Botswana-based PrimeTime Property Holdings’ Motswere building has been awarded a 5-Star Green Star Africa – Office Design v1.1 rating by the Green Building Council South Africa. The building marks the council’s first green star-rated building in Botswana.
Based in the Prime Plaza II in Gaborone’s central business district, it is the first of four commercial buildings that will make up Prime Plaza II once built. The 2 780 m2 Motswere building’s name derives from the Leadwood Combretum trees that inhabit this part of the country. It comprises three A-grade office levels, supporting facilities and two basement parking levels. The building is the first of PrimeTime’s large properties to achieve third-party green certification, which has provided the company with a great competitive advantage, says PrimeTime asset manager, Joe Simpson.
He explains in a media release that a green building responds to local environmental conditions and considers global realities such as increasingly scarce and expensive resources.
The Green Star is an integrated rating system that looks at energy, water, waste, indoor environment quality, land use and ecology, transport emissions and management factors.
For example, the Motswere building is well-oriented with south and north-facing glazing, which is provided with optimum shading in what is a hot country for most of the year – it considerably reduced energy consumption. The building also has on-site recycling facilities and uses solar photovoltaic power.
PrimeTime hopes the building is the start of a new wave of green-rated developments for Botswana and other parts of Africa.
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