The Onomo Hotel Kigali has a contemporary and innovative windows, the open green terraces, and Aluminum aero foil shading devices represent the building’s most prominent design features. The seven story office building will mitigate the intense heat gain from the Eastern and Western sun radiation.

The building incorporates a parking at the basement level, retails on the ground floor and offices on the upper floors. To break the barrier between the outside and inside, to maximize the view to the surrounding magnificent sky line and minimize the daily energy usage, we are using transparency and incorporating current glass technology and a high-performance curtain wall system, along with innovative shading to provide sun control.

The building includes approximately 1985.298m² of office space on 4260.916m² floor plates with 1032.312m² of ground-level retail. The office spaces are characterized by large efficient floor plates with 2.8 m floor-to-ceiling glass, which provide dramatic panoramic views of the surrounding city and mountain ranges. Additionally, eliminating the corner columns and cantilevering the office spaces express the building corners, resulting in a visual significance to the corners of the building, offering unobstructed views from the interior.

The goal was to design a high-performance modern high-rise office building using a sophisticated curtain wall system while maintaining an appropriate response to the Rwandan ever changing nature of the weather. Sun shading is very critical especially in Rwandan context. The use of aluminum aero foil will not only allow for a cohesive design connection between all the facade components but also enhance the architectural appearance of the building.

Using varying shading strategies on each façade makes it possible to provide floor-to-ceiling transparency on all sides. Insulated glass units that are a combination of low-E coated clear and spandrel glass are used on the north and south facades. The same units are also used on the east and west façade. In addition, the curtain wall system used will also incorporate frit pattern to reduce on the building heat gain coefficient, thereby reducing the building cooling load.    

The building’s integrated parking structure at the basement level is naturally ventilated, accommodating views, airflow and natural light by using large open glass windows including vents. Additionally, each façade responds efficiently to its orientation, each individual façade works simultaneously with the others, showing a cohesive expression of the building’s relationship with its surrounding   urban environment.