After 11 years, Orkidstudio has evolved and now has two new identities:
BuildX Studio envisions a world made for people and planet by creating the buildings of a radically better tomorrow. Based in Nairobi, we provide turnkey design-build services tailored to education, healthcare and affordable housing sectors.
Buildher equips disadvantaged young women in Kenya with accredited construction skills, leading to greater financial prosperity, changing male attitudes and promoting gender equality within the construction industry.
Our History
Orkidstudio was founded in 2008 as a charity in Scotland to provide pro-bono architecture and construction support to communities and organisations working with disadvantaged children in low income countries. Later, in 2016, a social enterprise by the same name was incorporated in Kenya to provide turnkey design-build services based on a strong social and environmental mission.
We are truly grateful for all the support provided to Orkidstudio by many people and organisations over the past 11 years.
Why Change?
All good things come to an end, however, in this case we like to think a good thing has led to two even greater things!
We discovered that through the greater resource and time we were able to spend on our projects at the social enterprise in Kenya our impact became much bigger than we could have imagined. This new model has given way to new approaches, a different culture of working and also many new faces. We felt it was time to reflect our new personality with a new brand – BuildX Studio!
Through our growing portfolio of work in Kenya and East Africa we become increasingly concerned by the lack of gender equity in the architecture, engineering and construction sectors around us, while our own focus on employing women was at the core of all our successes. Yet, the women working on our sites were always starting at a disadvantage, lacking the training and experience to thrive in the industry long-term.
To address this issue we launched Buildher in early 2019 which is now the main focus of our charity in Scotland.
If you have any questions or just want to find out more please visit us via the links above for more details on how to get in touch.