Hotel du Lac (Tunis)

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Hotel du Lac in Tunis

The Hôtel du Lac in Tunis is a 1970-73 to plans by the Italian architect Raffaele Contigiani built hotel building close to the Lake of Tunis was built. The hotel, commissioned by Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba , is now owned by the Libyan company Lafico , which is planning to demolish it. The building is currently empty.

architecture

The ten-storey building is unique with his, striking architecture and the concrete construction method from the style forth a representative of Brutalism . As each floor protrudes at both ends by a room width over the one below, the building is about 90 meters above, almost twice as long as on its foundation . The resulting sloping building flanks are reminiscent of the wings or the hull of a ship with the freely visible, outward-facing stairwell shafts angled at 45 °.

history

Lucasfilm's “Sandcrawler” building in Singapore

At the time, the building was considered a symbol of the arrival of modernity in Arab Tunisia and became one of the tourist landmarks of Tunis.

The shape of the building is said to have served as inspiration for the design of the Sandcrawler , a giant desert sand caterpillar from the first Star Wars feature film Episode IV - A New Hope by George Lucas . The shape can later be found in the architecture of the company building built by Lucasfilm in Singapore ( ) in 2013 . World icon

In 2013 it became known that its owner Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company (LAFICO) was planning to demolish the hotel building and build a new luxury hotel in its place.

  • Hôtel du Lac from the square of January 14th

  • Rear view of the Lucasfilm building

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b SOS brutalism. An international inventory . Park Books, Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-03860-074-9 , pp. 105 .
  2. ↑ a b c Save the Hôtel du Lac! ( Memento of the original from October 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: Magazine de L'architecture du Maghreb @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / archi-mag.com
  3. ↑ Lucasfilm's Sandcrawler Building The Superslice

Coordinates: 36 ° 48 '6.7 "  N , 10 ° 11' 14.3"  E