KAGVRV is a Vancouver based design practice working across residential and small commercial projects with a focus on clarity, craft and territorial awareness. We design laneway houses, adaptive reuse spaces and tightly choreographed interiors, and we collaborate closely with builders and clients to deliver grounded and thoughtful architecture. Our work is guided by research into corridors of sovereignty, indigenous territorial futures and planetary urbanism themes that inform how we approach material, landscape and space at every scale.
Colin Berg Mbugua Bachelor of Science in Architecture : Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Master of Architecture : University of British Columbia, Canada
Contact : colin@kagvrv.com
Manifesto: On Atonement, Territory, and the West Coast Imagination
At KAGVRV , we do not see architecture as static form-making. We see it as a verb—a process of cultural memory, political responsibility, and land-based inquiry. Our work is rooted in the conviction that architecture in British Columbia is not just a discipline, but a mode of listening.
We practice in a place where history is layered and unfinished. The land we build on is not neutral; it is storied, contested, and alive. We believe that architecture on the West Coast—more than in any other region of North America—carries the potential for cultural atonement. Here, the built environment is not merely a projection of capital or identity, but a gesture of humility. The proximity to enduring Indigenous sovereignties invites a different tempo, a different kind of authorship. It urges us to dwell less as designers and more as stewards.
Our studio aligns itself with the ethos Kenneth Frampton describes in Critical Regionalism, but with the added urgency of decolonial practice. We do not seek to romanticize the regional, but to mine it for responsibility. The climate, the forest, the cedar post, the rain shadow—these are not backdrops, but co-authors. Our work aims to make space for stories that predate the tools we draw with.
Unlike the more literal or commercially driven architecture, our West Coast clientele often act as patrons in the classical sense: individuals, communities, and institutions who fund projects not for prestige, but for meaning. This is particularly visible in collaborations with First Nations communities in BC’s interior, where the design process is as much about ceremony and remembrance as it is about program.
We design spaces that embrace incompletion, celebrate material honesty, and elevate the communal over the iconic. Our interest lies not in signature buildings, but in signatures of care—rooflines that respond to mountain profiles, walls that shadow tree lines, and interiors that hold silence with integrity.
KAGVRV exists not to dominate the landscape, but to conspire with it. We understand atonement as an architectural act: a willingness to build with reverence, to accept limits, and to embed architecture in a longer continuum of cultural regeneration. In this, the West Coast is not just our context—it is our curriculum.
Colin Berg MbuguaBachelor of Science in Architecture : Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Master of Architecture : University of British Columbia, Canada
Contact : colin@kagvrv.com
Multi - Generational Family Home 04
Location : Vancouver, British Columbia
Engineering : Effinity Consulting
Energy Modeling and Technology : Vancity Energy
Builder : Terracotta Construction
Status : Under Construction
Mackay Creek Renovation
Photographed by Connor Davies
Table for the Cook and the Seed
A design essay by Colin Mbugua / KAGVRV
Photographed by Connor Davies
A landscape table with a recessed planting channel, built to bring a quiet territorial element into the room. Its stepped geometry encourages both gathering and focused use, expressing the studio’s interest in clarity, craft, and subtle spatial choreography.
Sustaining Apertures
Location : Or Gallery, Vancouver
Research Based Art Installation With Lys Divine Ndemeye
Curated And Written By Jenn Jackson
Selected by Capture Photo Festical
Spring 2024
Ceramic Co-Design And Fabrication : Nolan T.K.
Installation Build : Alixzander Morale
Photographed by Connor Davies
Location : Or Gallery, Vancouver
Research Based Art Installation With Lys Divine Ndemeye
Curated And Written By Jenn Jackson
Selected by Capture Photo Festical
Spring 2024
Ceramic Co-Design And Fabrication : Nolan T.K.
Installation Build : Alixzander Morale
Photographed by Connor Davies
A suspended column of modular planters, each holding a small ecology, arranged in a vertical field. The installation treats plants as spatial material rather than ornament, producing a lightweight structure that oscillates between sculpture, partition and micro-landscape. Shadows double the piece on the wall, marking growth and temporal change themes central to our ongoing interest in territoriality, living systems and quiet spatial interventions.
Urban Acupuncture in Vancouver
A mid-rise prototype that rethinks Vancouver’s density through communal care. Kitchenless micro-units, a shared commissary, a basement vertical farm and planted ground-level commons form a metabolic architecture rooted in nourishment, reciprocity and ecological stewardship.
Live and Work Laneway Home
Location : Vancouver, British Columbia
Engineering Team : Effinity Consulting
Builder : Terracotta Construction
Energy Modeling and Technology : Vantage Energy Solutions
Landscape Architecture : Topographics Landscape Architecture
Status : Construction
Location : Vancouver, British Columbia
Engineering Team : Effinity Consulting
Builder : Terracotta Construction
Energy Modeling and Technology : Vantage Energy Solutions
Landscape Architecture : Topographics Landscape Architecture
Status : Construction
The brief initially dictated a combination of an art studio and apartment. Commonly refered to as a lane-way house in Canada, this auxilary lot underwent policy change allowing for a more nuanced use of ones laneway property. As seen below, the design celebrates the program allowing for the multi generational occupants both in the existing main house and laneway to live and work with space for private semi - private and semi - public moments required in work and life.
Multi - Generational Family Home 01
Location : Steveston, British Columbia
Engineering : Effinity Consulting
Status : In - Progress
Location : Steveston, British Columbia
Engineering : Effinity Consulting
Status : In - Progress
Medium Farms
Feasibility / Speculative Project In
Arctic Farming
Feasibility / Speculative Project In
Arctic Farming
A climate–responsive agricultural pod designed for the northern territories of British Columbia. The structure uses a woven timber lattice with a translucent skin to form a warm interior microclimate, enabling year round food production in remote communities. The geometry creates a series of linked domes that operate as both farm infrastructure and gathering space, reflecting our interest in territorial systems, local sovereignty and architectural clarity.
Volumes for the Unspoken
A sculptural series by KAGVRV
Floating Volumes is a series of objects that study how mass can appear weightless through precise geometry. Each piece is built as a suspended or visually lifted box, held by a minimal frame that reads more like a spatial diagram than a piece of furniture. The series plays with balance, negative space and quiet tension, reflecting our interest in clarity, structure and the subtle manipulation of volume.
Medium Farms Retail
Feasibility / Speculative Project In
Arctic Farming
Feasibility / Speculative Project In
Arctic Farming
A modular grocery outpost designed for northern British Columbia, built around the idea of local farm pods and short supply chains. The interior is organized as a tiled field with simple crate displays, a lightweight grid ceiling and clear sightlines, creating a space that feels both infrastructural and warm. The design explores how small retail buildings can serve as territorial anchors for remote communities, supporting local growers while offering a calm and functional environment.
Urban Parasite
Feasibility Study
Feasibility Study
A lightweight pavilion designed as an extension of a small café or community food space. The project uses a straightforward timber frame, a slatted roof and large openings to create a bright, open dining environment. A vertical planting wall forms a gentle enclosure, softening the edge between street and interior and introducing a micro-landscape into the project. The pavilion sits within the studio’s ongoing interest in clarity of structure, territorial edges and the role of small buildings in supporting social life.
Kasirwa Earth House
Project Location : Mt Kilimanjaro , Tanzania
Completed : Fall 2015
Project Location : Mt Kilimanjaro , Tanzania
Completed : Fall 2015
Kasirwa Earth House is a community-built project in Kasirwa Village on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Working with local craftspeople and students under the guidance of Jason Orbé, we designed and built three small volumes for incoming teachers and a pavilion at the village entrance. The structures use gabion stone walls, rough-sawn timber frames and hand-applied earth infill, drawing from local knowledge and the material logic of the region.
Epidermis
Selected for Venice Biennale 2023
Reclaiming The Centre : Curated By Livingstone Mukasa
Selected for Venice Biennale 2023
Reclaiming The Centre : Curated By Livingstone Mukasa
Abstract. As our universal need to access food gets threatened, we find ourselves in a position of contemplating on our consumptions and sustaining systems and materials. How did we get here and how do we move forward from here? Our current methods of material understanding in the built environment which prioritize extractive systems, heavy machinery, force and attempts of natural domination, stand in stark contrast to indigenous ecological approaches. This proposal seeks to spark a conversation on the ways in which the tools and thoughts in architecture and landscape architecture support the shift towards life sustaining systems, materials and relations.
Summer Film Series
Curated Film Series
Summer 2023
Venue : Landyachtz Courtyard
Graphic Design : Ashley Visvanathan
Curated Film Series
Summer 2023
Venue : Landyachtz Courtyard
Graphic Design : Ashley Visvanathan
Film Directors :
Kaho Yoshida
Esther Cheung
Tisha Deb Pillai
Lucas Greenough
Bronwyn Davies
Colin Mbugua
Kaho Yoshida
Esther Cheung
Tisha Deb Pillai
Lucas Greenough
Bronwyn Davies
Colin Mbugua
Title: Free Fall Author: Colin Mbugua
A speculative illustration produced in a skyscraper studio, exploring how shifts in visual technology reshape architectural thinking. The work juxtaposes classical geometries with satellite-era flattening, using symbolic figures, shadows and digital artifacts to frame the built environment as a site of distortion, surveillance and transformation.