B.ARCH Thesis - Creating A Hybrid Public Space In Nigeria

This thesis speculates on how architecture can create a new hybrid model for public space in a place where institutionally provided public space is absent, thus, providing a framework for people to draw from and potentially create community driven interventions in Abuja, Nigeria. Upon receiving the Syracuse University SOURCE travel grant and visiting Abuja, our research found that the market plays a larger role as an urban apparatus, supplying programs and activities not normally found in a market as we understand it in the west. These various activities, although supplied by the market do not have actual spaces and additional programs would supplement them to push the idea of the market as an urban activator and ultimate public space. The product is a totem-like structure with several possibilities and outcomes, based on the community of the market, with the potential for new plan typologies and facade designs to occur over time with the expansion of the market as the ultimate public space and as a framework for other markets across the nation which take place of what is normally government supplied public space.