1 park Avenue, Parklands: state-of-the-art green design building

Nairobi’s skyline is currently in the midst of an unprecedented architectural boom, with beautiful structures coming up, offering panoramic views that are transforming the city. If you are an Architectural aficionado or a photographer for that matter, you will most certainly delight and marvel at the new beautiful designs, a tad bit different from what we were once used to, in the eyes of buildings like the Kenyatta International Convention Centre or even Times Tower.

The latest entrant in the rapidly growing city skyline is 1 Park Avenue- a commercial building with some floors that are available for letting as well as accommodating the I&M Bank new headquarters, at the junction of 1st Parklands Avenue and Limuru road. According to Shameer Patel, Group General Manager of Strategy and Transformation at I&M Bank, who was the client project manager and helped us put this piece together, this is a state-of-the-art green design building with an Integrated Photovoltaic skylight that can and will generate 111,000 KwH per annum of power. This feature makes it a one of a kind in the entire African continent as its’ currently the largest such installation in Africa. (It is composed of 2,200 sqm or 23,680 sqft of photovoltaic glass in amorphous silicon technology.)

By providing the same thermal insulation as conventional glass, along with the capacity to generate free clean electricity from the sun, it enables the building to drastically improve its energy efficiency, decrease operation and maintenance costs, and reduce its carbon footprint.

The building comprises eight floors, roof level and four basements with a total gross area of 33,874.21 m². This also a parking capacity of about 400 cars in total, a borehole, three standby generators, five card-accessed lifts, a service lift and a VIP lift. The building is fully secured with CCTV, under vehicle surveillance system, turnstiles.

There are two sky gardens on levels 03 and 04 which provide sheltered outdoor breakout spaces for tenants in the building to relax or hold informal meetings, whilst enjoying magnificent views over the City Park, the Temple across the building and the northern suburbs of Nairobi.

The main entrance of 1 Park Avenue has a unique and beautiful 20meter high entrance arch of hand beaten aluminum panels depicting currency through the ages- embracing local artists artwork. This panel was designed by landscape architecture Jo Silvester and the panels were hand beaten by Jo’s Samburu women’s group in Laikipia. Trevor Andrew, of Planning Systems Services Ltd, says “there is nothing else as remotely beautiful and on this scale in Kenya.”  In line with promoting local talent the building also has a 40 metre wall mural done by another local artist, WiseTwo, spanning across the 1st floor.  

The lofty 8 floor high atria with its curved walkways and bridges, has a natural ventilation space crowned by one of the largest photovoltaic glass roofs in East Africa. The roof floats above the atria, allowing natural ventilation to all levels of 1 Park Avenue.

1 park Avenue was put together by an incredible team of talented professionals:

Developers.      I&M Realty

Project managers: Betts Townsend

Design Architects; Jim Archer and Trevor Andrews   of Planning Systems Services Ltd.

Site Architect          James Mwangi

Main Contractor      Laxmanbhai Construction Ltd.

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