Toke Joseph

Toke Joseph is an architectural and spatial designer and researcher based in Lagos, with educational and professional experience spanning Cyprus, England, and Nigeria, working across architectural design and creative/cultural engagement. Her work sits at the intersection of design, research, and community engagement.

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When the Water Comes: How Lagos Negotiates with Its Returning Floods

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Lagos is a city shaped by time, human interaction, the forces of nature, and its evolving, sometimes uneasy relationship with all three. Nowhere is this more visible than when the rain comes.

Eko sits on a floodplain. Its geographical condition predates the city itself, reaching back to a time before the first road was laid, the first boundary drawn. The drainage systems, the developments that have gradually become privatised waterfronts, are all built on a landscape that has always been, at its foundation, in continuous conversation with water. The flood is not an anomaly; it is the land insisting on a dialogue that was always going to return.

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