Courtesy: NLÉ

A floating school in Lagos, Nigeria we featured on weather.com has been nominated as one of the 2014 Designs of the Year from the London Design Museum.

The Makoko Floating School was designed by NLÉ, an architecture firm with offices in the Netherlands and Nigeria. The school opened for use in the spring of 2013, two years after NLÉ founder Kunle Adeyemi visited the fishing community and learned that the school building was in bad shape from constant flooding.

(PHOTOS: Disaster-Proof Architecture)

Ever-changing water levels have already forced much of Makoko to build on stilts and travel by canoe. But the homes still flood because of rising sea levels and heavy rain.

The school was facing the same problem, so Adeyemi and his team came up with the design for the floating school. The floating foundation is tied to 256 recycled empty plastic barrels. The A-frame exterior, made of local wood and bamboo, gives the structure a low center of gravity; not only ideal for floating, but also less vulnerable to high winds. Solar panels on the roof supply the energy.

(MORE: California Dad Builds Tsunami Escape Pod)

The Design of the Year exhibit opened this week at the London Design Museum. NLÉ's Makoko Floating School is one of 13 designs nominated in the architecture category. A model of the school will be on display through August 25, 2014. You can find out more about the exhibit here, or discover more about NLÉ's design mission on the firm's website.

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Homes Around the World That Float