How Nigeria’s Famous Floating School Won Architecture Awards And Then Literally Fell To Pieces

One week after architect Kunlé Adeyemi collected the Silver Lion at the 2016 Venice Biennale, “the Makoko Floating School collapsed. All that remained of the structure heralded as a bellwether of change for a slum and its inhabitants was a flattened pile of planks adrift in the waters of a polluted lagoon. What follows is an account of the school’s stunning rise and fall.”