Ngure Kairu was born in Kenya and studied Architecture at the Royal Technical College (now University of Nairobi).  Speaking in an interview in 2018, Arch. Kairu recalls that he felt he was purposefully failed in his final year RIBA examination at the College, as he was the first Kenyan student to have reached that stage. Determined not to repeat the year, in Kenya, Ngure Kairu travelled to England, where he obtained work as an Assistant Architect at the Liverpool Regional Hospital. In 1968 he joined the Fourth Year of the Leicester School of Architecture (now part of De Montfort University) and duly completed his RIBA Part 2 examination the following year. He is then recorded as enrolled on the 1970-71 postgraduate course run by the Architectural Association’s Department of Development and Tropical Studies, in London. He was tutored by Michael Safier and duly graduated with a postgraduate diploma in the summer of 1971. After passing his RIBA Part 3, Kairu returned to Kenya and by 1974 was working as the Registrar of Architects and Quantity Surveyors at the Kenyan Ministry of Works. Details of his later career are not yet known to us but he appears to played a major role within the Kenyan state system, working on projects for the ministries of Defence, Agriculture, Arts, and Housing – designing across a range of typographies, from housing, to factories and prisons.

Sources

• Architectural Association Student Register, 1970-71. AA Archives
• Architectural Association Diploma Roll, 1969-71. AA Archives
• ‘The Kenya Gazette,’ Nairobi, Vol. LXXVI, No.22, 17th May, 1974
• ‘Meet Arch. Ngure Kairu, the first African student who was admitted to study Architecture at the UoN,’ BUILDesign TV, 2018. Accessed 9th Feb., 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dOeSZMDAcU&t=1s