EXCLUSIVE: Nigerian Institute Of Architects Road Map 2016

In a brief chat with Nigeria Real Estate Hub (NREH), the President of Nigerian Institute of architects (NIA), Tonye Braide, shares with NREH correspondent, some insight on  NIA’s Road map for the year 2016. Read below:

NIA is going to organise a professional development workshop on tourism development which is aimed at expanding the tourism assets of a particular state in the north east region which has had a lot of peace and is claimed to be the pearl of tourism and home of hospitality. The aim of the workshop is to be able to develop the urban character, to clean up the places from the point of arrival to the point of interest and build local capacities.

NIA is going to relaunch its NIA journal which is called the NIA journal reloaded and this is to serve as a marketing tool for most new product and building materials in the country. To be a major source book for architects to be able to get specifications and references which they can always use in their building projects.

NIA also plans to launch the great urban challenge in the second quarter of the year. Great urban challenge is going to be a competition within cities in Nigeria but the projects in these cities, small urban projects taking about 1sqm will be selected by the state chapters, then they will be put to some assessment programs that will be run by international jurors and finalists will be selected. And there will be a grand selection process in which the finalists will be merged. The idea of the great urban challenge is to challenge governors to be able to show good corporate governance in urban development.

In the pipeline, also includes a couple of study tour. We intend to have a trip to Kenya, Uganda, Senegal and France. We have chosen France out of the European countries because France have a very good architecture, buildings with a lot of charm. Particularly the urban the urban culture and infrastructure in many inner city areas are very artistic and the kind of things we should start imbibe into our architects, so that we move into city designs and try to beautify our cities as we  grow, and one of the ways of studying architecture is by experiencing architecture.

Then other routine items of the year, like towards the third quarter of the year we plan West African architectural festival. It will be a festival which will hold in port Harcourt. We are trying to target about a thousand exhibitors from 18 countries in the west African sub region. Developers will come with projects, financiers will come with their opportunities and building product manufacturers will come with their building products. All one big giant extravaganzas. There will be talk shows in which people will discuss some of their challenges that we face in the urban system in the west African region and then source for solutions.