The ongoing renovation of State House Nairobi will cost nearly Ksh 800 million, according to some media reports. The project is expected to run over several months during which the President will operate from other State facilities. The building has in the past undergone piecemeal refurbishments but the current works are expected to give it a transformative look.
The 117-year-old iconic building was designed by British Architect Sir Herbert Baker who died in 1946.
Prolific in colonial India and South Africa, the Nairobi Government House, as it was known then, was very much an expression of a European style, featuring a protruding entrance topped by a plain triangular pediment and held up by neoclassical-style columns, notes Arch Daily.
Sir Baker was also behind the The Kenya High School, the East African Railways Headquarters, and the administration building at the then Prince of Wales School in Nairobi (now Nairobi School).
