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Object Timeline

  • We acquired this object.

1993

  • Work on this object began.

2013

  • Work on this object ended.

2016

2025

  • You found it!

Community Cooker (Jiko ya jamii)

This is a Project. It was architect: James Howard Archer, Momu Musuva and Planning Systems Services. It is dated 1993–2013. Its medium is stone, iron sheets, wire mesh.

The Community Cooker (“Jiko ya jamii” in Swahili) is a communal oven that uses trash as fuel for the Laini Saba community in Nairobi’s Kibera informal settlement..Designed by Nairobi- based architect Jim Archer, it is described as “cash-free heat”: residents collect the trash in exchange for time cooking. Under the management of the community-based organization Ushirika wa Usafi (“corporation of cleanliness”), the trash is sorted onto racks, dried, and shoveled down a slide into the burn box. Each oven is large enough to bake ten loaves of bread or fire clay pots.

  • Sugarcane Charcoal
  • bagasse (waste product fibers left after the juice has been squeezed from....
  • DO90.002

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<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://www-4.collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/420778907/ |title=Community Cooker (Jiko ya jamii) |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=11 February 2025 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>