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With 14 million residents spread across two regions, Istanbul is a major financial and cultural centre for both Europe and the Middle East. As the city's population continues to swell and projections predict that Turkey's biggest urban centre will become Europe's largest by 2020 with 16.4 million people, urban intensification is in full swing along the shores of the Bosphorus. Long dominated by dozens of minarets, the area is now boasting a variety of highrise residential and office buildings. On the eastern edge of the metropolis, developer Varyap is currently building one of the city's future tallest edifices, Metropol Tower Istanbul.
Designed by British architecture firm RMJM, the Metropol Tower is characterized by a curvy glass facade on one side, giving the structure a slender look as it ascends toward its final height of 250 metres and 58 storeys. The mixed-use tower will be part of a vast 500,000-square-metre complex, comprising a total of three skyscrapers. In total, 1,200 apartments will be added to the master-planned district of Ataşehir, which has been designed to eventually welcome more than 80,000 residents within 18,000 highrise buildings.
The Metropol Tower project will stand above a 30,000-square-metre public shopping mall, including a 16-theatre cineplex and a 400-metre open-air promenade lined by exclusive retail on the mall's rooftop. Named the Metropol Catwalk, the shopping complex will be adjacent to office spaces and accessible via nearby highways, easily connecting the 700,000 square metres of newly developed spaces in central Istanbul.
