Cave_bureau’s research and exhibition programs fall under what they call The Anthropocene Museum. This conjoined title recognizes the proposed new geological epoch we are living in, except from a decolonial standpoint. The Anthropocene is a geological time interval believed to have started from the middle of the 20th century, in which the processes of our Earth have been profoundly altered by human activities taking place since the industrial revolution. We look to collectively challenge the dominant Western conception and operation of the Anthropocene, which is in fact rooted in imperialism and ongoing settler colonialism. Through an African oral storytelling perspective, we stage events of natural resistance in caves with a multitude of communities that surround these prehistoric structures to remember our distant and near histories of trauma, while beginning to imagine new architectural modes of healing.

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Cave_Bureau is a Nairobi-based office of architects and researchers that maps explorations in architecture and urbanism in nature. Their work addresses the anthropological and geological context of the postcolonial African city as a way to face the challenges of their contemporary rural and urban lives.