The Adsequor: A Leaning Tower in Izmir That Harvests Rain and Spares the Meles Delta

Most towers lean on the ground beneath them; The Adsequor leans so the ground can breathe. Set where the historic Meles Stream empties into the Meles Delta on the seashore of Izmir, the project starts from a pointed question: can a high-rise give something back to the ecosystem it occupies, rather than drain it? Its answer is a tower tilted deliberately toward the northeast, a single gesture that does three jobs at once. It collects water, spreads structural load and organises the building's programme.

Designed by Naz Kaplan and recognised with a People's Choice Award in Commercial '20, the proposal responds to a wetland that rapid urbanisation and unchecked high-rise growth have steadily pushed aside. Kaplan does not treat the delta as a backdrop for views. The tower is framed as a systemic intervention, an environmental mediator between city and marsh, and that ambition shapes everything from its foundations to its hotel rooms.

A Ground Plane Given Back to the Wetland

The opening image keeps the tower out of frame. Long ribbed roof blades fan out over a stepped lawn and a still pond, with people reading and birds crossing the sky. It is a telling choice. Before showing height, Kaplan shows the ground the project hopes to protect, and the blades read as a structural language that will reappear, scaled up, in the tower's skin.

That sequencing matters because the site is the argument. The Meles Delta was once a working ecological asset and is now under pressure from the very building type Kaplan is proposing. Leading with water, grass and wildlife sets the terms: the tower has to justify itself against this landscape, not dominate it.

Tilting Northeast to Catch Rain and Spread the Load

Seen against a hazy skyline at dusk, the tower's inclination is unmistakable, wrapped in curved steel ribs and rings that trace its lean. The tilt is the project's central performance device. By angling the mass toward the northeast, Kaplan enlarges the surface exposed to rainfall, turning the envelope into a vertical water-harvesting device in a city where water management is becoming increasingly urgent. The same geometry redistributes loads across a broader footprint, easing pressure on soft wetland soil that a conventional upright tower would bear down on hard.

The second rendering shifts to the human scale: a spherical glass cabin on a steel frame, passengers standing as it looks out over a bay and a green headland in afternoon sun. Whatever its precise role in the circulation, the image makes clear that the building is meant to be experienced in motion and in relation to the water, with the landscape treated as the thing worth arriving at.

Sun on One Face, the Delta on the Other

The section reveals how cleanly the lean sorts the programme. Six numbered floors and colour-coded zones, paired with exploded plans, show a tower split by orientation. The southwest elevation holds the functional core, with technical spaces and energy systems placed where solar exposure is greatest to support passive energy generation and cut operational demand. The northeast side opens toward the wetland, and that is where the hotel rooms sit, each angled to take in expansive views of the delta.

There is a quiet intelligence in how the form serves both faces. The shadow cast by the leaning structure falls across the northeast, tempering heat on the guest side and producing spaces whose character shifts through the day. Rather than applying shading as an add-on, Kaplan lets the building shade itself.

An Exoskeleton Held in Tension

The final board gathers construction diagrams, a parametric definition and interior renderings of a curved lobby and room levels. Together they explain how a leaning tower stands up on unstable ground. The structure works as an integrated exoskeleton supported by tensile cable networks: the outer frame defines the envelope and reduces the need for internal columns, freeing the floors for flexible layouts, while cables run into the ground and distribute forces across the wetland in a controlled way that limits disturbance to the substrata.

The result is a balance between compression in the core and tension along the exterior, an equilibrium that lets the sculptural form hold steady against wind and seismic forces. Circulation is expressed rather than hidden, with ramps, escalators and vertical cores threading through the frame. The curved lobby in the renderings shows what that openness offers inside, where structure and movement become part of the room instead of being tucked behind walls.

Why This Project Matters

The Adsequor is persuasive because its signature move is not decorative. The lean is the rain catcher, the load spreader, the shading device and the organiser of programme, all in one. Too many sustainable towers stack green features onto a standard extrusion; Kaplan instead lets a single geometric decision carry the environmental brief, which makes the logic legible and harder to dismiss as greenwashing.

It also takes a clear position on a real place. The Meles Delta is a site where high-rise development has caused harm, and the project argues that the typology itself can be retuned to tread lightly, through tension cables instead of heavy mass and orientation instead of mechanical fixes. As a People's Choice recognition, it suggests an audience ready for towers that answer to the ground they stand on.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Naz Kaplan

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Project credits: The Adsequor by Naz Kaplan Commercial '20 (uni.xyz).