Ten upcoming Zaha Hadid Architects skyscrapers
The choice of the word “civic” being operative to the project’s role as a soul-searching device, where the question becomes what the civic psyche of the islands is today. Is it shopping and prohibitively priced villas in the sky? It may well be, and Mercury Tower is not to blame for that.
But the case might also be, as with many fast-developing urban contexts, that public or civic aspiration exists at odds with the country’s commercial agenda and/or political schema. We may feel that the tower represents urban priorities that are askew with the identity of its place – much like the twist at its 10th floor, whose sinuous appearance is hardly congruous with the historic or contemporary vernacular of the islands.
The recent history around the site is thorny, with a high-rise masterplan having been proposed and slammed by public opinion in 2016, and with a series of towers either existing or earmarked in its orbit. It could reasonably be argued that Mercury Tower has been built in exactly the right place – the murky core of Malta’s nightlife scene, where chaotic development and an almost total forgoing of strategic urban planning has been left to somehow endure.
Should the influence of singular buildings finally be forcefully abated?
The tower sits within what could be deemed a hotbed of Malta’s design failings. But with such looming visual dominance on an island of Malta’s size (316 square kilometres), the building’s impact breaches past Paceville’s red line. Its uncompromising mass can be seen from far and wide, and in a similar spirit to the way it meets the conserved 1903 Mercury House at its base, feels sudden and alien.
Throw in a national identity that is coloured by centuries of foreign dominion, consistent political scandal with perceived complicity of the built environment, and the lack of synchronicity that a tower of this heft holds with global carbon concerns, and the question we are left asking is quite binary: is Mercury Tower a saviour or symptom of Malta’s urban fate?
And on a more globally relevant basis: should the influence of singular buildings finally be forcefully abated, resisting symbolising the wholesale messaging of what places are, or what certain people or powers want them to be?
Ann Dingli is a Maltese architecture and design writer based in London.
The photo is by Susannah Farrugia.
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Publish date : 2024-10-30 02:29:00
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