Kabage Karanja

Kenya

Kabage Karanja is a Nairobi-based architect, researcher, and educator. He studied art and architecture in the United Kingdom, where he qualified in 2011 under the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He leads the research and aesthetic direction of Cave_bureau that charts explorations into architecture and urbanism within nature. This work addresses the anthropological and geological context of the postcolonial African city to confront the challenges of our contemporary rural and urban lives.  

In 2022, he was an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, and he has recently been appointed as the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University. His work has been published widely on platforms such as e-flux, The New York Times, Wallpaper, Elle Decor, Dezeen, The Architect’s Newspaper, CNN, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and The Architectural Review, amongst others.  

In 2025, he will be co-curating the British Pavilion for the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale. Since 2017, he has led the research project titled “The Anthropocene Museum”, which has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum and twice at the Venice Architecture Biennale, where Cave_bureau received a special mention in 2021 for the installation “Obsidian Rain” under “Anthropocene Museum 3.0”. In 2023-2024, he participated in the final series of “The Architects Studio” solo show, featuring the works and collection of Cave_bureau at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. More recently a section of “the Anthropocene Museum” collection that includes the “mbai bronze” has been aquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art.