When completed later this year, the façade of the new Kalahari condominium development in Harlem — the largest of the area’s bumper crop of such developments — will be painted with a bold, striped pattern inspired by designs from the Ndebele tribe of South Africa.

At 425,000 square feet, including 60,000 square feet of commercial space and 249 condominium units, the two-tower complex will fill much of the block bounded by Lenox and Fifth avenues and 115th and 116th streets.

Perhaps more than any of the neighborhood’s other new developments, the Kalahari will stand proudly at the crossroads of the new Harlem and the old Harlem. To the site’s north and east stand recently constructed condominiums; to the south looms the troubled Martin Luther King Towers public housing development, and to the immediate west, largely Senegalese vendors sell a dizzying array of goods from the booths of the vibrant Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Market.

Although the Mount Morris Park area north of 116th Street is one of the faster-gentrifying areas of Harlem, a previous effort to develop the site foundered in 2003, following community opposition. In contrast, plans for the Kalahari development, which will incorporate both market-rate and below-market-rate housing, and which is designed to be environmentally friendly, received a standing ovation when first presented to the members of Harlem’s Manhattan Community Board 10, according to Walter Edwards, CEO of Harlem-based Kalahari co-developer Full Spectrum of NY LLC. (The project is a joint initiative of Full Spectrum and the Larchmont-based developer L&M Equity.)

The Kalahari represents a unique approach to marketing Harlem to would-be buyers — starting with the complex’s name. In recent years, many Harlem real estate developers have sought to capitalize on the idea of a second Harlem Renaissance, some even giving their buildings names — such as the Langston and the Ellison — that explicitly recall the Harlem Renaissance. Others have tried to lure buyers uptown with names evocative of downtown locations, such as SoHa, Loft 123, and SoHo North.

“We chose the name Kalahari because we know how poor that area of Africa is, and yet its people have persevered — we wanted to identify with the tribes of the Kalahari,” Mr. Edwards said.

Mr. Edwards knows something about perseverance. He moved to 121st Street from South Carolina at age 9 in 1947 — before the Martin Luther King Towers were built, before the neighborhood was home to a sizable West African population, and long before anyone imagined that Harlem would again draw affluent homebuyers from other parts of the city.

He went on to buy his first piece of investment property in 1962 — a brownstone on 113th Street, for which he paid about $15,000 — and patiently expanded his portfolio over the ensuing decades. In 1982, he and Carlton Brown, a longtime resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant, joined forces to form Full Spectrum. Today, he is among the neighborhood’s most established real estate developers, and one of its elder statesmen. He is chairman of the Harlem Business Alliance and board chairman of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood, where he has been a member for more than 25 years.

“I am a developer and I understand that added space to build means more money in my pocket. It seems to me that I should give something back,” Mr. Edwards told The New York Sun, reflecting on his role in Harlem’s development.

This is not to say that his approach won’t also prove commercially viable. The Kalahari is still under construction — the 12th and final floor is due to top off at the end of the month — and it won’t be ready for occupancy until late in the year or early 2008. Even so, 22% of the market-rate units have already sold, according to the Kalahari’s sales manager, Essence Crockett.

The development’s 120 below-market housing units will be awarded via lottery to eligible buyers, for prices ranging between $125,000 and $485,000. The remaining 129 units are listed at market-rate prices. One-bedroom units are priced starting in the mid-$500,000s, two-bedroom units start in the high $600,000s, and three bedroom-units in the high $700,000s.

From the sturdy, renewable bamboo used for the units’ floors to the greenery insulating the rooftops, the Kalahari is being marketed as Harlem’s second green residential complex. The neighboring condominium development at 1400 Fifth Ave., another Full Spectrum offering, was Harlem’s first effort at environmentally sensitive housing.

The complex will derive some of its energy from solar panels, exhaust heat will be captured and reutilized in the winter, and so-called “gray” waste water and rain water will be collected and reused for landscape and other maintenance purposes. According to Mr. Edwards, these and other similar measures are projected to result in energy usage levels as much as 30% below the maximum levels mandated by the New York State Energy Code. He said the complex also is expected to receive the United States Green Building Council’s silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating, the group’s third highest level of recognition for green building practices.

Ms. Crockett knows that, starting with the façade, the building won’t be for everyone — but that doesn’t worry her. “It’s bold,” she said of the design. “Sometimes you have people who walk in and are pleasantly surprised by it. And then you have the people who really understand it, and are saying, ‘Oh, this is just quite beautiful.’ Others want a bit of explanation.”