City Ornaments

Nairobi keeps evolving as its needs expand and diversify. Familiarity with a city so often makes us disregard those details that make it special. But we should be careful that this obliviousness does not result in neglect. Nairobi has an ornamentation that defines the city. Let’s take a virtual trip around some of its defining features.

Recently, I was surprised to discover the finer details on the façade of the Kenyan Parliament. It happened as I studied an image at flickr.com: I doubt I would have noticed the motifs in real life. It is interesting how familiar things become so ordinary that we fail to notice their beauty. For example when was the last time you noticed the images on a 100 shilling note?

Nairobi as a city must be experienced to be appreciated. The city, however, is not simply an artifact to be viewed: you must become part of the city to appreciate the different ornaments and decide what they mean to you: it is an individual experience. Sounds, smells and texture are important; the breezy sound of fountain spray, distant church bells, the call of the muezzin, and the pungent smells of garlic, coffee and cigarettes.

City ornaments and decorations have the capacity to unleash feelings, trigger reactions, feed the memory and stimulate the imagination. Different reactions are what make a city tick. Physical spaces can become ornaments themselves. The stretch from the junction of Moi Avenue and Kimathi Street around Corner House, Union Towers and Mama Ngina acts as a magnet for young people.

As such, it constitutes an important feature in this group’s mental map of the city. The middle-aged population mills around the edges of imposing City Hall’s precincts and adjacent offices. The details that we take for granted can change. Take the skyline around the iconic All Saints’ Cathedral on Kenyatta Avenue: one gets the feeling that the many extensions have toned down the allure of the original building. The Cathedral no longer dominates its setting as it once did.

This raises the debate on how far expansion ought to go. It brings to the fore that old contest between conservation and development, against the backdrop of an acute shortage of space. Excellent urban planning emphasizes visual diversity. The scale of ornaments – such as skylines, corner shops, monuments, streetscapes, iconic buildings – is critical.

The Stanley Hotel had a landmark lone acacia tree (thorn tree) that was removed in 1997 and replaced with a similar seedling in 1998. For many years city dwellers and visitors branded the Stanley with that tree. But now it is gone and increased security concerns mean that the pedestrian walkway has been pushed further away from the hotel. This has changed the inside-outside ambience of the adjacent Thorn Tree café, Nairobi’s only proper pavement café.

Urban planning needs to be more considerate of the landmark sites in a city if planners want to preserve the city’s unique fingerprint. Increasingly, natural vegetation is becoming rare in Nairobi. The purple blooms of jacaranda trees along Uhuru Highway are salient panoramas that often go unnoticed due to familiarity. This is also the case with the Uhuru and Central Parks, man-made ornaments that stand out against Nairobi’s concrete background.

The Nairobi Gallery, adjacent to the Kenyatta Avenue/Uhuru Highway roundabout, is an iconic landmark. It’s important for the richness and variety it gives to the urban environment. Its neighbour, Kipande House, provides an opportunity to travel back in time in terms of architectural language.

For a building to impress itself upon the urban scene as a landmark, it must dominate its surroundings or stand out from them. The KICC, Times Tower and Rahimtulla Trust Building in Upper Hill are outstanding city landmarks. The ambience of the Trattoria Restaurant, located at the corner of Wabera and Kaunda Street, is an unconscious marker in people’s minds. This is because of the way the 30-year-old Italian restaurant spills onto Nairobi’s streets.

The Jamia Mosque, City Market and National Archives also act as reference points. If you took away the red column supporting Florida Night Club, you would change Koinange Street’s texture considerably. A few autonomous icons, like the Nation Centre, the Hilton and Lonrho House Towers, keep tweeting from various vantage points on the skyline. A city’s skyline is its crown.

By virtue of their size and scale, skyscrapers are the principal decorative element of a city. Particular buildings often come to represent a city: the 30-storey, 36-year-old, KICC building has long been inextricably associated with Nairobi and Kenya in the same way the Sydney Opera House has come to stand for Australia. The separation between civic and commercial streets defines city ornamentation further.

The traditional kiosk evolved and has been brought to life again through the tiny display stalls now dotting many commercial streets. These petite market stalls within larger shop floors have sufficient presence to impose themselves on the emerging urban imagery. The imposing colonial-era Kenya National Archives building dominates a major transport terminus in the city. Located on the corner of Moi and Luthuli Avenue, this columned building is an unparalleled landmark.

However, the building lost some of its charming original stone finish because of paintwork. And there is a new noxious development in Nairobi: the growing presence of grills, razor wire, roller shutters in shops and spikes on pedestrian walks around buildings, ostensibly to keep idlers away. Do these creepy planning elements really complement the high-tech nirvana we are told we are creating here?

We are now screened when entering supermarkets, restaurants, cinema halls and even when boarding matatus. Nairobi’s ornamentation can do without razor wire and other grilled patterns. New security needs present an opportunity to improve design, promote sustainability and conservation to preserve the spirit of the city. Even when responding to pragmatic security needs, planning innovation must be encouraged.

Without caution, we may destroy the city ornaments that have made Nairobi unique. Every element of development, from park benches to skyscrapers, should be seen as an attempt to adorn the city and to establish and reinforce Nairobi’s distinctive identity.