MC Tower

U in Boxes

Since 2001 Dubai Media City is being developed as a completely new district of the Gulf metropolis, which is - as an agglomeration of a countless number of media and technology firms - the world's first media free-trade zone. The planned MC Tower will spiral more than 46 storeys into the sky, with its antenna reaching a height of 224 metres.

The required building volumes for its hotel and office uses follow a paradigmatic arrangement: floor plans composed of U-shapes reduce circulation zones in size while both maximizing floor area and the tower's window frontage, thus opening up its interior as much as possible towards the nearby ocean vista.

Instead of being a bulky mass - something that economic factors most often require a tower's lower floors to be - the first five levels of the MC Tower, which contain public and semi-public functions, are scattered into discreet volumes of varying sizes. They are offset against each other in order to create a playful and airy atmosphere and to minimize the mass of the tower's plinth. In cooperation with Arch. Dennis Lems.