Mirabeau

The counterpoint

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​Hala Wardé

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From departure to arrival, every step along the way, there has always been a port.

There has always been a maritime city, Mediterranean and cosmopolitan: Latakia, Beirut, Marseille.

 

From the Levantine coasts to the Phoenician city, a long thread stretches out, tense and enduring. The thread of trade, of navigation, of conquest through exchange. The legacy of a people and a civilization, this "Mare Nostrum."

 

And at the heart of this journey lies the story of a man and his bold success. Ports and their docks, their anchors…
These are the origins, the land, the roots. The open sea, its vessels, its sailors.

These are the possibilities, horizons, and wagers won.

 

In French, the word bâtiment means both a building and a ship. Two worlds in one word. To build—construire—is both to anchor and to expand. To lay foundations in order to depart once again. It is, at heart, an act of freedom, at least for one who knows that “a free man will always cherish the sea.”

 

More than just a tower, Mirabeau is a building—a structure set within an extraordinary site facing the port, facing the sea, facing the horizon. It stands as a singular object, rooted in this unique place, part of the port and maritime world, yet in dialogue with its neighbors: the CMA CGM tower and La Marseillaise. It is a Counterpoint.

 

The building is composed of interlocking volumes, each defined by simple geometry. Its skin of glass and aluminum shifts with the orientation and the view, each surface echoing its surroundings. Tones of white and silver echo the sea’s foam, its ever-changing shimmer.

 

Each façade is informed by and responds both to technical imperatives (views, orientation, comfort) and to the poetic (the rhythm of the glass, the vibration of the materials). They play with sunlight and shadow, with the wind, the glint of sky and sea.

 

Like a musical fugue, where melodies intertwine, overlap, and respond to each other in harmony.

 

This building breaks free from the notion of a “tower” by opening itself to the world at its base, and via its crowning top. At ground level, its plaza becomes a place of access and encounter, open to the city, inviting collaboration.

 

Its core is imagined as a vertical mast, running through the center of the structure—a gravitational point anchoring its balance and housing all vital systems. Solidly anchored in the ground, it draws energy from the port’s Thalasso thermal energy system, producing heating and cooling—freeing the tower’s head from cumbersome machinery.

 

Its concrete skin bears the imprint of a Lebanese cedar, an homage to the owner's origins and a symbol of a land whose timber once built legendary ships.
 

The peripheral structure allows for flexible, adaptable office spaces infused with innovation, sustainability, and new ways of working.

 

Each floor opens onto a loggia, a breath of fresh air—an unusual luxury in high-rise towers.

 

At 85 meters, Mirabeau reaches its final gesture: a horizontal volume open toward both land and sea. Resting on a belvedere, this uppermost space is encircled by panoramic terraces offering a 360° view over Marseille, its mountains, and its coast.

 

Its silvery skin, like that of a fish, is made of thousands of shimmering scales meticulously calculated and oriented to ventilate the technical components they conceal, while reflecting the sky and drifting clouds, sometimes becoming indistinguishable from their own reflections.

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Like another lighthouse at the port’s edge, this final architectural gesture embodies the spirit of CMA CGM. Forward-thinking and innovative, an urban and maritime beacon, pointing to the open sea, visible from afar.