Back from East Africa

We had five really packed days and one day relaxing with giraffe in Nairobi. We interviewed about half dozen local architects and had about half dozen other meetings ranging from US officials that do AIDS related work at the USAID offices housed at the embassy to documentary filmmakers from Austin, TX at an Ethiopian restaurant. The local architects we met with were highly qualified and ran quite a range from a top 10 firm in Africa that had designed many of the skyscrapers in Nairobi to an American who has been working in East Africa for 15 years doing primarily charity type work to a young firm with 2 ½ years experience that also teaches at the University of Nairobi and collaborates with a Herzog and de Meuron studio from the Basel school of architecture, as well as with Harvard’s Graduate School of Design working in Kibera slum. We will be selecting the firm we will be working with by next week. It will truly be a tough choice, but at least we have three excellent options and feel confident that our design will be in good hands. We are scheduled to make a return trip in the middle of October to move the schematic design toward completion.


http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/sidarec is home to our project on the Open Architecture Network where we will be updating our design as it progresses. So stay tuned.