Wilson Mugambi
Kenyan architect Wilson Mugambi has spent his career proving that good design is a public service, not a luxury. After cutting his teeth on community health clinics in Isiolo, he co-founded Artcore Design Build LLP in 2014 and quickly became a go-to consultant for mixed-use projects that weave passive cooling, local materials, and flexible public space into tight urban plots. His reputation for marrying aesthetic ambition with social utility vaulted him, at 38, to the presidency of the Architectural Association of Kenya, the youngest person ever to hold the post and earned him seats on the councils of two international architects’ institutes, where he pushes for African voices in global code debates.
From that perch Mugambi has championed a “people before permits” agenda, streamlining project approvals for affordable-housing developers and steering AAK’s first guidelines on climate-resilient detailing. He also runs an in-house studio program that pairs graduate interns with senior partners, insisting that mentorship is “the fastest way to scale impact.” Next on his docket: lobbying for a national retrofit fund to green Kenya’s aging building stock and launching a regional design fellowship that will send young architects into underserved counties. For Mugambi, shaping skylines is important but shaping the profession’s conscience matters even more.