Kabage Karanja (KY)
A co-founder of Cave Bureau, exploring architecture's role in urbanism, nature, and culture, and co-curator of the UK Pavilion for the 2025 Venice Biennale.
Kabage Karanja is the co-founder and co-director of Cave Bureau, a Nairobi based bureau of architects and researchers exploring the relationship between architecture, urbanism, nature and culture. In particular, their work explores the anthropological and geological character of place and landscape, and how those qualities map on, or are denied, within the contemporary African city. These studies form part of a broader decoding of the legacy of colonialism on urban conditions, explored through drawing, storytelling, construction, and the curation of performative events of resistance.
Kabage Karanja has been appointed co-curator of the UK Pavilion for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, and in parallel is a Louis Khan visiting assistant professor at Yale school of architecture.
This session is supported by the British Council.
How does the theme of Common Interests resonate with you and your work?
When looked at historically, the theme is very problematic, common interests were rarely about extending any common rights or interests to indigenous people. In fact, this legacy in many parts of the world still remains within the geographies of the so-called commonwealth nations that Australia is a part of. I feel more inclined to interrogate our under-common interests that lie beneath, where caves, forests, deserts, and valleys were, and still are used as spaces of decolonial resistance, enabling us to take up the urgent and yet creative movement for climate justice, and equal rights for all people around the world. A kind of down under reflection of these common interests.
What are some of your favourite projects that have transformed urban space?
If saving a city forest is deemed as an urban project, then it would be the Karura forest project in Nairobi, Kenya. It was literally fought for by the late Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, who in the late 90s after being bludgeoned on the head, managed to eventually stop political and private land grabbers from stealing this public amenity that is over three times the size of New York’s Central Park. Today it is the primary green lung of the city, with an abundance of life, and ofcourse caves within its heart. I often wonder, but never surprised that very few people around the world know about her. My other favorite projects simply pale in comparison to what her work achieved.
Who are some of your greatest influences in work and life?
It is safe to say that architects are not on my primary shortlist. It includes prophets, freedom fighters, artists, civil rights activists, geographers, environmentalists, poets. Just to name a few such as Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, Wangari Mathai, prophet Muhammed Ibn Adbullah, Demas Nwoko, Amitav Ghosh, Maya Angelou, Dedan Kimathi, Kathryn Yusoff, Khadijah Saye, Muthoni Wa Kirima, peace be upon them all.
What do you hope audiences attending Living Cities Forum come away with?
Well that is difficult to predict, but my hope is for more audience engagement. Question and answer sessions are far too often very short, and yet they embody the richness of our human oral traditions. Going by the exciting roster of presenters, it is likely to be very engaging, and maybe even a little heated. I look forward to being part of this forum, sharing and learning in equal measure.
