Wongani Mwanza

Architect & Participatory Urban Designer

Member

Wongani is the Participatory Urban Design Lead focusing on community engagement; embedding Community Wealth Building principles, with a strong desire to see all parts of society shaping their built environment. He has design experience across the civic, residential, health and education sector and has worked internationally for multi-award winning Krook & Tjäder in Stockholm, Sweden.

He was project architect for the 2023 Pineapple Awards shortlisted ‘Meanwhile in Oxfordshire’ programme which transformed vacant retail and office spaces, through meanwhile use, housing 56 organisations at affordable rents. Wongani also led the coop for the community engagement for the 2025 Pineapple Awards shortlisted 'Blackbird Leys Community Centre' project. Wongani is passionate about the circular economy, hosting an RIBA podcast on the circular economy in 2023 and his research exhibited at the 2019 RIBA 'Industrialised' exhibition. He co-curated Modern Art Oxford's 2022 Adapt Transform Stories, a thematic series on community responses to urban design and creativity. He is currently engaging in research and leading workshops on the topic of intergenerational wealth, race and housing.

Wongani is also an associate lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, where he teaches an undergraduate Design Unit C: Building Stories. He is a panel member for the Oxford Design Review Panel and he is a Design Council Associate Expert. He has been a judge for the AJ Architecture Awards in 2023 & 2024 and is currently a mentor for POC in Architecture and Black Females in Architecture, supporting architecture students & recent graduates.

• wongani@transitionbydesign.org
• @_wongani