OFFICE FOR REPAIR

               [oFR]


systems and spatial 
design studio













ProjectScaleFocus AreaLocationClimateYEAR
Frontejas EntretejidasTerritorial; Districtland governance; public realm; housing; materials developmentEl Paso, USA
Ciudad Juarez, MexicoSemi-Arid2022
The Ecological ClassroomPlotconstruction; food systems; public realm; capacity-building; materials developmentPaxcaman, GuatemalaTropical Highlands2024
Architecture of DisplacementCross-territorialreasearch; policy; sector developmentUS-Mexico Border, Northern Peten, GuatemalaSemi-Arid, Tropical Highlands2025
Community-Led Food SystemsRegionalsector development; research, masterplanningEivissa, SpainMediterranean2024
The Ecological LibraryPlotconstruction; food systems; public realm; capacity-building; materials developmentPaxcaman, GuatemalaTropical Highlands2027
Once, a River RanTerritorialresearch; land governance; public realm; infrastructure El Paso, USA
Ciudad Juarez, MexicoSemi-Arid2026
RA TechnologiesRegionalconstruction; food systems; capacity-buildingPetén, GuatemalaTropical Highlands2026
London ClimatonRegionalresearch; capacity-building; public realmLondon, UKTemperate Oceanic2019
StoryGardenPlotpublic realm; capacity-buildingLondon, UKTemperate Oceanic2021
GROWRegionalconstruction; capacity-building; research; materials developmentHoima, UgandaTropical Savannah2027
Ecobuilding in ConflictCross-Territorialcapacity-building; research; materials developmentPhilipines, India, Tropical Savannah2026







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University of CambridgeGROW: Agroecology in Kyangwali’s Settlement2026-2027



DATE: 2026 — ongoing
STATUS: In development; FUNDING APPLICATIONS 
PROJECT TYPE: RESEARCH AND BUILT PROJECT

LOCATION: Kyangwali Refugee Settlement, Hoima District, Western Uganda
CLIMATE ZONE: Tropical savanna (Aw); bimodal rainfall, March–May and October–December

CLIMATE STRESSORS: Soil degradation; erratic and intensifying rainfall; prolonged dry spells; crop failure; deforestation pressure on shared land

Commissioned by: University of Cambridge (Department of Architecture)
In collaboration with: Dr Irit Katz (Cambridge Architecture); Dr Gabriel Karubanga and Daniel Mutembesa (Makerere University); Nicholas Frayne (PDRA, Cambridge); Priscilla Namwanje, Frank Mafumo (Makerere); Claire Warwick (Durham UNIVERSITY); Lwanga Herbert (Makerere, computer science); CHAIN Uganda; A Hand for a Refugee; Hoima District local government.


OFR ROLE: Co-design toolkit lead; spatial design of physical hub; biobased materials methodology; digital platform governance framework; named project partner and subcontractor

OFR STRANDS: Groundwork; Spatial Design; Capacity & Co-Design; Strategic Systems Design; Knowledge Circulation



GROW is an interdisciplinary research project led by the University of Cambridge, designing and studying a physical knowledge hub and accompanying digital platform with refugee and host communities in Kyangwali refugee settlement, Uganda. The project is an international research collaboration with the universities of Cambridge, Makerere, and Durham. It will design and build a physical hub with refugee and host communities, develop a digital platform for agricultural knowledge exchange, and produce a replicable co-design toolkit for comparable settlement contexts. It is an active research project currently seeking funding.

OFR's scope within GROW spans two connected areas: the spatial design and construction methodology for the physical hub, including material strategy and seasonal construction planning; and the co-design toolkit, a replicable methodology for co-designing agricultural knowledge infrastructure in displacement contexts, which OFR leads across its full development.




Kyangwali is one of Uganda's oldest and most established refugee settlements, and Uganda's approach to displacement is unusual: the national policy framework grants refugees land use rights, the right to work, and freedom of movement. Settlements are planned for long-term integration rather than temporary containment, and infrastructure is progressively shared between refugee and host populations. In practice, however, that framework operates under chronic strain. Soils on shared and adjacent plots are degrading under continuous cultivation without fallow or amendment. Rainfall has become less predictable across both wet seasons. The institutional structures that are meant to support agricultural livelihoods — NGO provision, district extension services, UNHCR programming — operate separately for refugee and host populations, and almost never for both simultaneously. Agricultural knowledge exists in abundance in Kyangwali: knowledge of what grows, what fails, what adapts to the specific soils and microclimates of this landscape, carried by people who have farmed here for decades and by people who arrived from elsewhere carrying the knowledge of entirely different growing systems. The problem is not a knowledge deficit. It is a knowledge infrastructure deficit.


GROW approaches this through an agroecological frame. Agroecology, as OFR and the research team are applying it here, is not a technique. It is a way of working within the interactions already present between plants, soil, water, people, and the physical and social infrastructure that mediates access to all of them. It treats farming as simultaneously an ecological practice, a cultural practice, and an economic one, and it treats the knowledge held by communities as the primary asset, not a gap to be filled by research. The project's task is to design conditions in which that knowledge can be shared, documented, and given longevity.




Partner credit:
In collaboration with: Dr Irit Katz (Cambridge Architecture); Dr Gabriel Karubanga and Daniel Mutembesa (Makerere University); Nicholas Frayne (Cambridge); Priscilla Namwanje and Frank Mafumo (Makerere); Prof. Claire Warwick (Durham Digital Humanities); Lwanga Herbert (Makerere Computer Science); CHAIN Uganda; A Hand for a Refugee; Hoima District Government.

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