Emma Miloyo

Emerging Female Architects of East Africa

Hannah Wood
Nov 4 · 3 min read
Illustration by Dev Asawala

Emma Miloyo, the first female president of the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK), studied architecture at Jomo Kenyata University of Agriculture and Technology outside Nairobi. Twelve years ago she co-founded a corporate firm with her husband called Design Source, specialising in hospitality, commercial and energy projects across East Africa.

“At Design Source, we work on the principle is that architecture isn’t only shelter, but that it should inspire and evoke emotion”, says Miloyo. “We make an extra effort to think about how our buildings interact with the end-user and their context. Our buildings shouldn’t just be buildings, they should make people walk past and take a second glance.”

Her Nairobi-based office puts Miloyo at the epicentre of the East African construction explosion — according to Deloitte’s 2018 African Construction Report, Kenya has the largest number of projects in the region, with an estimated overall project value of 38.2 million dollars.

“It’s the fad now, everybody’s putting up a highway or a railway line or something, and it’s having a huge impact on how cities develop. In Nairobi, we are witnessing the urban sprawl that comes along with such fast expansion”, explains Miloyo. “In many projects, the focus is vehicular movement and developers are not thinking about the human scale, which has a huge impact on the projects’ future success. You see this again and again, especially in projects by Chinese developers and clients, both here in Kenya and across East Africa. Projects are not being designed for longevity or in our local materials and styles.”

At Design Source, Miloyo and her design team favour the use of homegrown materials and techniques in their buildings. Like Heilman, she sees similarities between sustainable design and concepts in traditional African construction. “We Africans stumbled on these concepts in our traditions: you build models around you and build with your hands, we didn’t have to think too much about heating and cooling systems. We must not lose the basic principles we have inherited, and keep these ideas alive in new African buildings.”

As her career has progressed, Miloyo has often found herself in positions of leadership, both managing construction teams and now as president of the AAK. She warmly tells me that her journey has been one with many challenges along the way.

“Something they don’t teach you in school is that architecture needs to respond to people’s needs and how to manage that respectfully. In trying to meet the client and end user’s needs the solution is never all about you, and as an architect, you need to be very responsive. Very few architects can get away with anything else, only starchitects like Zaha and the rest can say, ‘this is who I am and this is what I do’, and people come to them for that kind of work. To realise architecture, you have to have a lot of emotional intelligence. You’re leading teams, you’re conducting an orchestra, and there are all these dynamics. So you realise that while architecture is a lot about drawing, the major part of it is in fact how you interact with people.”

This piece was originally written for Archinect. Read the full story here: https://archinect.com/features/article/150164665/the-emerging-female-architects-of-east-africa

Hannah Wood

Written by

Architect and writer. Read more at: www.studiohannahwood.com

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