Located in Cairo, Egypt, in the New Administrative Capital, the Iconic Tower has become the tallest building in Africa. It has an impressive height of 400 meters and 77 floors covering an area of 265,000 m2 in total. In addition, the structure has also become the first supertall skyscraper on the continent as well. However, obviously, the building has another primary purpose. The Iconic Tower is only a part of a much bigger project which is to decrease the workload of the capital, Cairo.
Nearly a fifth of Egypt’s population lives in the capital and the city suffers from overcrowding. With this new project, Egypt is attempting to build a new administrative capital. In a short time, all of the Egyptian government and its entities will have moved to the new capital.
The New Administrative Capital has yet to receive its proper name. However, the Iconic Tower has already become the most famous part of the new capital which is nearly the size of Singapore.
While the structure is impressive as it is, the designers faced a huge problem in the process of its construction. This was a problem that could even stop the Iconic Tower from ever existing in the first place.
Since the New Administrative Capital is located in a desert, the architects of the project realized that the soft sand had the chance to swallow a building this tall. Firstly, they had to make sure that this would not happen.
In order to make the building as safe as possible, the architects first built a concrete foundation of nearly 19 square kilometers. Moreover, this foundation became one of its kind in Africa and the Middle East too.
While it is a modern structure by all means, the Iconic Tower also carries traces of the architecture of Ancient Egypt. The tower’s shape resembles an obelisk and its façade looks like a lotus flower, both of which represented the authority of the pharaohs, and symbols of Egyptian civilization.
