A Rocket Shaped Building Rises in Morocco

Some buildings have a design brief, this one started as a memory.

Way back in 1969, a young Moroccan businessman stood at a NASA facility and watched a Saturn V being prepared for launch.

He never forgot it. Decades later, that moment became the Mohammed VI Tower — 250 meters of quietly rocket-shaped ambition rising from the banks of the Bou Regreg river, which is now the tallest building in Morocco and the third tallest on the African continent.

Architects Rafael de la Hoz and Hakim Benjelloun designed the 55-story tower to sit between Rabat and the historic city of Salé, and the form earns its metaphor. It doesn’t wave at rocketry from a distance.

The building tapers deliberately upward from a broad podium base, grounded and coiled at once. Its north facade looks out toward the Bou Regreg and the ancient Hassan Tower minaret, a 12th-century landmark that has watched this city for 800 years. The conversation between the two feels less like contrast and more like continuity. 

The south face is a photovoltaic double skin: solar-generating, thermally protective, doing real work while also looking like a building that means business.

The north face is glazed with decorative metal fins. Two entirely different facades, one coherent object. That tension is where the design lives. 

Inside, Pierre-Yves Rochon drew on white marble, bronze, brushed brass, Cordoba leather, zellige tiles, and wood panelling, a material language that roots the building in its place without making a fuss about it.

The mix of uses runs from a Waldorf Astoria hotel and offices to residences, a conference hall, restaurants, and a panoramic observatory at the summit where, on a clear day, the ramparts and kasbahs of both cities spread out below. 

Eight years of construction and roughly $700 million later, the building is open. The Saturn V that inspired it flew to the moon. This one stays put — which, given the view, seems like enough. 

Via New Atlas