The All Seasons Tent Tower scheme has been proposed as part of the Mercedes-Benz hotel tower competition. The concept reinstates two sustainable terraced cylindrical towers connected in the ground floor embraced with green tent-shape layer. Higher tower will house hotel and business center and the lower tower will accommodate apartments. A public program space including shopping, exhibition and restaurants will link both the towers.
Structural facade skin, which covers the terraces of towers, creates openings and full-structural elements. The facade is a metal mesh that represents landscape element that is rising from the plato. The tower is designed to resist gravity load and the forces resulting from earthquakes, as the city of Yerevan is situated in a region prone to strong earthquakes.
The volumes of two towers are positioned and designed to create dominant and remarkable view from the city. Higher tower occupied mainly by the hotel appears dominant from the Teryan Street. With the Mount Ararat behind the new complex, the design creates a dialog between the object and a shadow.
One of the core ideas of the sustainability concepts is to heat and cool working, living and hotel room areas and use the exhaust air of these offices rooms to condition the atrium, which is used as a big buffer space. The external facades will feature a high performance, adaptable external shading device to reduce solar gains in summer.
The energy supply system is based on natural resources like river water heat exchanger to provide cooling in summer as well as heating – in combination with a heat pump – in winter. Photovoltaic cells integrated in the atrium roof generate power. Another objective of sustainable building approach thrives to minimize energy intensive materials, and use local available, sustainable materials.
