The 44-week project will see the tower given a major sustainability-focused overhaul, with the top three storeys deconstructed and replaced by six penthouses. The block currently comprises 188 apartments but after the refurbishment that number will drop to 144, although the floor space of the entire building will increase by more than a quarter to 40,000m².
Source:Mir
The scheme is backed by SAM Société Immobilière du Soleil, a company run by Sylvia Ratkowski-Pastor, whose grandfather, Gildo Pastor, built the original tower. From the seventh floor up it was designed, as Vallotton describes, as ‘three separate villas sat side-to-side, repeated 17 times and stacked on top of each other’.
Proposed south façade balcony detail
The block was constructed on the site of the Villa Le Soleil – the former home of French socialite Béatrice-Charlotte de Rothschild and her banker husband Maurice Ephrussi – which was demolished in 1952.
Visualisation of proposed balcony detail
New acoustic measures will also be introduced to replace the sand which currently sits within the concrete floors.
According to the design team, led by ZHA director Stéphane Vallotton, a 2019 feasibility study ‘demonstrated that renovating the existing building was preferable [to demolition and building anew] from both a financial and environmental stance’.
Work is set to start next month on ZHA proposed retrofit of Monaco’s first high-rise building, the 78m-tall Le Schuylkill tower in Monte Carlo. The practice won the £146 million job to overhaul the 61-year-old hillside apartment block in 2016, following an invited competition which also featured Herzog & de Meuron and Daniel Libeskind.
