Tarkwa Bay Project Explores Building with Reclaimed Materials Off Lagos Coast

An abandoned building on Tarkwa Bay, an island reachable only by boat from Lagos, is being transformed in a project that examines how architecture can arise from materials, relationships and conditions already present in a place. Writing for ArchDaily, Toke Joseph argues that architecture is usually encountered at its conclusion, once the uncertainties of making have resolved into a building, a surface or a space, while the conditions enabling those outcomes — the movement of materials, the availability of labour, and the knowledge held by people and places — remain largely invisible. On Tarkwa Bay, Joseph writes, such conditions cannot be separated from the act of building itself. The crossing from the Lagos mainland reframes access: people, tools and materials travel across water, some resources are readily available and others less so, and reclaimed elements carry histories from elsewhere. Salt and sun alter how surfaces behave, and the presence of local artisans shapes how the work unfolds. These constraints are not necessarily prohibitions; instead they expose dependencies that building elsewhere can allow us to overlook. The piece was published on October 20, 2026, with photography courtesy of Josh Ike Egesi.