Jajja's House
location: Kikajjo, Uganda
status: built in January 2020
We met Jajja Nannono Immaculate in 2017 while collaborating with St. Mary’s School in Kikajjo, Wakiso District, about 20 kilometers from Kampala along the Kampala–Entebbe corridor. What began as an educational collaboration gradually became a long-term relationship rooted in presence and shared daily life.
Jajja is a farmer, grandmother, and respected community figure. She lives in Kikajjo, a rapidly transforming peri-urban area where agricultural land coexists with new housing developments as the metropolitan region expands.
The territory is marked by red lateritic soils, subsistence farming, brickmaking, and incremental construction. Land tenure operates through a mix of customary practices and private titles, often limiting women’s formal ownership despite their central role in cultivating the land and sustaining household economies.
It was through this relationship — and within this changing landscape — that Jajja’s House began.
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Designed and built with Jajja Nannono Immaculate, local women, local builders, and architecture students, the project understands construction as a space of learning, exchange, and autonomy.
Drawing from local materials, ecological observation, and daily practices, the house functions both as a home and as a modular prototype — adaptable, replicable, and rooted in the territory that shaped it.
This is where A Casa’s methodology was formed.
A self-built home co-created with women connected to the land.Jajja’s House is an emancipatory housing project developed through immersion, co-creation, and collective building.
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Immersion & the Encounter
– Entry through long-term relationship with Jajja and her routines
– Learning from land, daily life, and community rhythms
– Architecture begins after trust and presence
Co-Creation & Collective Building
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– Construction workshops led with and by women
– Gendered labor roles transformed through practice
– Materials and labor treated as active agents
Research, Translation & Commons-Based Knowledge
– Process documented and taught
– Knowledge shared across academic and public institutions
– Local epistemologies enter formal systems
The construction management timeline
Impact Snapshot
​Immersion & the Encounter
– 19 direct collaborators
(7 local women · 5 local builders · 7 women architecture students)
Co-Creation & Collective Building
– $18,000 raised by 409 contributors
– Low-impact construction using local materials and modular systems
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Research, Translation & Commons-Based Knowledge
– 11+ universities engaged
– Open-source construction manual (women-centered)
– Graduation thesis
– 8 published articles
– International recognitions and exhibitions
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Systemic Continuity
From Jajja’s House emerged:
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Mothers’ House (developing)
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Widows’ House (developing)
A single architectural process evolving into a community-led housing system.
