A team of student from the architectural department in Oduduwa University took African Architecture to another level by coming up with an African architectural website. The team consist of 4 final year student namely: OladipoMayowa, BadmusBasit, Ajih Raymond and Arudiwe Franklin.Naijapoint met with them for an interview.
TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF:
My name is Oladipo Mayowa, a final year student of Oduduwa University, I am from the Architecture Department and that says why the niche of the website had to be architectural related. Well! Aside designing buildings and writing another thing I love is technology, am so inspired how developed countries has used technology to almost solve all the problems that besiege them and I think is high time we Africans embrace the fact that the world is moving faster than we are and start to encourage ideas and start up that can make life more easy and educative.
WHAT BROUGHT ABOUT ALKETECTURE?
“Alketecture came up with me trying to mix my thought with reality on ground here in Africa, I had study Electrical and Electronics Engineering in the polytechnic which I was not bad at, so when I decided to move to the university to start Architecture from scratch, I knew it was a very though course but the presence of internet as made almost everything simple so I believed it will help but then I noticed that the internet has been flooded with so much foreign ideas that I can’t relate with, most times it doesn’t match up to what we do in our studio, and this is because African Architecture is quite different from the foreign ones, imagine trying to browse on how a sitting room looks like and you start to see plans that paid little attention to ventilation or plans that have kitchen right inside the sitting room. Am not saying this is bad but they consider so many things we don’t have around before making their plans and then we implement their ideas and the output is disaster.
Another things is that there are so many architect but not so many firms but lucky us Architecture seems to be a professional course which makes you an entrepreneur, but how to you showcase what you can do? How do you locate potential client? How do student showcase their works for appreciation, criticism and recommendation?, all this I thought about that became alketecture.”
WHAT IS ALKETECTURE?
“Alketecture is an online community that brings various African Architect together to display their creativity to the world by uploading their 3D project, sketches and model. The website has three basic features which is a Portfolio, where architect can display their works, people can comment, like and even contact them for a job. Another feature is the Blog where latest African architecture news and ideas will be shared while the last one is the Forum, where architect, student and buildings admire can discuss on various topic around Africa. The vision is to connect African Architect to the world and relate African style of buildings to the world also.”
DO YOU HAVE A TEAM?
“Yes I do, I didn’t do this alone. I introduced 3 of my friends while still trying to put things together and we have worked on almost everything concerning the website together.”
IF YOU WERE RIGHT IN FRONT OF AN INVESTOR WHAT WILL YOU ASK FOR?
“I will definitely ask for sponsorship and support. It is one thing to have an idea it is another thing to execute it but the most important is for people to actually see it, use it and benefit from it. We want to reach the whole of Africa, organize competition, seminars and many other things. We want alketecture to be the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear about African architecture and lastly we want to be successful.”
