NBO BY DESIGN
Spatial Storytelling, Building Tours & Urban Literacy
NAIROBI
BY
DESIGN
urban language of Nairobi.
We tell the other story.
BUILD
TOURS
Walk through 120 years of decisions. Every building in Nairobi's CBD was built by someone, for someone, at a specific moment in history. Build Tours teaches you to read what they were trying to say.
URBAN
LITERACY
Understanding your city matters. It changes how you vote, how you advocate for your neighbourhood, and how you hold planners and politicians accountable. Every premium tour funds urban literacy for everyone — students, community groups, residents, and anyone who deserves access to this kind of knowledge about their own city.
SPEAKER
SERIES
Salon-style conversations on architecture, planning, and who gets to shape Nairobi. Architects, planners, and the communities they design for on the same platform. Both sides of the story, every time.
BUILD TOURS
NAIROBI CBD
Filter tour routes on the right side. Select one or more than one...
POWER & GOVERNANCE
Follow the seat of state power from KICC to Parliament. Every step was built to project authority, control resources, or organize power over people. Includes sites where movement held critical detention chambers.
HERITAGE BUILDINGS
Learn how the Railway Bank Association, Colonial Archives, and Old City Hall were designed to impress and project authority. Every stone is archival material showing how early colonial administration shaped local African, South-Asian, or European trade.
NAIROBI THEN AND NOW
The glass skyscrapers side by side with colonial stone public towers, the government building back to the private corporate. Every era building on top of older layers which changes how your eyes view how a city moves these streets and for whom.
INDIAN HERITAGE & COMMERCIAL NETWORKS
The most under-told story in Nairobi's urban history: the South Asian community physically built much of the CBD, financed the first commercial streets, dominated public spaces, and created networks that still run on.
INFORMALITY & EVERYDAY URBANISM
Nairobi's buildings. The subject is the street itself. Hawkers, matatu routes, informal commerce, street drainage, improvised storefronts, the edge economy: the city planners designed, and the city residents actually built are two different cities in the same space.
KIBERA & MUKURU
Walk through two of Africa's largest informal settlements with a community guide who knows them from the inside. These communities built their own infrastructure, drainage networks, and commercial hubs. The spatial intelligence here is extraordinary. This tour is continuous.
RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE
Nairobi's CBD contains some of the most architecturally significant religious buildings in East Africa. The Holy Family Basilica, Jamia Mosque, the Sikh Gurdwara, the Jamatkhana, and others represent different streams of belief, identity, and community in the city's history. This tour reads what religious architecture tells us about who has always shaped this city, and how.
EVERY CITY
IS A TEXT.
THIS ONE
IS OURS.
Urban layers readable in one morning's walk
Years of decisions visible from KICC rooftop
People whose city this actually is
Nairobi is one of the few cities on earth where you can read six distinct layers of urban history in a single morning's walk. The colonial grid, postcolonial modernist ambition, South Asian commercial heritage, informal settlement intelligence, new luxury towers, and the emerging climate adaptation story. All of it compressed into one extraordinary geography.
NBO by Design makes that story legible. Urban literacy — the kind of understanding that changes how you see your city, your vote, your neighbourhood, and every city you visit again.
We ask the question that most tour operators skip: who has the power to shape this city? The colonial planner, the postcolonial government, the South Asian merchant who built the streets, the informal builder who had no institutional support. And now, who decides what comes next?
THE
NAIROBI
TALKS
Quarterly conversations on architecture, urban design, and who gets to shape Nairobi. Both the architect and the community. On the same platform. Every time.
Topics have included colonial urban planning, informal settlement design intelligence, climate adaptation, and the politics of the Nairobi skyline.
Upcoming dates announced via Instagram and the mailing list. Free and paid tickets available.
KNOWING
YOUR CITY
IS A
RIGHT
Nairobi floods every time it rains heavily. In March 2024, flash floods killed at least 71 people across Kenya, 30 of them in Nairobi alone. Informal settlements in Mukuru, Mathare, Kibera, and Huruma were hardest hit. Vehicles were swept away. Homes were submerged. Families lost everything in a single night.
These floods are not accidents. Nairobi was founded on a wet plain and has been building over its own drainage systems ever since. Rapid urbanisation, development on floodplains, drainage infrastructure that has not kept pace with the city's growth, and weak enforcement of land-use planning regulations have created a city that floods its most vulnerable residents every single rainy season.
As climate change intensifies, this will get worse. Researchers project that extreme rainfall events will become more frequent and more severe across East Africa. The people least responsible for climate change, living in informal settlements on Nairobi's riverbanks, will pay the highest price.
Knowing how to read your city is how you protect yourself in it. When residents cannot read planning decisions, identify flood-prone land, or challenge infrastructure projects that make flooding worse, they cannot protect themselves or hold anyone accountable. NBO by Design exists to change that.
Nairobi was designed as a racially segregated city. Its colonial grid still shapes who lives where, who floods first, and who gets evicted last. Understanding that history is not nostalgia. It is accountability.
Every road widening, every demolition, every new flyover is a design decision made by someone with power. Urban literacy means being able to read those decisions. Who benefits. Who pays. Who was not consulted.
Nairobi's flooding is not bad luck. It is the result of planning failures compounded by climate change. As rainfall intensity increases, communities on floodplains and riverbanks face escalating risk. Reading the city means reading that risk.
Premium tours fund free urban literacy walks for secondary school students and community groups. Every corporate booking unlocks a free school session for 25 students. A city that understands itself is harder to exploit.
“A city whose residents understand it is harder to exploit.”
NAIROBI IN FOCUS
◎ Follow @nbo.by.design
BRENDA
NGOYA.
Urban designer, social entrepreneur, Curator & Spatial Storyteller, and founder of NBO by Design. Brenda holds an MSc in Sustainable Lands and Cities from the University of Edinburgh and has spent four years doing participatory design work with communities across Nairobi. Led over 50+ guided city walks & urban literacy workshops. She built NBO by Design on the belief that understanding your city is not a privilege – it is how you participate in it.
“The question is not just what was built. It is who had the power to build it, and who was designing all along without ever being called a designer.”
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Everything you need to know before stepping onto the pavement with us.
We recommend comfortable walking shoes, a sun hat, sunglasses, reusable water bottle, and a light jacket (Nairobi weather can shift quickly). A smartphone or camera is great for taking archival reference photos!
WHERE TO FIND US & BOOK DIRECT
Reserve directly using our instant form below or book through our official travel & experience partners.
LUMA
Direct booking. Fastest way to secure your Sunday spot. RSVP opens weekly.
Message directly for group bookings, bespoke enquiries, or any questions.
VIATOR
For international travellers. Verified listing, secure payment, English support.
TRIPADVISOR
Find us and leave a review after your walk. Reviews help more people discover NBO.
DIRECT RESERVATION FORM
SEE NAIROBI
DIFFERENTLY.
Join our next walking tour or inquire about private group bookings & educational workshops.
★ Private tours, corporate walks & academic groups available upon request
THE CITY
BELONGS
TO ALL
NBO by Design is a social enterprise. The commercial and social sides of this business are the same engine, not two separate things running in parallel.
Every premium tour ticket sold funds urban literacy for everyone. Students, community groups, residents of informal settlements, young professionals — anyone who deserves to understand the built environment around them.
The community co-guide programme trains residents from Mathare, Kibera, and Mukuru to lead tours of their own neighbourhoods. Because the people who built the informal city are urban designers. They just were never given that name.
PREMIUM TOURS FUND FREE ACCESS
International and corporate guests fund free community access. 30% of net revenue ring-fenced for the Community Urban Literacy Programme.
COMMUNITY AS GUIDE
Residents trained and paid as co-guides in their own neighbourhoods. The expert on Mathare is someone from Mathare. Their voice leads the walk.
URBAN LITERACY AS ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS
NBO by Design trains community guides from Nairobi's informal settlements — people already doing the work of addressing climate vulnerability, flooding, and poor infrastructure in Mathare, Kibera, and Mukuru — to advocate for their environmental rights with the language and framework to be taken seriously. Working alongside existing community-based organisations, we embed urban literacy into the advocacy already happening on the ground. The people who know best what bad planning costs should be the ones leading the conversation about what better planning looks like. This is not a programme we run for communities. It is one we build with them.