Housing Ambition Project

Housing Ambition 

Summary:

Housing Ambition is a 2 year collaboration between the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and University College Dublin, Ireland, led by Dr Brendan O’Neill. Funded by Ethos Kalos, it will preserve the unparalleled Housing Research Development Unit's (HRDU) archive, a vital collection of approximately 15,000 items that hold significant value for academic and social discourses. Unfortunately, this archive remains largely forgotten and underutilised. This initiative aims to halt the loss of this valuable archive by cataloguing, digitizing, and promoting its importance to researchers and the public.

       

Project Team:

Brendan O’Neill (Assistant Professor) - School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland

(opens in a new window)https://people.ucd.ie/brendan.oneill 

Brendan O'Neill has been a Lecturer at UCD since 2018 and is the Co-Director of the Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture (UCD Academic Centre). His research interests include early medieval architecture, organic light-frames structures and links to pastoralism, economy and mobility. With Dr Martin (below) he has recently published ‘Mirages of Emptiness in Samburu, North Central Kenya’, in the Journal of Architectural Education (2023).

Samantha L. Martin (Associate Professor) - School of Architecture, Planning & Environmental Policy, University College Dublin, Ireland

(opens in a new window)https://people.ucd.ie/samantha.martin

Samantha L. Martin’s main research and teaching interests lie in Classical antiquity and the phenomenology of landscapes. She is presently the editor-in-chief of Architectural Histories, the field journal of the European Architectural History Network. Martin has won many awards for her teaching, including the 2019 College Teaching Award at University College Dublin. In 2021-2022 she was a Mellon Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC. She has also received grants from the GAHTC, and in 2019 she established a STEAM learning initiative in Samburu, northern Kenya in 2019. An exhibition based on this initiative was named a flagship project by the Irish Research Council in 2020.

Linda Nkatha Gichuiya (Lecturer) - Department of Architecture and Building Science, University of Nairobi, Kenya

(opens in a new window)https://architecture.uonbi.ac.ke/staff/dr-linda-nkatha-gichuiya

Linda Gichuyia coordinates and teaches the Environmental Design Masters courses at the University of Nairobi, in addition to design and research Undergraduate courses in Architecture. She is deeply involved as well in drawing policy frameworks and strategies for the Kenyan Government and International bodies in her other various capacities as a practising Architect, a part-time Public Servant of the Government of Kenya and as an urban development consultant. With Dr Martin (above), we recently presented a paper at the conference “Third Ecology” in October 2023 titled- In(HABITAT)ion of the Archive - Probing the Emergence of the UN Agenda on Human Settlements and the Built Environment.

Anthony Oduor Ralwala  (Senior Lecturer) - Department of Architecture and Building Science, University of Nairobi, Kenya

(opens in a new window)https://architecture.uonbi.ac.ke/staff/dr-anthony-oduor-ralwala

Dr. Ralwala is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Built Environment and Design (FBED), University of Nairobi. He is a Registered Architect by the Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors, Kenya (BORAQS). He is also a Corporate Architect Member of Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK). Dr. Ralwala has published widely in local and international journals. In 2019, he wrote the book Meaning in Kenyan Luo Vernacular Architecture, which has been translated into six languages: German; French; Italian; Russian; Spanish & Portuguese.

Jonny Dillon (Archivist) - National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin, Ireland

Jonny Dillon works as an archivist at the National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin. He is also a research editor for the Collection’s online platform, Dúchas.ie. As part of his work disseminating Irish folklore and related subject, Jonny produces and hosts the National Collection’s podcast Blúiríní Béaloidis (Folklore Fragments). He is also Honorary Treasurer of the Folklore of Ireland Society.

 

Project Funding

 

Housing Ambition is generously funded by (opens in a new window)Ethnos Kalos foundation. It continues the work of
Cultural Landscapes and Social Spaces (ClaSS), a UCD Earth Institute Strategic Priority project
for 2022-2024, Samburu Stories: Communicating Architecture in the Climate Emergency,
funded by Irish Research Council (IRC) in 2020, with exhibitions in the (opens in a new window)Irish Architectural
(opens in a new window)Archive, Dublin and the (opens in a new window)Department of Architecture, University of Nairobi, Kenya and
Crossroads of Change in the Global South, funded by Higher Education Authority (HEA),
Ireland, with further support from UCD and MIT in 2018. Project partners, Samantha Martin and
Brendan O’Neill, are also currently co-PIs on Whose Story is it Anyway? Building an Ethical
Culture of Collecting, Cataloguing and Archiving, supported by UCD ReCLAIM, funded by
Wellcome Institutional Fund for Research Culture in 2024.