UGANDA, Kampala | Real Muloodi News | Priscilla Namwanje, an ambitious Ugandan architect, recently won one of the world’s most significant competitions for sustainable design – the LafargeHolcim Next generation Middle East Africa Awards.
The Lafargeholcim Award recognises innovative approaches in overcoming environmental, social and economic challenges to sustainable building.
The budding architect is seeking to transform Muyenga-Namuwongo neighbourhoods from from a gray locality to a green social area, through her award-winning “Connective Infrastructure” multi-scale design project.
The project aims to contribute to Muyenga and Namuwongo’s urbanism and urban planning. The young architect hopes to bridge the communities of Muyenga and Namuwongo through her vision by implementing a system that allows development of synergies between various sectors.
With prize money worth 88.4 million Ugandan shillings (approximately US$25,000), Priscilla plans to establish her research practice in urbanism and urban planning to inspire young graduates.
Namwanje has researched informal settlements such as Katanga, Namuwongo, and Kamwokya, among others, to create problem-solving concepts that will transform fragmented communities.
Priscilla Namwanje’s Remarks on Real Estate in Uganda
“Most people who work in the city or have their livelihood in the city cannot afford to live in the city. As such, they live in slums, where housing is affordable. There are proposals to improve these areas, such as building housing estates. Still, people will need to move to other areas, and many changes have to be considered, such as people’s livelihoods. So, it is a multifaceted issue that requires a lot of research to inform policy, design, and decisions,” Namwanje elaborated.
The architect expressed her views on Uganda’s urban planning, believing that there is an increase in demand for housing, with informal settlers accounting for most of the demand.
Impact of Urban Planning to Real Estate Development
Urban planning is a technical and political process that focuses on developing and designing land use, the built environment, and infrastructure. Urban planning and real estate:
- Influence the economic benefits of real estate developments.
- Prevents and regulates excessive growth.
- Ensure excellent urban economic and social structures:
- Encourages real estate development.
Challenges
In the field, while doing research and activism, she highlighted it is difficult to convince people that research is a lucrative career, making it difficult to get people on board with research projects.
Namwanje added, she faced challenges by rigid systems in the planning fields and other structural challenges that the country faces, not to mention working in a male-dominated field.
Who is Priscilla Namwanje?
Priscilla Namwanje holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Makerere University and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in urbanism at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
She became interested in urban activism and planning because of her passion for design and architecture.
She also won the Next Generation prize and the LafargeHolcimher Awards in the Middle East Africa category through her project, Connective Infrastructure.
About the Awards
The Holcim Awards are the most important competition for sustainable design in the world. The Next Generation category honours young professionals and students for their visionary concepts and bold ideas.
The jury chose four entries from the Middle East Africa competition region to receive Next Generation prizes. The winning projects from Uganda, Jordan, Sierra Leone, and Iraq share one trait: an inherent optimism for the future.
These awards encourage the development and applications that require fresh approaches in the construction industry’s value chain.
According to Priscilla Nawanje, her success is a significant step forward in her career, and her victories show that research can be an effective tool for problem-solving.
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