The Odeon marks the return of tower construction in the Principality of Monaco. The two-tower high-rise is designed to accommodate retail, business, and residential space. It features two wings, with 44 and 49 floors respectively, resting on a shared foundation slab above 10 parking levels. At 170 metres, it is currently the tallest tower on the Rock of Monaco. The tower is famous for its high-end finishing touches and, at launch, was home to the world’s most expensive apartment, a 3,300-m² penthouse.
In the 1980s, Prince Rainier III decided to put an end to high-rise construction in Monaco. But given the Principality’s shortage of space, Albert II decided in 2009 to promote vertical development. The Odeon Tower is certainly a step in that direction.
Given the Principality’s 2-km² footprint, building in Monaco is no mean feat. The building’s steep hillside location called for extensive civil engineering solutions and painstaking attention to foundations.
Thanks to our partners’ help, we were able to develop retaining structures and foundation works.
In response to the building’s pharaonic scale and the site’s geological characteristics, we needed to build temporary retaining structures – 40 metres high on the hillside. Subsequently, the retaining structures were replaced by a diaphragm wall 82 centimetres thick and about 55 metres deep, which became the car park’s perimeter wall.
The tower’s foundations consisted of barrettes 100 centimetres thick and over 50 metres deep. Building the diaphragm wall-barrette complex required 25,000 m³ of excavation.
To meet the tight schedule requirements, on-site teams opted for the top-and-down construction method. This meant that a transfer slab had to be built between the infrastructure and the superstructure to enable concurrent work on the basement levels and the aboveground structure.
Foundations were a key issue for this skyscraper whose base on the ground – sloping hillside ground – is only 3,000 m².
This building confirms Monaco’s ability to make a bold statement in the fields of luxury and technology.
Beyond its status as a high-end building, the tower pioneered the use of new technologies. All private apartments are equipped with lifestyle-enhancing home automation, enabling users to manage air-conditioning, home-security, and other systems through touch-screen technology.
This new skyscraper breathes new life into the Rock of Monaco in terms of housing and brings a new development perspective to the Principality, whereby horizontal planning (new offshore construction) is supplanted by vertical construction.
Client
Groupe Marzocco
Project management
Alexandre Giraldi
Implementation dates
November 2009 to September 2015
Earthworks
150,000 m3
Concrete
80,000 m²
Steel
10,000 tonnes
