Bio / Manifesto
Founded by Colin Mbugua, KAGVRV is an architecture and design studio rooted in material honesty, cultural intelligence, and care for context. Working between Vancouver, Kenya, and Europe, the studio focuses on small, high-impact projects that prioritize ecological interdependence, food sovereignty, and social continuity.
We design with an understanding that architecture is not just about form—it is about relation. Our work resists the pressure to overbuild or overstate. Instead, we create adaptive, thoughtful structures that respond to how people actually live, grow, and gather.
Whether designing a vertical farm behind a neighborhood shop, an art studio module for aging artists, or a courtyard refuge for women in semi-arid Kenya, KAGVRV builds formats for collective dignity—spaces that host meaning, support healing, and invite new social rhythms.
Influenced by thinkers long before us, our practice values smallness, slowness, and specificity. We see architecture as a kind of infrastructure for joy: quiet, accessible, and built to last.
We’re not here to impress. We’re here to offer architecture that nourishes
Contact : colin@kagvrv.com
Colin’s primary interest lies in the urban condition of Vancouver. The practise is involved in mediating how multi-generational families cohabitate space. With great influence from British Columbia’s vast and rich country, research between Vancouvers relationship to it’s countryside has led to exhibition and sculptural work to further his engagement with his surrounding territorial issues.
contact : colin@kagvrv.com
Multi - Generational family house 01
Location : Steveston, British Columbia
Status : In - progress
Location : Steveston, British Columbia
Status : In - progress
Concept sketch - Southern facade as a composition of a series of rooms from the entrance to the kitchen, dinning area, the private courtyard and the bedrooms havesting the southern light with use of clerestory windows.
Concept sketch - Eastern facade as a identinty from the drive way. This moment mediates between the young couples entrance and the in-laws entrance to the left.
Concept sketch - Northern facade. The in-laws covered entrace area pulled into the center of the building through the landscape using a gentle ramp to navigate the topography. Buffering the entrance area from the living area is a cut out courtyard on the groundfloor which creates a seamless connection between the Japanese style garben and the interior living space. The inteded green roof slows down run-off in the commonly wet Vancouver climate and redirects it into its green spaces for absorbtion. The bedrooms from the young couples 4 bedroom unit cantilever over the entrance ramp.
