Project story · Alexandria, Egypt
A glass tower that borrows its colour from the sea
On the Alexandria corniche, Thuraya Tower rises as a slender, gently twisting shaft of glass. It is a tall building for a busy shoreline that tries, above all, to be calm.
By byJOOM · Thuraya Tower · Mixed-use · Hospitality and resorts
A tower for a working shoreline
The corniche is not a quiet place. It is a road, a promenade and a front door to the city, used every day by people who are going somewhere. Thuraya Tower is designed for those who live, stay and work inside it and for those who simply pass beneath it on the way to somewhere else. Arrival is at street level. The calm begins above it.
A profile with a quarter-turn in it
The tower does not rise as a plain prism. Its profile twists gently as it climbs, so that the silhouette changes as you walk along the promenade and the building looks different from every stretch of the coast. The effect is deliberate and restrained: a slight turn that makes the form feel alive without becoming a gesture.
Glass that holds the sky
The skin is glass, and the glass does what glass does best on a seafront: it reflects. In the pictures the tower carries the amber of a low sun in one view and the pale blue of a clear afternoon in the next. The building does not choose a colour of its own. It takes its colour from its setting, which is a more honest way to be a landmark than painting one on.
A base that opens to the street
At the foot of the tower the design opens to the street edge and to the trees along the promenade. Palms line the walk and the base is drawn back and glazed, so that passers-by see activity inside rather than a wall. This is the part of a tall building that most people actually experience, and it is where the scheme spends its generosity.
Simple form and careful proportion; the building takes its colour from its setting, so it stays current.
Simple form, careful proportion
There is very little in Thuraya Tower that is not form or proportion. The shaft is slender, the twist is slight, the glass is continuous. Without ornament to rely on, the design depends on getting the proportions right and then leaving them alone.
A silhouette that stays current
A simple form and careful proportion mean that the building will not date quickly. Because it takes its colour from its setting, it stays current as the light, the sea and the street around it change. For a tower on a shoreline that will be seen for a long time from far away, that is the right ambition.
This article describes design intention. The images are design visualisations, not photographs of a finished building. See the Disclaimers.