Senseable Lagos Lab, an initiative of MIT Senseable City Lab launches in Isimi Lagos Tech Valley

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MIT Senseable Lagos

Nigeria’s leading residential development company, LandWey Investment Ltd., held a groundbreaking ceremony on December 15, 2022, to commemorate the launch of the Senseable Lagos Lab – the first of its kind research facility in Africa at Isimi Lagos, Epe. This feat was achieved alongside stakeholders of MIT Senseable City Lab and the Lagos Government at the maiden edition of the Lagos Future City Week organised by Landwey.

Giving his speech at the ceremony, Lagos Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, represented by the Special Adviser on SDGs and Investment, Solape Hammand, remarked “I  wholeheartedly commend Landwey Investment for attracting this partnership. The Senseable Lab launch is a very exciting project for us as it follows our climate adaptation and sustainable resilience plan for Lagos. We have identified many projects which will help us address this including: flood risk, green building and some other challenges. Thus, it is exciting to see the fruition of this partnership as it would help us address some if not all of these challenges.”

Solape Hammond, in giving the Governor’s speech also commented on what the partnership means for education. “We have recently established the University of Science and Technology which will focus on churning out those graduates who will be providing solutions through science and technology. This makes it an apt time to have this partnership as Lagos is well equipped with several universities for the Senseable City Lab and Isimi Tech Valley to work with across the state.” She remarked.

With an overall goal of anticipating future trends, the MIT Senseable Lab will bring researchers together from many academic disciplines to conduct real-time work on groundbreaking ideas and innovative real-world demonstrations in Lagos. The Lab’s work has been exhibited in leading venues including the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum Barcelona, the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Among many awards are TIME Magazine’s Best Invention of the Year in 2007 (Digital water Pavilion) and 2014 (Copenhagen Wheel).

The co-founder and Director, MIT Senseable Labs, Carlo Ratti, walked the audience through the vision of the research initiative focusing on some of the global solutions developed by the facility through its meticulous research. He commented: “We are elated about this partnership as it is our first ever in Africa. Building sustainable cities around the world has helped us realise the peculiarity of each city. Each one has its own distinct problem, to which we use data to provide solutions. We are curious to possibly discover Lagos’ environmental challenges and equally excited to proffer solutions using data.”

MIT Senseable Lagos
Carlo Ratti at the groundbreaking of the Senseable Lagos Lab in Lagos

Committed to promoting the adoption of sustainable living in Nigeria and by extension, Africa, the relationship between Isimi Tech Valley and MIT Senseable Lab City hopes to provide data-led long-term solutions to the ever-growing Megacity which will, in turn, encourage more investment. 

For more information visit www.isimilagos.com  or www.futurecity.ng  


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