(1990) Mansoury Tower

client : Obeid Mansoury
typology : Residential
services : Architecture
where : Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Retrospective 1981-1990 video: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CPxSImAji4m/

Despite how low the budget could go in building a residential tower, the architect still creates a sculptured building with a unity of movements, symmetrical sections and feathery color contrasts. This residential tower of 18 floors is built with a concept of maximizing the benefit by building every permitted square meter. It is located on a main busy city street and has retail stores on the ground floor. The entrance to the tower is from the little alley at the back.

Apartments on all floors have wide balconies. They are distributed all around the 4 sides of the square plan; the one that dictates the building to look bulky and a cube stretched into the sky. This limitation challenged the architect at adding a lively movement to the whole block. He started by retaining the limit definition of the site by his usual way of keeping clear the corners and highlighting them with straight lines running from ground level all the way to the top. He also crowned the building by simply ending his vertical lines with arches and curvilinear shapes.

The whole building is symmetrical. The material used is concrete. The architect added some vivacity to in a way of moving lines and color contrast with the natural grey color. He introduced curves on the protruding volumes as well as the red color on balustrades and the lower parts of all the balconies.