Currents: Olalekan Jeyifous’s Shanty Megastructures

In Shanty Megastructures (2015), the Nigerian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous has created a speculative Afrofuturist architectural intervention for the waterfront of Lagos, Nigeria.

The piece is part of Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture, a traveling exhibition curated by architect Sekou Cooke, currently on view at the Museum of Design Atlanta (through January 29, 2023). The show features work by 34 practitioners, representing seven countries, inspired by the creative spirit of hip-hop. It includes, in addition to work by Jeyifous and Cooke himself, that of Amanda Williams, an artist trained as an architect, who last month was named a 2022 MacArthur fellow.

“A great building must begin with the immeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasured.” ―Louis Kahn, whose masterpiece, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, just turned 50 years old.