Tour Emergent
“Tour Emergent” is the name of the new tower to be built on the Abidjan Plateau, property ofthe CNPS – Caisse Nationale de Prevoyance Sociale. Today the Plateau is Côte d’Ivoire’s administrative, commercial and financial centre and occupies a prominent position in West Africa. The design of the new tower responds to CNPS’s aspirations of building a unique building with striking architecture capable of becoming Abidjan’s new icon.
The tower has 40 floors, 3 floors below ground and 37 floors above ground which correspond to a height of 160 m, with a total construction area of 39,000 m2. The building houses an underground car parking; a 3,200 m2 commercial gallery distributed on floors 0 and 1; a 22,000 m2 5-star hotel distributed between floor (-1) and floor 30; a 3,600 m2 set of apartments distributed between floor 31 and floor 36.
Regarding the organization of the hotel program, which is the most complex, the central issue was the decision to place the Reception on Floor 3 and not on Floor 0. Limited in terms of hotel area on the ground floor to accommodate a five-star social area and in view of the local scenario, the project has evolved from a traditional street-level reception and bar solution to a solution that protects itself from that environment and is a distinguishing factor.
The main entrance strategically occupies the corner of the building, which ensures a prime position regarding the surrounding streets. Access is made through a large covered area that allows the parking of vehicles. From there, we reach the lobby of appropriate scale, where we can access the hotel and the apartments through the elevators; through a large staircase and escalators we can access directly the congress centre located on Floor 2, thus facilitating the operation of the different programs.
Travelling up on the elevators to the hotel, we will reach Floor 3 where the reception is located. This floor has 1,350 m2 of construction area and 600 m2 of exterior area, allowing us to organize all the reception space, back office, living areas and bar with the scale required by a hotel of this category. All these areas open to the exterior where the swimming pool and several covered esplanade areas are located.
In addition to this direct contact with the exterior, 17 m above the street, you can enjoy a fantastic view of the entire city, with atranquillity that the ground floor would never allow. From the Reception Floor we can directly access the Congress Centre, by descending one floor through an exclusive staircase for this purpose. Another staircase allows us to go up to the dining room and fitness centre / spa located on Floor 4. Once again, all spaces favour the visual relation over the city and the direct contact with exterior spaces.
The geometry of the building and the larger floor plans of the hotel’s first floors made it possible to open large voids that visually relate this big lobby to the congress centre and the upper floors, providing the whole an impressive scale and spatial dynamics.
The 264 rooms are distributed in two sets – from Floor 5 to Floor 19 all the plans will be different and the number of rooms per floor will decrease due to the rotation of the building; from Floor 20 to Floor 29 the form stabilizes and the plans will all be the same. The top floor of the Hotel houses the panoramic restaurant / bar and the remaining six floors are for the apartments.
