Garden City Mixed-Use TowerGarden City Mixed-Use Tower

A concept study, prepared for a developer assessing a prominent Nakawa site. The question was whether a genuinely mixed-use tower — not a tower with a shop in the lobby — could work commercially at this location.

Three buildings stacked

The proposal reads as three distinct volumes. A four-storey retail and food podium holds the street edge and wraps the parking. Eight office floors sit above it, set back behind a deep brise-soleil. A publicly accessible roof garden at level thirteen separates the offices from ten residential floors above, and gives the tower the one thing central Kampala has almost none of: a large, shaded, high-level public space.

Why the garden is at level thirteen

Putting the shared amenity at the transition rather than at the very top means it serves both halves of the building, it is reachable by the office lifts and the residential lifts, and it is not a penthouse amenity dressed up as a public one. It also breaks the mass at the point where a 21-storey slab would otherwise become oppressive from the street.

• Levels 1–4: retail, food court, 1,900 m² of covered public space
• Levels 5–12: 8 office floors, 1,150 m² net each
• Level 13: public roof garden, café, event terrace
• Levels 14–21: 96 apartments, one- to three-bedroom
• 4 basement levels, 420 parking bays

This remains a concept. It is published here as a study in what density on a Kampala hill site could look like if the public realm were designed first.