Trends change. What is more important though is the people who take it upon themselves to come up to lead this change. Prosper Byamungu is one such person.
He describes himself as a natural artist who loves drawing and painting. “I am a creator of things. I believe in adaptation and accept that things change.”
As a student at Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi, his attention was drawn to three-dimensional art—being able to express art in spaces. “Art is a very aesthetic field. It is about the senses. Buildings can be art pieces. They can be used to appeal to the senses, “he believes.
It was at Nkozi that the concept of design came to mind. He reasons that Architecture is supposed to solve a human problem because it is the human beings that consume art. “That is why some buildings end up being empty because they do not appeal to the consumers. Ugandans are linear, they are not vertical they want to access spaces easily,” he says.
“That is why most of the buildings that work well are on street level,” he adds.
Prosper has taken it upon himself to make the concept of design and build a new approach in construction. What this means is that you come up with new concepts which are environmentally friendly yet very attractive and catchy for the eye. And cost effective too.
And that is what art has always meantt for Prosper; to come up with new ideas. “My ideas keep changing.”
Prosper is the founder and director at Brown Stridge, a company heavily invested in design and build, a mode of building where the design and construction are contracted and controlled from one source.
According to the company’s website, “this method allows for extra organization, there’s a single point of accountability. And to an extent, a level of quality control.”
“The client has more say in the project,” the company reiterates.
“The frustrating experience of clients going back and forth between architects, builders and contractors during construction birthed Brownstridge Design Build Company Ltd. The Directors’ solution was to have a horizontal integration of the construction processes to achieve better results,” the company says, adding: “We deliver high quality infrastructure in an ethical and environmentally sound manner by supporting and encouraging the professional development of our employees and by being responsible to the communities in which we practice.”
While the company has worked on some key projects such as Cafe Pap, L’Auteur Restaurant, Acacia Hotel in Mbarara, Bunyonyi Safaris in Kampala it is perhaps their most recent approach to recycling that is drawing attention to the previously unknown firm.
Their works were brought to the fore, when in 2016, Prosper was challenged by Kawanguzi Japheth alias CK, to come up with design concepts of what would later be known as The Innovation Village. CK is the founder of the Innovation Villlage a community of innovators and entrepreneurs based in Kampala, Jinja and Mbarara.
Previously, Prosper had worked at Mara Hub and had realised there were a number of things that needed to be redefined for a co-working space. Mara Hub was a co-working space founded in 2014 by a budding entreprenuer Ashish Thakkar on Ham Towers, in Kampala, near Makerere University, to help entrepreneurs and innovators have a space where they could do their work with ease.
“As a person who had worked in a hub before, I had in mind what works and what does not. When I was given the opportunity to design the village, I came up with my best. We put in the coffee shop, the sitting spaces and graphics and it was good to start.”
He was a passionate designer with a lot of new ideas. That was in 2016. Two years before had launched out in the work space working with the Infrastructure Design Forum (IDF) run by Jasper Kyomukama. IDF is one of uganda’s leading architectural firms established in 1992 by Architect Jasper Kyomukama. While at IDF, Prosper learnt how to run a business, how things work in the real world.
In 2014, he left the IDF to start working on his own projects. And that is how he joined Mara Hub. As a hub, Mara had a self limitation for a footloose person like prosper. It lacked in expression. It was so formal and professional for a handy person like him. With the few projects he was getting, he was getting frustrated by the builders who always changed the designs. That was when the idea of Brown Stridge came up, a design and build company.
“I jumped out of residential homes mainly because they take forever and the owners are very sentimental about them.” He centred his efforts on designing coffee shops. Notable among those were Design Agenda and The Sound Cup. He then tweaked his model to look more in the direction of partnerships since they guaranteed long term projects.
Inside the Babirukamu Home: A Kiln Where Leadership Was Forged by a Mother’s Tough Love — Tempered by a Father’s Steady Hand That is how the partnership with The Innovation Village came about. “CK gave me a canvas and asked me to make it work. We wanted to create a space that could motivate the people sitting in there to keep plugged in.” In addition to the liberty to design, there was a promise to expand.
The dynamic artist believes that when you over formalise a place, it formalises the people working from there and that takes away their playfulness. “Colour is so important. It relaxes someone. It helps them to handle tasks very effectively.”
When the idea of setting up Motiv came up, they took it on. “Motiv is an example of what we call an urban regeneration project. Urban regeneration means that we come up with new ideas for buildings different from what they were designed to do.”
Motiv is a creative community and one of the continuous projects. It was the beginning of the container idea. It was designed to show people what it looked like. “We have this idea that things cannot be done in Uganda. It means that any concept you have unless you have a proof of concept, you can’t sell it.”
Many buildings are getting repurposed as the need for use changes. This applies to warehouses too. For Motiv, it was such a better option to accommodate the non-corporate type like carpenters, musicians, tailors, artists and all the people who want to express themselves. “We wanted semi-permanent structures. They are like lego toys, they can be moved around.
The rest of the world has already moved on with the idea of containers. They are already designed. It is a fast construction. The wood we use is recycled timber. They are pallets.”
Today, Prosper is designing the Container Safari Lodge, a concept built from already existing material. The project is about mobility. A container is repurposed into a cottage.
A conversation with Amos Wekesa resulted in this. Amos is a household name in Uganda’s tourism industry. He is the founder and CEO of Great Lakes Safaris Limited, a tour and travel company. He is also the owner of Uganda Lodges, the compnay that owns lodges in different parks. They include Elephant Plains and Simba Safari Lodge in Queen Elizabeth National Park , Primate Lodge in Kibaale National Park and Budongo Eco Lodge. He wanted more accommodation space at the Simba Safari Camp in Queen Elizabeth National Park.
So, working with Amos, Prosper has built a prototype for people to see. It is a single room that can be converted into a double or twin. The cottage is a unit of a whole lodge. Simba is going to have 10 units.
Uganda has a shortage of rooms in national parks. It is quite costly to build a new lodge in a game park. With these cottages, each unit costs USD 25,000 (about UGX 88 million) to have one done. Amos gave an opening to different people to invest in the tourism business. The units are available for sale to the public. The container lodge will run on the model of cost sharing between the host and the unit owner.
However given how popular the idea of repurposing containers is becoming, the team at brown stridge is busy designing and building different projects. According to prosper, when the lockdown happened, many people were forced to rethink their homes. They realised they needed a space within the home but separate from home. This gave a rise in demand of small work spaces which they are now working on.
The urban regeneration program is set to go beyond industry (like the case with Motiv), tourism (like is the case with the cottage) to include schools, technology, agriculture, and medicine in partnership with Frontline Medical Communications. Frontline Medical is a disruptor in the health care. It is designed to create an avenue of having mediacl professionals in more than 20 distinct markets using different platforms like print, online, live events and conferences.
Most of these programs have been achieved through partnership.
Prosper has put together a team of architects, quantity surveyors and engineers who work to make all this work happen. The team at Brown Stridge is heavily invested in design work but mainly for business environments. They do a lot of office fit-outs. We make places that are comfortable. There are many people buying into the technology which works.
However there is still a big challenge for Prosper. Human resource is hard to come by. His team alone cannot do all the work. They have to outsource but it affects the work process.
His biggest lesson has been to build his own team and teach them how to grow. They should be able to take care of themselves and that way they will be able to build a career. The future looks bright as more businesses are getting financed. Next year his company
