Africa Outlook: Can you tell us about your career history and that of Beglin Woods?

David Beglin, founder and Director: “My career to date has been entirely spent in Kenya, after a short time in London with the Farrell & Grimshaw partnership in the early 1970s - I have been an architect in Kenya since 1974. “I studied at University College Dublin and went to London in 1972 to join the Farrell & Grimshaw partnership. In those days, the profession was going through interesting changes. Computers were becoming a thing in architecture and emerging practices such as Fosters, and Rogers in the UK, and Building Design Workshop in Italy, were producing fascinating work. When the Farrell & Grimshaw practice split up, I moved to Kenya in 1974 and have been here ever since, and my interest in architecture has only continued.

“During the 1960s and 1970s, computer-aided design was becoming big in Britain. Kenya, in 1974, was a newly independent country, supported by Britain and in need of many new buildings of every type. The architecture profession at the time was very small and mostly made of older architects who ran branch offices of UK-based firms.

“I spent 20 or so years working with various practices in Kenya. The projects were large, exciting, and almost everything had to be produced locally. Then, in 1992, I joined Simon Woods, a UK architect who had been in Kenya as long as I had, and we formed Beglin Woods Architects. We quickly attracted several new projects, mostly in tourism, resort design, hotels, and lodges in the game parks, and here we are today.”