Architect Doreen Adengo passed away on July 22, after over a year of battling cancer, according to New Vision in Uganda. Recently profiled in ARCHITECT's September 2021 issue as a Next Progressive, the Uganda-based architect believed that "it’s critical to make the case that architects and urban planners can improve people’s everyday lives, helping cities develop sustainably."

Adengo earned her B.S. from Catholic University in Washington, D.C.,and her M.Arch. from Yale. Upon graduation, she worked for architecture firms in London, Washington D.C., and New York. On returning to Kampala, Uganda, she founded Adengo Architecture in 2015, where her practice worked on everything from furniture design to research and advocacy at the the urban and regional scales.

Her firm’s mission was clear: “It is focused on communicating the value of design in African cities,” Adengo told ARCHITECT. “In a context where non-designers often build their own homes and other structures, we believe it’s critical to make the case that architects and urban planners can improve people’s everyday lives, helping cities develop sustainably.”

The Bujjuko School, Bujjuko, Uganda. In this largely agricultural region, community members spend most of their time outdoors, retreating inside during the evenings. Adengo Architecture’s design echoed this pattern by providing a seamless relationship between the school’s interior and exterior.
courtesy Adengo Architecture The Bujjuko School, Bujjuko, Uganda. In this largely agricultural region, community members spend most of their time outdoors, retreating inside during the evenings. Adengo Architecture’s design echoed this pattern by providing a seamless relationship between the school’s interior and exterior.
“African Mobilities 3x3” project. The global Kitenge trade provides a window into the connections and contributions that African migrants are making in the world. Combining photography, film, cartography, and architecture, this project explored the ways in which Congolese traders and tailors transform the social, economic, and built environment in Kampala, Uganda.
courtesy Adengo Architecture “African Mobilities 3x3” project. The global Kitenge trade provides a window into the connections and contributions that African migrants are making in the world. Combining photography, film, cartography, and architecture, this project explored the ways in which Congolese traders and tailors transform the social, economic, and built environment in Kampala, Uganda.

Adengo’s work varied from the design of affordable housing, schools, and a mobile medical clinic that incorporates ecologically sensitive elements such as solar panels and water harvesting capabilities to being the conservation architect on the Uganda Museum, a 1940s Modernist building selected for the Getty "Keeping It Modern" conservation grant in 2020.

Adengo also taught at The New School and Pratt Institute in New York; the University of Johannesburg’s Graduate School of Architecture in South Africa; and Uganda Martyrs University in Kampala. While in New York, she set up a free, private tutoring practice for students studying architecture.

There is a growing need for more inclusivity in regards to who gets to tell the story of architecture in Africa.

Adengo also helped produce exhibitions and workshops exploring Uganda urbanism and architecture at the Goethe-Zentrum Kampala and the Architecture Museum of the Technical University Munich and was an Andrew Mellon Fellow on the Centring Africa: Postcolonial Perspectives on Architecture research project at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, amongst many other accomplishments.

Uganda Museum, Conservation Management Plan, “Keeping It Modern” initiative. The Uganda National Museum, designed by Ernst May in 1954, is one of the first purpose-built museums in Africa and one of the first Modernist buildings in Kampala. Adengo Architecture is working with the Getty Foundation and other partners to come up with a conservation management plan for this important museum, which has been threatened with demolition on numerous occasions.
Franklin Kasumba Uganda Museum, Conservation Management Plan, “Keeping It Modern” initiative. The Uganda National Museum, designed by Ernst May in 1954, is one of the first purpose-built museums in Africa and one of the first Modernist buildings in Kampala. Adengo Architecture is working with the Getty Foundation and other partners to come up with a conservation management plan for this important museum, which has been threatened with demolition on numerous occasions.

The CCA/Mellon Foundation collaborative project on Centring Africa is an innovative model for collective research that in 2019 with the aim to study postcolonial perspectives on the architecture of African countries since their independence. As a researcher, Adengo said that there is an importance of oral histories to the process of Centring Africa: “There is a growing need for more inclusivity in regards to who gets to tell the story of architecture in Africa,” Adengo told CCA in 2020, and her project proposed to tell the story of the Modernist buildings in Kampala from the perspective of the local user, exploring how the building has been adapted over time to meet the needs of the contemporary city. “My approach will be to focus on the Mary Stuart Hall building and interview current users, past users, the university administration and the architects Peatfield and Bodgner,” she continued.

In April 2022, Adengo gave the J. Carter Brown Memorial Lecture at Brown University, discussing her work and architecture in post-colonial Kampala.

Adengo touched many lives, and members of the design community and beyond are mourning the tragic loss: “Doreen was an amazing, thoughtful, and giving architect,” wrote Mark Gardner, AIA, of Jaklitsch / Gardner Architects on Facebook. “I had her speak to our students at Parsons School of Design and she was so giving of her time, especially to our BIPOC students. Too soon.”

The architectural historian Barry Bergdoll remembers meeting her on a Society of Architectural Historians study tour to India when she was just finishing architecture school. “A talented committed engaging and warm person,” said Bergdoll in a Facebook post. “What a load for us all and for architecture and for her country.”

A vigil and burial will take place in her ancestral home in Atutur, Kami District, Uganda.