Africa's Tallest Tower Was Worth the 40-Year Wait - Yanko Design
Briefly

Africa's Tallest Tower Was Worth the 40-Year Wait - Yanko Design
Tour F is a supertall skyscraper in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, first imagined in the 1970s as a sixth tower to complement existing administrative towers A through E in the Plateau district. The project remained stalled for decades due to bureaucratic and economic uncertainty until construction began in 2021. BESIX Group installed 70 foundation bars and built 62-meter-deep diaphragm wall panels to anchor the structure. Designed by Pierre Fakhoury, the tower avoids a generic glass-box look through a sculptural form with trapezoidal inclined glass planes that tilt inward or outward. The facade extends upward into open air, and the geometry can read as a stylized African mask from certain angles. The tower is symmetrical along its east-west axis, with a rectangular podium at street level for the main entrance and support services.
"Tour F, the supertall skyscraper currently piercing the skyline of Ivory Coast's economic capital, was first imagined in the 1970s as part of a sweeping urban development plan for Abidjan's Plateau district. The idea was straightforward: complement the existing administrative towers - A through E - with a sixth. What wasn't straightforward was actually building it. The project stalled for decades, a vision suspended in bureaucratic and economic uncertainty. Construction finally broke ground in 2021, with BESIX Group drilling 70 foundation bars and 62-meter-deep diaphragm wall panels to anchor the structure."
"Designer: Pierre Fakhoury Designed by Lebanese-Ivorian architect Pierre Fakhoury - the same mind behind the breathtaking Notre-Dame de la Paix Basilica in Yamoussoukro - Tower F is not trying to be a generic glass box. It has something to say. The form is sculptural: a slender volume whose facade is carved into trapezoidal inclined glass planes, each facet tilting inward toward the earth or reaching toward the sky. The top is cleanly truncated, then crowned with a dramatic extension of the glass facade that dissolves into open air."
"What makes the design genuinely compelling is its embedded cultural logic. When viewed from a certain angle, the play of facets reads as a stylized African mask - a nod to West African artistic tradition embedded quietly into a 21st-century supertall. The building is symmetrical along its east-west axis, grounding the sculptural gesture in structural clarity. At street level, a simple rectangular podium houses the main entrance hall and support services, keeping the base honest and approachable despite the tower's im"
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