Ikko Kobayashi

My first Africa was in 2002 when I was one year absent from architecture school, Tokyo city university. In Uganda, I worked as an intern at a local architecture firm, made local bricks and studied as a visiting student in Makerere University. Chasing other sides of Africa motivated by ‘Architecture without Architects’, I went to Mali, where I stayed for half of a year when I was a master student of Tokyo University of the Arts. I got a map of Dogon village in Paris, then I went to Mali all the way by land in 2007. In 2011, being established our firm, TERRAIN architects, with our first work AU dormitory in Uganda, since then I have kept relationship with Africa based in Tokyo and Kampala.