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Doctrines and Layers in Space: A Critique of Stephen Ajadi’s Design for the Anglican Church in Ogidi, Nigeria
(Department of Architecture, University of Lagos, 2019-03-01) Igwe, J. M.
The paper engages Stephen Ajadi’s design for the Anglican Church in Ogidi as a platform and environment to experience, appraise and study the symbolism and dynamics of doctrine in space. In Ajadi’s proposed church design, mutations of the Anglican doctrine are expressed and interrogated in the typology of church. Employing the investigative methodologies of history, architectural theory, and interviews with the architect, the ideas of Ajadi are appraised, interrogated and expounded. In the development process of the Ogidi church, Ajadi skillfully moves backward to go forward while still in the present. He has used methods of computation and parametric design to engage highly abstractive issues of history, space, place and doctrine. He sets up an orchestration strategy that hides method in plain sight while the issues he intends to address take the foreground, probably only for a keen eye. The Ogidi project is found to address wider theoretical issues than the architect had initially imagined. In essence, the church not only engages doctrine in space, but creates layers of other parameters into a parcel of discourse such as place, chronology and the possibilities of new methods for addressing them in an architectural project.