The Mohammed VI Tower (Arabic: برج محمد السادس) is a 55-story, 250-metre (820ft) skyscraper in the city of Salé, bordering Rabat, the capital of Morocco. It is the tallest building in Morocco and the third tallest in Africa. It is a project by the Moroccan businessman Othman Benjelloun and led by the company O'Tower.[2]
It is a project launched by billionaire Othman Benjelloun, chief executive officer of Bank of Africa.
In 2013, the Bank of Africa group (formerly BMCE group) signed an agreement with the Anfa urbanization and development agency (AUDA) to construct the tower in the new Anfa business district.
In 2014, Benjelloun presented the model of the BMCE tower:
“A tower that I wanted represented by a rocket. This rocket will carry thousands of executive members and employees of the BMCE group to space. This Rocket will be ready for take-off from a Launch Pad, also represented in this project."[3]
Its objective was to build a rocket-shaped tower in Casablanca that will house the new headquarters of the banking group.[4] Benjelloun claims that the rocket shape would be inspired from his experience in the United States:
“This particular shape is inspired by my visit to the NASA space agency, at Cape Canaveral in Florida in the USA, where I was invited to participate in a spaceflight simulation, in 1969, in company of the astronaut Pete Conrad, prior to the launch of the actual flight of Apollo 12 to the moon in November of the same year."[5]
Originally planned for Casablanca Finance City, the initial plan for the bank's headquarters was slated to be 135 metres (443ft) high and completed in 2016. Benjelloun then decided to raise the projects height to 190 metres (623ft).[citation needed]
In March 2016, 10 additional floors were added to the plan and it was announced that the tower would instead be built in the city of Salé. The building, now renamed the Mohammed VI Tower, would house a mix of components for hotel use, offices, residential and retail. The project began on 9 March 2016, when King Mohammed VI laid the first stone of the new skyscraper, at a cost of 357 million euros (or US$422 million).[6]
The architects of the tower are Spanish architect Rafael de la Hoz and Moroccan architect Hakim Benjelloun.
Construction started in July 2017. The tower is designed to be visible from a distance of 50 kilometres (31mi) all around.[9] Its budget is 3.5 billion MAD.[10] With 55 floors, it will include a luxury hotel, offices, high-end apartments and an observatory located at the top of the tower. The south facade of the tower houses photovoltaic panels.[11]
