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Cave Bureau

Guest at Moviment

Biography

Stella Mutegi et Kabage Karanja. Courtesy Cave Bureau

Cave Bureau, founded and directed by Kabage Karanja & Stella Mutegi, is a Nairobi based bureau of architects and researchers charting explorations into architecture and urbanism within nature.

 

Their work addresses the anthropological and geological context of the African city as a means to confront the complexities of our contemporary rural and urban lives.

The bureau is driven to develop systems and structures that improve the human condition, without negatively impacting the natural environment and social fabric of our communities. They navigate a return to the limitless curiosity of our early ancestors, conducting playful and intensive research studies into caves within and around Nairobi. These studies form part of a broader decoding of pre and post colonial conditions of the city, explored through drawing, storytelling, construction, and the curation of performative events of resistance. 

In the program

Platform for New Assemblies

 Architecture, Philosophy  Meetings

 

The world today is changing in a way that is threatening traditional forms of coming together and prompting a search for new ways of living together. The climate emergency, crisis in democracy and digitalisation are all challenges that are opening us up to the need and desire to invent new forms of gathering.
The international and multidisciplinary programme Platform for New Assemblies brings together key figures from various disciplines – art, science, cookery and architecture – to discuss various configurations of the collective and examine the way in which we do, and will, live together. They will do so in a variety of forms: spoken word, concerts, performances, screenings, a "meta-siesta", listening session and exhibition of works.

 

This first edition of the programme, which will be developed over several years with the generous support and collaboration of the CHANEL Culture Fund, will lead us in our reflection from the privacy of the bedroom to the plural density of the city via the informal space of the home.

 

This first session, which was devised by a think tank comprising the Cave Bureau architecture firm (headed by Stella Mutegi and Kabage Karanja), the philosopher Emanuele Coccia and architect Andrés Jaque, welcomes many voices to the debate: the architectural historian Beatriz Colomina, starred chef Julien Dumas, sociologist Eva Illouz, architect Tatiana Bilbao and many others, all of whom share the conviction that assembly today is an emerging and crucial form.

Assembly 1: What intimacy is there today?

With Cave Bureau (Stella Mutegi et Kabage Karanja), Emanuele Coccia, Andrés Jaque and Aric Chen, director of Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam / moderated by Jean-Max Colard 

 

Assembly 2: What sort of architecture will we live in?

With Beatriz Colomina, architectural historian and director of Princeton University’s Media and Modernity programme; Lina Ghotmeh, French-Lebanese architect and creator of the 2023 pavilion at London’s Serpentine Gallery; and Philippe Rahm, architect and author of the recently published manifesto Style anthropocène (HEAD Geneva). 

 

Assembly 3: Cooking the world

With Julien Dumas, starred chef; Catherine Clarisse, architect, research professor and author of Cuisine, recettes d'architecture; and Emanuele Coccia / moderated by Jean-Max Colard

 

Assembly 4: How to make a world

With Prem Krishnamurthy, designer, author, educator and director of Wkshps; Joy Mboya, executive director of the GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi; Tatiana Bilbao, architect; and Beatrice Galilee, co-founder and executive director of The World Around

 

Assembly 5: The assemblies of tomorrow

With Cave Bureau, Emanuele Coccia, Andrés Jaque and Aric Chen / moderated by Jean-Max Colard

 

Meetings – Thursday, 11 to Sunday, 14 May 2023

In French and English, with simultaneous interpreting

To be found in Moviment, chapter 2:

The bedroom, the house, the city

 Wed 10 – Sun 14 May 2023