The iconic competition winning design for MTN House, Accra was lozenge shaped on plan offering a curved elevation to independence Avenue. The circulation core, however, was extracted from the floor plate into separate tower at the rear, connected to the main building by bridges.
The curtain wall was to be shaded at each level with horizontal aluminum sun louvres. A glazed, enclosed atrium spanned the height of the building from the basement to the roof and at ground floor level the floor of the atrium was glass allowing natural light to penetrate the basement.
A second design option was built and completed in 2016. This boasts a spacious, double height reception lobby which houses security screening and generous waiting areas whilst giving on to a Media Centre on the public side of security and the MTN restaurant and lifts to the offices after security. The restaurant spills out onto a terrace served by an outside bar.
The five office floors above provide expansive open plan spaces laid out with rectilinear work stations with a small number of glazed cellular offices on the perimeter.
The main meeting room on each floor is accessed directly from the lift lobby obviating the need for visitors to penetrate the work space, whilst a secondary Meeting Room, located close to the entrance to the work space, is intended largely for internal meetings.
The second floor spills out onto the roof of the Reception, offering a landscaped elevated garden for staff to sit under the shade of trees.
The top floor houses executive offices and the Board Room and, being smaller than the floors below, offers a generous outdoor terrace along both sides for corporate entertaining. The roof level houses the services including radios for telecoms signals, located behind the Radio Frequency Transparent cladding rendering them hidden from street level.
Two of its elevations, south-west and north-east facing, have projecting horizontal aluminum louvers shading devices to minimize tropical heat gain. Also, in these elevations, there is a visual interplay between the verticality of the disengaged columns which forms part of the building structure in front of the horizontal low-e double glazing which provides further reduction in solar heat gain.
On grade car parking is supplemented by a 4 storey multi-storey car park at the rear of the site.
Despite achieving a rectilinear plan as requested by client JCA has added an eye catching, free standing, curved colonnade in front of the building penetrated by an expansive glazed canopy, all creating a distinctive porte corchere.
