White Walls

For Pritzker Prize–winning architect Jean Nouvel, Hon. FAIA, there’s neither a typical nor an ordinary project. From the luminous double-walled, glass-and-concrete Torre Agbar in Barcelona to the subtly battered Hôtel de Police in Charleroi, Belgium, he has consistently brought surprising formal inventions to the high-rise genre. Paris-based Ateliers Jean Nouvel’s latest exploration in the type is no less memorable: White Walls is a 220-foot-tall, white-painted concrete structure in Nicosia, Cyprus. The 107,639-square-foot trapezoidal tower, which includes two floors of retail, six floors of offices, and 10 floors of apartments, cuts a memorable figure on the skyline with pixelated cut-outs on the east and west façades that offer glimpses of gardens within.

The structure’s south façade is angular and hard-edged, in contrast to the softer, rounded balconies, rendered in white-painted concrete, of the north façade. Vegetation bursts from each balcony, covering roughly 80 percent of the south face and providing substantial shade during the summer while still allowing sun to penetrate to the interior during winter months. Nouvel subverts the standard structural logic of the tall building by constructing concrete piers at the east and west ends—which contain standard core elements such as stairs and elevator, and more private programmatic functions such as meeting rooms and bedrooms. These piers are joined by column-free spans that serve as open offices in the lower floors and open-plan living areas in the residences above. The architect plays with the nature of a concrete wall though the varied perforations, which make the vertical surface appear in some instances to be a simple screen, at other times a protective shell. The larger openings are filled with verdant gardens that overflow their containers and sprout lush green foliage from the building’s envelope.

Both apartments and offices feature substantial outdoor loggias that allow all building occupants to enjoy Nicosia’s temperate climate. Voids and windows in the concrete walls are designed to a module of 0.4 meters—almost 16 inches—square. This dimension gave the architects freedom to pattern the building’s east and west façades with various scales of these apertures, making it nearly impossible to differentiate between single- and double-height spaces from outside. The perforations blur—in ever so digital a manner—any meaningful sense of scale among the building’s 18 floors. The balconies to the north and south ensure that every room, even the apartment kitchens, has an outdoor connection. A duplex apartment caps the tower; its central courtyard layout is based on Cyprus’ traditional architecture, with sloped louvers providing shade while retaining views to the sky. In Nicosia, Nouvel integrates tower and landscape while employing the white walls of the island’s vernacular, rendered larger, and in formally inventive and surprising ways.

Project Credits
Project: White Walls (Tower 25), Nicosia, Cyprus
Client: Nice Day Developments
Design Architect: Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Paris . Jean Nouvel, Hon. FAIA (founder); Emmanuel Blamont (adviser to Jean Nouvel); Philippe Papy, Elisabeth Kather (project leaders); Sony Devabhaktuni, Nobuo Yoshida (architects)
Local Collaborating Architect: Takis Sophocleous Architects, Nicosia . Anastasia Koumoulidou, Demetris Sophocleous
Structural Engineer: KAL Engineering
M/E/P/FP Engineer: Mitsides Samouhl & Partners
Quantity Surveyor: Nicolaou & Konnides
Size: 10,000 square meters (107,639 square feet)
Cost: €11.5 million ($12.9 million)

This article appeared in ARCHITECT's October 2016 issue.