Nairobi con el KICC a la izquierda

In September 2026, the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) in Nairobi will be the scene of the first Pan-African Architecture Biennale, an unprecedented event which aims to put Africa at the epicenter of global architectural discourse. Curated by Omar Degan, the founder of the practice named DO Architecture group, this inaugural edition to be held in the Kenyan capital is ‘Shifting the Center: From Fragility to Resilience,’ a declaration of intent with a view to inverting the logic that has historically relegated the continent to a peripheral role.

Through exhibitions, conferences, workshops, and urban interventions, the new Biennale seeks to assert the capacity of African architecture to offer solutions to the world’s challenges, including climate change, accelerated urbanization, and cultural preservation.

The selection of the KICC as venue is not fortuitous. With its cylindrical tower and terraced podium, it symbolizes the post-colonial ambition to project a modern pan-African identity through a universal architectural language. Nairobi, with its contrast-rich urban fabric, is an ideal location for a dialogue that questions inherited narratives and puts forward new ways of envisioning the future of African cities.

At the heart of the curatorial proposal is the concept of fragility, not in the passivity sense but as the result of historical and spatial processes deeply marked by colonization, displacement, resource extraction, and environmental precarity. In the face of imposed fragility, African architecture has developed forms of resistance: vernacular methods of adapting to environmental conditions, preservation of ancestral nuggets of wisdom, and reinvention of the urban fabric in contexts of institutional neglect. These survival mechanisms, passed on through generations, embody centuries of knowledge about climate, the cycles of resources, and community life. Now more than ever, they are the foundation upon which to build a resilient future.

The Pan-African Architecture Biennale is not just a celebration of the diversity of the continent’s built domain, but a call to heed local voices and collectively imagine new ways of inhabiting the world.

Nairobi