Bodega Ecohaven by Olalekan Jeyifous is part of his series exploring alternative futures for Brooklyn.

The architectural storyteller finds inspiration in sci-fi. The future Olalekan Jeyifous is imagining for New York City probably won?t happen in his lifetime, and he?s okay with that. The ?implausible architecture,? as the Brooklyn-based visual artist calls his work, is about the creative excitement of an alternative story line.
?Architecture is my medium, but I?m really a storyteller,? Jeyifous says.
Jeyifous was born in Nigeria and immigrated to the United States when he was 6. After going to architecture school at Cornell and working at DBOX, he ditched the office world and began working more as a visual artist creating public murals and sculptures. A few years ago, Jeyifous made headlines for his improvised ?Shanty Megastructures? series, a speculative, and somewhat dystopian, vision of Lagos. Now, he?s turned his attention to Crown Heights, where he?s lived for about 20 years, and is conjuring up a version of the neighborhood inspired by Afrofuturism, eco-Futurism, and agro-Futurism. It?s lush and Edenic, filled with technologies like rainwater harvesting, biofuels, aeroponics, aquaponics, cooperative farms. In Jeyifous?s Crown Heights, Franklin Avenue is a permaculture corridor, public transit gets you where you need to go (and fast), and rooftops have freshwater marshes.
As with most people in 2020, the coronavirus threw a wrench in Jeyifous?s plans for the...