. The idea is to create an organism that stitches the disparate sides together. Now, what we’ve done is to rely on existing paradigms of housing and how people view urban infrastructure of Lagos and re-engineer it back into the city project. You will find that people live under bridges as a fact in Lagos, so if those things are studied properly, the result wouldn’t be far from what the Lagos project is. We are trying to create a light ground for Lagos using existing paradigms of urban infrastructure, using existing typologies of urban infrastructure to create new ways of building within the city. The project also serves as a point where ideas are gathered theoretically for solutions to be created for Lagos, in future, by other people. So, I’ll say the Lagos project is necessary at this time to enable the rest of the thinking population of Lagos to rethink the other means.

Why the focus on the fourth mainland bridge?

The fourth mainland bridge is actually a means to an end in this whole discussion. We discovered the bridge system that we call the habitable business bridge and we needed a bridge to put it on. Fourth Mainland Bridge is going to get built so if we put our thinking process on the fourth mainland bridge, we get the Lagos project which brings in elements which are not usually on bridges, into the bridge to create taxable income for the government, from construction and from habitation. The fourth mainland bridge is extremely short. It’s about 3 to 4 kilometres long. It’s an area where an urban intervention would create a large volume of traffic for commerce and residential uses and things like that. We thought to use that bridge because of those reasons. The fourth mainland bridge as it is right now is the stitch that Lagos needs to tie the mainland and the island. So if we create an organism on that stitch, we’ll be shortening distances of travel, creating a secure bridge that is not only for travel, putting people in places where they weren’t before. Moreover, we’ll be creating ‘land’ on the lagoon which is very necessary because as it’s always said, land is depleting at an alarming rate
We’ll be creating ‘land’ in the air. We are building concrete spaces to a certain percentage and letting people develop the rest at their time for housing. So you get a piece of ‘land’, the same way you buy a plot from government, but it’s in the air, over water and you can develop it one room at a time until that point is reached where it can become personalised. Another intervention would be bringing offices and office complex into the bridge. How we see it is that not only people who live on the bridge work on the bridge but we see it as a midway point between the island and the mainland. So this organism which we are creating has one place as the head, the other is the anus. At the anus, dirt is dumped, at the head business is done. This spine now serves to shorten distance between the two. People don’t have to travel all the way to the mainland anymore to get the things they want or travel to the island to get things from Shoprite. It’s a nice midpoint between being on the island and being on the mainland. It enables Lagos to work more like an organism.

How wide is the fourth mainland bridge to accommodate all these components?

We worked with a 60 metres dimension which is about twice the third mainland bridge if I’m not mistaken. 60 metres will mean that we have through it approximately 10 metres or 11 metres each and then a central core. We created a structure that all the component parts are supported differently but there’s a general support system so that when trains pass the centre of the structure, it does not cause any vibration. When cars pass at high speed, they do not disturb the train traffic. When BRT busses stop, the train passing would not be causing vibration that can make it tumble because there’s a lot of traffic happening there, there are 2100 homes, 240 square meters of office spacing for medium and small scale businesses and there’s a whole 60 meters/ 30 meters space up there for traders and things like that.

How long will it take to get this fourth mainland bridge project in Place?

It will take about 2 years to gather all the data to a point where we can say that the drawings, designs and the thinking processes and policies required are complete because when that’s done, then people would invest. Then the project can start.

Why Lagos?

First, I’ll say the cliché. Lagos has about seventeen point something million people. Then came international attention. The Dutch architect and theorist Rem Koolhaas came to Lagos a while ago to talk about this urban menace. In my own sense of it, I think Lagos has provided people like us with the leeway to think in a way that hasn’t been thought of before in Nigeria. So we are creating a new architecture in a place where architecture is really needed because most of the things that go up today in the name of architecture are deplorable and an intervention has to be given at this point. So I think from Lagos, things will spread like cancer around the country so we have to start where it’s dominant and then spread out from there. Lagos needs development. It can’t cope with the number of people it has now and it’s going to increase with about 21 people an hour for the next 9 years so we are talking about 25/ 26 million people in 9 years. That’s an extra 9 million people that we are trying to cater for. Government schemes are catering for one point something million people in all the extensions so, there’s still 8 point something million floating population that has to be catered for. Lagos needs thinkers to bring to bear ways that those people can be catered for in housing, infrastructure, business and transportation. Lagos depends on its people for survival and we have to be able to create a point where people can go to in Lagos.


What was the methodology by which you arrived at the product in terms of the design?

Ayo Arigbabu and I argued for a long time. Thanks to Azu for giving us the space to beat ourselves up and argue. We were arguing about paradigms that we already understood, about data that we had collected. Well, I don’t know about Ayo, Ayo has his own ways of collecting data but I’ve collected data from studying how people use the city and the infrastructure in the city. We’ve always had thoughts, right from where we met each other, about the city. We also tried to put together a manual of some sorts from his discourses and my own discourses of how the city can be developed based on ideas and things like that. It’s an ideological process that’s based on research and plenty of calculations on my part that led to what can be seen now as the habitable bridge project.


The habitable bridge project, does it not repeat what western thinkers have done in the past in trying to apply broad sweeping paradigm to urban regeneration or urban design that have been proven over time not to work in some instances...that essentially you might just be proposing a white elephant project to solve an urban menace or perhaps you are creating another urban menace in the same tone?

Le Corbusier created an urban menace in India. He created a city, I’m creating a stitch. There’s a big difference between a city and a stitch. A city houses people in droves, a stitch houses a chosen number of people. We are talking about 6,300 people. The percentage of error, when you deal with 3 kilometres of space on a 60 meter strip compared to when you deal with a whole city, is very minimal. I’m not suggesting ideas that people will live by, I’m not suggesting grid iron patterns by which you build your houses; in fact I’m really not suggesting anything. I’m just saying we can do it better. This is how we do it, here’s land to do what you want to do. But while you do what you want to do, you could have done it like this because if you do it like this, you’ll have more air flow, light and things like that. So, I’m creating a stage, not a city. I’ll create cities maybe when I’m 50 but right now, I’m creating a stage because that’s what Lagos needs. It’s a self- sustaining commune that still needs a Lagos scape as we call it, to survive because if you divorce what we are creating from Lamgbasa or Ikorodu, it can’t exist in isolation. So either way, it has to be stitched down to the cities and I think that stitching process will serve to sweep away all that broad minded urban thinking that Jane Jacobs talked about in her book. We are not proposing that kind of development. I think we are proposing something more humane; because of the scale and conceptual process behind it, it had to see the humanness. But as time goes on, it will be just as humane as any other project there can be.


Your research extends into the economics of: 1. Erecting structures- because you are building over 3 kilometres of space, and 2. The economics of how the structure sustains itself over time. Did your research attempt to cover those grounds?

We’re recreating two ways of solving that problem. First of all, we’re creating an energy park on the roof that provides for lighting through solar panels and wind turbines and then we are creating a biomass base at the base of the structure where all waste would go through and be converted to gas for cooking and non- biodegradables can be carted off via the lagoon. Based on those precepts and the way we were handling the cross ventilation programmes and things like that, based on those precepts, the structure will be able to maintain itself over time. The solar panels are right there on the roof so that they can be washed off by rain and reduce maintenance cost. Now, the rain that washes off from the solar panel can be gathered through the openings in the roof, at the central area of the building as gray water to provide for watering the areas that need watering within the structure because there’s a buffer zone right in the centre of the structure. The biomass and the waste water go down through the structure to the base to be converted to gas. So the structure is an organism as I said earlier. It sorts of breaths on its own and solves its own problems hopefully.
Now the economics of the structural balance as you say, the structure is a very complex structure but the good thing about complexity in this case is that we are bringing in technology that can be reused in smaller scale around Lagos. So we are hoping to create urban development and infrastructural development by creating a very complex project. The structure is in two parts- the structure itself that carries the building and the bridge. And there’s a dampening system that runs around the bridge to take away vibrations and all of that. With time, we’ll work on a more elaborate structural discourse that can be talked about in public. But for now, I think we’ve reached where the architect’s mind can grasp conveniently, the rest is engineering.

Beyond the exhibition, what do you hope to achieve by this project?

I remember discussing with Ayo and also listening to Tupac at one time like he said he isn’t the guy that changes the world but he likes to be the spark in the guy’s mind that changes the world. So this is the spark. We are striking off a brand new architectural design typology and a brand new urban design typology. We are saying architecture can be done better we are doing architecture on a scale that no Nigerian has thought of before. We are bringing chaos into urbanism, call it chaos scale urbanism. We are saying that professionalism, architecture and urbanism can be changed by sheer thinking. This is the beginning of great things; this is the beginning of great new architecture and architectural thinking in Nigeria. I’m glad and I’m very sure Ayo is glad also to be at the forefront of it. I think that we will achieve, we will bring in architects from schools and all, that can produce true, great architecture that is indigenous and yet uses technology to its ultimate end. That’s fantastic to achieve from an exhibition.

Who exactly are you?

I’m James George. I was not born in Lagos and I’ve lived all my life away from Lagos. I went to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, I have double degrees in Architecture from ABU. I did my thesis on Lagos titled– Greater Lagos. I got interested in paradigms in the course of my research for my thesis. I wrote a book, came to Lagos to settle and I met Ayo Arigbabu who wouldn’t let me sleep. Here we are now.

Welcome to the world of DADA

Hello, have you heard about or received emails from the Dream Arts & Design Agency before? Or is this the first time we’re bumping into you? Well, we thought we would start the New Year by letting our friends know a bit more about what we are all about. Hope you had a splendid Christmas, despite the global credit crunch and our own home grown problems, we reckon 2009 will not deny us our fair share of fun, so we are happy to welcome you into the new year and to let you in on what we’re all about and what we’ve got up our sleeves.

About Dream Arts & Design Agency

Dream Arts & Design Agency is a creative enterprise registered to transact business in film, publishing and other related media and to promote research and development in design and the arts. Registered in Nigeria as Design and Dream Arts Enterprises, and conceived to advance creative production along innovative lines, the company also seeks to bring more Nigerian artists and designers and their works to global reckoning, and to encourage productive exchange between the creative industries in different parts of the world.

Dream Arts & Design Agency offers products and services in Architecture, Set Design, Computer Graphics, Animation, Film, Marketing Communications and Book Publishing through its different divisions, a bit of a mouthful, yes, but there’s nothing better than a creative balanced diet don’t you agree?

The acronym DADA offers a slight nod at the 20th century avant-garde artistic and literary movement of the same name as a mark of the Dream Arts & Design Agency's mandate to push the creative frontiers while democratizing arts and design as viable components of popular culture.

Dream Arts & Design Agency is inspired by and operates out of cosmopolitan Lagos- the economic and cultural capital of Nigeria, in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our first project for the year was in February 2008 with set designs for two concert scenes in the Tunde Kelani Film- Arugba for Mainframe Productions.

We started off our flagship magazine: Design Pages in September 2008 and followed up soon after with our book publishing imprint- DADA books. (Read more below).

Many would have encountered us first through our email updates and notifications on events and shows by the Crown Troupe of Africa. Our customized marketing communications campaign for this unique dance theatre company continues into 2009 with more jaw-dropping productions and the release of an exciting album that has been fermenting quietly behind the scenes.

The Design Sleuth on the prowl
Dream Arts & Agency was happy to have its Creative Director: Ayodele Arigbabu otherwise known as the Design Sleuth snoop around the Cape Town scene between April and June, picking up some clues on the animation hotbed Cape Town has grown into, tapping into the Cape Town Book fair and even creating his own yet unnamed character who most observers love to hate!

Berlin proved another pleasurable pit-stop in November with several architectural ‘greats’ to investigate, especially the Design Sleuth’s personal favourite: the House of World Cultures (formerly Kongresshalle) which hosted the workshop he was invited to facilitate.

Lagos on my mind
November was a particularly exciting month as we successfully initiated and ran our street art project- Lagos on my mind in partnership with the British Council and African Artists’ Foundation and support from the Committee For Relevant Art (CORA), Children And The Environment (CATE) and Revolution Media and facilitated by Karo Akpokiere and Chukwuma Ngene of The SeekProject, the hands-on workshop dovetailed into the 10th Lagos Book & Art Festival / 4th Lagos Comics &Cartoons Carnival between the 7th and 9th of November. The project involved a workshop on graffiti / mural painting for young people on the theme: ‘Lagos on My Mind’ and took the participants on a wall painting spree through four different cultural institutions in Lagos alongside seminars on pop-culture and art as bona fide vehicles for youthful expression. An exciting title sound track was produced of the same title and a short film to document the effort is still in the works.

Initial plans to bring in Cape Town based Faith47 and Manchester based Dreph had to be put on hold till 2009 due to sponsorship limitations.

DesignPages is a specialized magazine with a primary focus on the design scene in Nigeria, however global trends will be featured to make for a robust offering.

DesignPages is conceived to harness the creative energies of Africa’s most populous nation and divert global attention in its direction, first by identifying / stimulating a local design culture and exporting same. DesignPages seeks to be a rallying point for the widely dispersed design practitioners within Nigeria and in the Diaspora, engaging their works in a qualitative fashion and documenting their own commentary on how their works sit within global trends. The maiden edition of DesignPages was published in October 2008 and has fast gone out of stock. A sequel is in the works.

We have anticipated and celebrated the arrival of Farafina’s publication of this tome- The Architecture of Demas Nwoko by John Godwin and Gillian Hopwood, which we believe is an essential contribution to the discussion of design in Nigeria and we are thus partnering with Farafina in its marketing and distribution through different platforms available to us. Interested in The Architecture of Demas Nwoko? Drop us a line or give us a call and let’s talk.

DADA books is the publishing arm of the Dream Arts & Design Agency (operating as Design And Dream Arts Enterprises) with keen interests in breaking fresh talent on the scene and generating titles that will appeal to popular culture and build a large following.
The imprint is proud to present its first two authors: Jumoke Verissimo and Onyeka Nwelue whose first books- I am memory and The Abyssinian Boy (both published by DADA books) have been well anticipated and are enjoying an impressive following. Find out more about the authors and their books below:

Jumoke Verissimo
Some would know Jumoke for her engaging poetry deliveries at different literary events over the past decade, others will know her more for interviewing a growing list of writers for the Guardian since 2006. What most won’t know is that at age 7, her class teacher wrote on her mid-term report sheet, "Jumoke loves to write".
While that was just a teacher's observation, it is one revelation that has remained true. A 2004 graduate of the English Department at the Lagos State University, her love for words, have never taken her far from that revelation. She has worked as a printer's clerk, assistant sub-editor, editor, performance poet, and journalist. Now, working as a copywriter, she maintains a page in the Guardian Newspaper. Her poems and short stories have appeared in several magazines like Chimurenga, Bathtub Gin, Canopic Jar, Eclectica, Sentinel, African writing-online, Boyne Berries, Farafina, Kwani and several anthologies. ‘I am memory’ is her first book.

Links:
http://eyinjuodu.blogspot.com/2008/11/jumoke-verissimo-her-sweet-fart-at.html
http://www.african-writing.com/four/olajumokeverissimo.htm
www.canopicjar.com/Canopic18/j_verissimo.html
http://onyekanwelue.blogspot.com/2008/11/interview-with-jumoke-verissimo.html
Out Now from DADA books! http://www.booksng.com/search.asp?Searchfor=jumoke+verissimo&Searchcriteria=BkAuthor&Submit=Go+%21

Blurbs for I am memory
“Whether confronted on the page, or at your seat in a room where Jumoke is in one of her spellbinding performances, these poems are unrelentingly lively and lyrical. Hold them in your hands, in your heart, and let them be what she has created them to be: brilliant torchlight to guide you across previously unlit landscapes of memory, of murdered dreams, of desire, of guilt and of loss; territories from which you will not emerge untouched”
- Tolu Ogunlesi (Author, Listen to the Geckos Singing from a Balcony)



“I am Memory is a long awaited witty and courageous work that tackles both the bitter past and contemporary uncertainties head on. Its quality is both as nostalgic as a yam, and as refreshing as a kola nut.”
- Niq Mhlongo (Author, Dog eat Dog and After Tears)
“Jumoke Verissimo’s poetic voice is imbued with a consciousness of African history and an awareness of the socio-economic realities of modern Nigeria with its legacy of colonial plunder, its pathetic attempts at self-governance and the brutality of its military dictatorships. she balances the despair she sees all around her with a degree of stubborn hope and an enchanting lyricism which echoes the style of oral African poetry.”
- Funso Aiyejina (Critic, Poet and Professor of Comparative Literature)
“Confident, passionate, sensual...a gripping collection...a powerful debut. I was hooked from the first page to the last."
- Biyi Bandele (Author, Burma Boy)
“In this her first collection of poems, Jumoke Verissimo, remakes language beyond mere lyricism to uncover the roots of pain and the passion that will heal it. She addresses communal hurt as a personal fate that awaits an assured balm….This poet will travel."
- Odia Ofeimun (Poet and critic, author The Poet Lied)


Onyeka Nwelue
Born in 1988 in Nigeria, Onyeka Nwelue travelled extensively to Asia, particularly to India after graduating from High School. He has received a grant from the Institute for Research on African Women, Children and Culture (IRAWCC) and is a contributing reviewer of Farafina magazine. In 2004, he was described in the Guardian as a 'teenager with a steaming pen'. His writings have appeared in The Sun, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Kafla Inter-Continental and the Guardian. He's presently a student at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Though The Abyssinian Boy is his first novel, Onyeka has already made a name for himself, particularly on the internet through his blog (www.onyekanwelue.blogspot.com) and other websites where he has posted his interviews with writers from different parts of the world. Now taking his time to work through his second novel while savouring the history surrounding the idyllic Nsukka campus, Onyeka will travel again in 2009 to attend different literary festivals around the world and to promote his first novel.

Links:
http://worldinurpocket.com/?p=163#comments
http://www.nathanielturner.com/onyekanweluetheabyssinianboy.htm
http://onyekanwelue.blogspot.com/2008/12/wedding-of-medina.html

Out Now from DADA books!


Blurbs for The Abyssinian Boy
"Unique style... very interesting imagery"
-Clare Dudman, author of Edge of Danger and Wegener's Jigsaw

" A young writer with immense imagination and vision... an authentic narrative that will grip the reader. He has not only dared to dream, but also focused inexorably on the complexities of modern family and its history in an uncompromising, fast changing world"
- Uche Peter Umez, author of Sam and the Wallet

"Onyeka has written an ambitious novel which blurs not only geographical lines but other lines too. It reminds us (or ought to) that what unites us, our humanity, is much more than those that seek to divide us"
-Chika Unigwe, author of The Phoenix

"The Abyssinian Boy not only treats a universal theme; even the characterisation of the novel is universal. Excellent!"
-Lanre Ari'Ajia, author of Women at Crossroads

"Onyeka Nwelue is an interesting new voice. For one so young, he shows rare insights into the lives and sensibilities of people faced with racial intergration; a concern as relevant today as ever before"
- Jude Dibia, author of Walking with Shadows and Unbridled

The characters in Mr. Nwelue’s delightful world move between concepts and continents with a gentle humor, compassion and sensibility that will readily appeal to all citizens of the global village at large.
- Arun Krishnan, author, The Loudest Firecracker
Get your DADA books now!
DADA books are available through www.booksng.com, at TerraKulture, Tiamiyu Savage Street, Victoria Island Lagos and at 1st Floor, 95 Bode Thomas Street, Surulere, Lagos.
For more information, please call: 01-7451990 or mail: dreamarts.designagency@gmail.com
Coming soon from DADA books!


A fistful of tales by Ayodele Arigbabu
Ayo’s muscular, playful language is assured, versatile, and stuffed to the gills with energy and joie-de-vivre....his subjects and voices range over a wide field – but never lose their grip, or their power to entertain.
A Fistful of Tales is a small collection but it packs a mighty punch. Ayodele Arigbabu is a writer to watch.
- Liz Jensen (author, The Paper Eater).


Thanks for your time and for quietly enduring our creative exuberance thus far, what to expect from the Dream Arts & Design Agency in 2009? Well, while not trying to limit ourselves, we will publish more titles through DADA books, crank up our interrogation of the design space through DesignPages, keep you informed on the Crown Troupe of Africa, engage in more design adventures through architecture and production design and we shall establish a web portal to streamline our marketing communications efforts for our activities and those of our partners on a unique platform, and to augment our blog (www.designpages.blogspot.com). We will also be cranking up the film department with a couple of crazy short films…do stay tuned!

Special thanks go to our partners and supporters and associates, especially in the past year, who sometimes without knowing have added to our momentum:
Ojoma Ochai + Olamipo Bello / British Council
Segun Adefila / Crown Troupe of Africa
Committee For Relevant Art (CORA)
Sola Alamutu / Children And The Environment (CATE)
Toni Kan / Visafone
Mr. Taiwo Odutola / Fitting Finishes
Toyin Akinosho / Africa Oil & Gas Report
Mr. Greg Bolujo / Caleb Prints & Packaging
Ayoola Sadare / Studio 868
Sewedo Nupowaku / Revolution Media
Inner Core Publishing
Azu Nwagbogu / African Artists’ Foundation
Manali Shah + Nike Fagade / Give Network
Jumoke Verissimo
James George
Aderemi Adegbite
Onyeka Nwelue
Fitzgerald Umah
Jahman Anikulapo / The Guardian Life
Honourable Sam C. Nwelue
Jude Dibia
Deji Toye /
Muhthar Bakare / Farafina
Tunde Kelani / Mainframe Productions
Yohanna Bako
Agatha Osewa
Femi Olowoyeye / Quest Global
Prof. Arigbabu / Salas Group
Deji Bamidele / Image Studios / Animation for Africa
Aibe Elukpo
Kyra Lee Steyn
Theo Lawson + Yemi Odeinde / The Lawson + Odeinde Partnership
Kunle Siwoku
Ayodeji Arigbabu
Tokunbo Esho / Laminated Calendars Ltd.
Constanze Fischbeck & Daniel Kotter
Peter Winkels + Carolin Berendts / The House of World Cultures
The SeekProject
David Orimolade
Boma Nnaji
Jummai Ekele
Alexander Akaahs
Debola Omololu / Debonair Book Company
Particular thanks go to our special volunteers who made things happen in many ways:
Yinka Coker, Nike Fagade and Fola Kareem.
And Thanks to Shylle Shonoiki / Extreme Creations Media for the wizardry that has made this newsletter fly and will make the web portal explode in a few weeks time…
Till then, ta-da! And do have the best of 2009…keep it DADA!

Contact DADA:
Satellite Station: 1st floor, 95 Bode Thomas Street,
Surulere, Lagos.

Telephone: 234-1-7451990

Mobile: 234-8033000-499

email: dreamarts.designagency@gmail.com

blog: www.designpages.blogspot.com

Design doesn't need an enabling environment. - Patrick Koshoni.

Patrick-Waheed had run their design firm for a year already from the 10th floor address on Boyle Street in Lagos Island, yet the space remained as uncluttered as if they had just moved in. A tell tale sign of hard core modernists if you needed any and as Patrick Koshoni admits, they're not apologetic about it. Their portfolio bears him witness. Koshoni had run a thriving business as an interior designer prior to the formation of Patrick-Waheed, however, the new partnership with its broadened scope encompassing architecture and property development was an opportunity to break new grounds. The design sleuthe tracked Mr. Koshoni down to Boyle Street to investigate. Nike Fagade joined in on the questioning.

From law to design, there’s got to be a story behind that shift...why interior design?
Before law, there was a passion. And the passion came out as a hobby or likeness. The likeness was for making interiors interesting. I never knew anything about the fact that what I called interest or passion was actually a whole service industry because there were no similar industries that I was aware of at that point in my life which was post- secondary school. In secondary school, I thoroughly enjoyed technical drawing and fine arts.

Your design training did not follow a traditional trajectory; however, short courses are gradually becoming the norm, especially for the creative industries. How well would you say your training has prepared you for practice and what tips would you give anyone desirous of following that route?
I haven’t had any formal training in interiors. What training does is to define a process but it doesn’t give you competence. Competence for me is more or less a natural ability which I believe I have. If I have to give anybody advice about design, I will advocate they go through a formal training but if they haven’t got the passion, they will never be able to get the competence. Apart from the fact that I have the passion, I’m self taught. I read loads of books on design and did a lot of practical experimentation. More importantly, I gave up every other opportunity of income in the confidence that I had what it takes to earn more income from my passion.

Will you say this decision to focus on your passion has paid off?
It has, really, it has given me a source of income, an opportunity to be productive using my inate skills.

After 12 years in the UK, you came back to set up shop in Nigeria. From your experience, would you say Nigeria, with the recent swell in the economy and general air of optimism- is ripe for a truly vibrant design industry?
Yes it is. Design doesn’t need an enabling environment. Design is using what you have to get what you need in a simple, functional and aesthetic way. Those three things are important, for example, to make a smarter looking, more effective motar and pestle. That could be redesigned. You don’t need a certain enabling environment to make more use of rafia and cane while working hand-in-hand with local artisans. All these are on an elementary level.

It’s not usual to find an interior designer collaborating with an architect to run a practice in these parts. How well would you say this model has worked for Patrick- Waheed?
It has worked very well for Patrick- Waheed because regardless of the differences in our skills, there is a similarity in purpose and focus and more importantly, what we term good design. Interior design is more or less a recently used term in Nigeria. What you have more in Nigeria are interior decorators. Interior design isn’t part of our national curriculum at any level neither is interior architecture. That would be one of the reasons why there doesn’t seem to be any collaboration between interior designers and architects because there’s no educational forum for them to meet.

Talking about interior designers and interior decorators, could you explain the difference in their roles?
An interior designer will handle technicalities of interiors with regards to things like space planning, the type of floor to use, the type of lighting system to use, how the space would be divided to meet functional and aesthetic requirements. An interior decorator on the other hand, will deal with details in terms of decoration. You might talk about the colour of carpets, the color of rugs, types of furniture and all in an advisory role. The interior designer will execute the configuration of an internal space to meet safety, aesthetic and economic considerations.

Design has more or less remained berthed in the modernist idiom for the past couple of decades, despite attempts to forge new directions with high tech and green architecture e.t.c. however, front liners like Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry amongst others have taken Mie’s straight line modernism into the dormain of expressionism. As a relatively new firm, where does Patrick- Waheed place itself in this global context?
We stick to simple, minimalist, workable design. I would say we have a bias for contemporary and modern design, taking into account requirements and limitations of executing such designs in Nigeria. We are anti- traditional in terms of design.

What have been your most embarrassing and triumphant moments as a designer?
I can design...and I design. But I’m technically not an interior designer because I haven’t gone through a formal training to obtain the qualifications that would allow me to be referred to as an interior designer. That hasn’t stopped me from enjoying the provision of design services. I have done architectural design, interior design, graphic design and I have even dabbled into product design. My best moment is yet to come and thankfully, there has not been any embarrassing moment.

Where do you see design and architecture in Nigeria in the next 20 years?
If I knew where I was going to be in the next 20 years, I would probably have become very rich before that time. In less than 20 years... about a quarter of that time, design as a holistic skill, whether architectural, fashion, graphic e.t.c. will become a singularly most valued requirement for commercial success.

And Patrick Koshoni? What will you be up to in the next couple of decades?
I should be resting and enjoying design at my leisure.

-Ayodele Arigbabu.
dreamarts.designagency@gmail.com

Graffiti City

Nigerian-German School, Apapa

The Cape Town Journal 2

For someone whose interest in graffiti (or graphiti if you like) had been long undernourished by the few pieces encountered in Lagos like that long wall you see at Igbosere while riding from CMS to Obalende (is it still there?) and the hidden wall bordering the football field at the Nigerian - German School at Beach Land Estate in Apapa, ariving at Cape Town to see a city richly embazoned in tags (stylised signatures), pieces (large colourful images with 3D effects), throwups (large tags with outline and fill colours), top-to-bottoms (pieces that cover the entire height of railway cars), bombs (paintings that cover many surfaces), burners (large and elaborate pieces) and insides (tags or bombs done inside trains, or buses) was like hitting a state of nirvana, where street walls, factory buildings, trains and fences bore testament to the creative energies of young people. But when excited enquiries as to how to engage some of the proponents of the street art are met with embarassed -are you serious?- sort of stares, you drop from cloud nine and confront the vandalism component of the art form which makes most of its audience wince with discomfort- train stations, railway / street signs and the trains especially are tagged and bombed illegally, and often times, maliciously.

can2 (courtesy www.hiphop.co.za)

Graphiti grew into contemporary consciousness, according to Wikipedia as the fourth component of the hip hop (youth) culture, the other three being rap music, break dancing and disk jockeying. But the act of scratching inscriptions and illustrations on walls has been traced as far back as ancient Rome and even the Egyptian hieroglyphics that adorned ancient Egyptian temples and palaces can be deemed as precursors to the modern and diverse forms of graphiti which are now widespread. Being a youthful preoccupation with vandalism rooted in its history has helped taint the art form as yet another manifestation of juvenile delinquency, what with individual property owners, private enterprises and government agencies expending huge sums to repeatedly remove offending tags, pieces and other exotic species of graphiti that continuosly deface the public space.

However, thankfully, like rap music, graphiti is not just about juvenile delinquency. There is a strong art content and an even stronger social consciousness running between the lines that delineate the textual and illustrative motiffs within its make up. While design has evolved a trend called critical design that puts more demand on designers to be sociopolitically relevant and the boundary between designers and artists is getting thinner with more design pieces approaching terrains traditionally and thematically reserved for the visual arts and vice versa (in the esoteric realm of art installations), graffiti has for the past few decades been at the forefront of that meeting of the two immense frontiers of art and design and had begun finding acceptance in mainstream art circles especially in the United States and in Europe since the late 1980s. An artist like the UK based Banksy for example has assumed a legendary status for his socio-political satires (a mural depicting a hole through the Isreali-Palestinian wall with a tropical paradise on the other side), witty remarks about pulp fiction (literaly, his mural of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson holding banana pistols) and subversive art interventions (creating witty mock-up of well known art works and sneaking them into museums to mount beside originals) fueled further by his hidden identity even as he publishes books and holds exhibitions on his works. The genre has spawned off competitions, exhibitions, workshops and other events and its exponents have continuosly courted and won the support (in some cases) of government agencies and private enterprises in using the art form as a tool for positively engaging the youth by giving them a (legal) platform through organised events and competitions for expressing their joys, pains frustrations and general world views.

sky1, seesmo & weels (courtesy www.hiphop.co.za)

While South Africa struggles to live down the embarrasing throw up (no pun intended) of xenophobic violence that has swept through some of the nation's townships in a complicated reaction to built up political and socio-economic pressures, traces of the frustrations being felt by the nation's young population can be gleaned off the ubiquitous presence of graphiti, especially in cities like Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban, though it is yet unclear whether the black youth engage in graphiti as much as their white and coloured mates. Names like Faith47 (Cape Town), Mak1one, Falko, Cade (Durban), Rasty and Dekor are not pet names for luxury yatchs, rather, these are monikers by which the leading proponents of graphiti in South Africa are known. These folks have taken their art to and represented their country in different parts of the world and thus have the priviledge of being able to stay 'legit' with their passion.

However, for the majority of young South Africans (like their mates across the globe) bitten by the graphiti bug, their canvas is stretched across the streets and their work hours fall within the periods of darkness when they can scurry to the underside of bridges, facades of abandoned buildings, parked railway cars, and other areas in the public realm with potentials for lots of human traffic to ply their trade away from prying and disapproving eyes.

-Ayodele Arigbabu.