The Adsequor: A Leaning Tower That Works as a Living Machine for İzmir's Meles Delta

Most towers treat the ground as a parcel to be built on, then leave the residue for landscape. The Adsequor reverses that logic. It is a high-rise hotel that also wants to be a water system, an energy producer, a public destination and a tool for restoring a damaged wetland. The tower leans, its arms reach into the terrain, and the whole structure reads less like an object placed on a site and more like an instrument tuned to it.

The project is a thesis by Naz Kaplan, set at the Meles Delta in İzmir, Turkey, where the historic Meles River meets a vulnerable wetland surrounded by urban infrastructure, industrial development and transportation routes. Kaplan identifies the deterioration of the river and its adjoining wetland as the central problem of the site, and makes environmental recovery part of the brief itself. Hospitality, recreation, exhibitions, workshops, public space and landscape regeneration are stacked into a single vertical system that Kaplan frames as a living machine.

Public Interiors That Pull the City Up Into the Tower

The atrium sets the tone for how the building intends to be used. A long staircase climbs past sweeping white ribbed ceilings, and below it a planted circular bench gathers visitors. The ribs inside echo the structural members outside, so the interior shares the same logic as the exterior structure. The planting at the base is a small gesture, but it signals that the wetland agenda continues inside the building.

The second image shifts to a curved glass shell holding a grand piano and café tables against a dusk sky. This is where the socio-cultural strategy becomes tangible. Kaplan's brief calls for exhibition spaces, recreational programmes, circulation experiences and a rooftop destination, all intended to make the skyscraper accessible beyond its hotel guests. A tower that lets the public in is far easier to defend on a sensitive site than one that keeps them out.

A Tower That Meets the Ground Through Its Arms

At ground level, banded arms sweep over a park while a couple sits in tree shade beside a reflecting pool. The image captures the project's most important move: the tower does not stop at its footprint. Sweeping structural members, tensile systems, terraces and pedestrian connections carry the architecture outward until building, infrastructure and landscape become hard to separate. Kaplan describes the design as moving between these three scales, and here the transition happens at the scale of someone sitting in the shade.

Landscape Terraces Made Possible by Going Vertical

From above, ribbed tubular arms cross green landscape terraces, their long shadows falling across the lawn. The aerial view makes the economic argument clear. By concentrating numerous functions into a dense vertical development, the proposal keeps more of the surrounding ground free for landscape and environmental restoration. The terraces spread outward around the structure, green areas wrap the tower, and routes tie the project back into the existing urban fabric and the wider transport network.

This is the conceptual heart of the scheme: turning a damaged area into a preservation and regeneration zone. Density is used here to free up ground for the wetland, the opposite of how it usually shows up in high-rise development.

The Leaning Profile as Water and Energy Infrastructure

Looking up, the tower twists and bends from its expansive structural base, its ribbed fins catching the sky. A circular callout isolates the water collection detail, a reminder that the dramatic form has a job to do. The environmental strategy includes rainwater collection, wastewater management, landscape-based treatment systems, photovoltaic surfaces and a structural approach meant to respond to the wetland condition. The expressive geometry is how these systems get gathered and carried down into the landscape.

The leaning tower is the project's most recognisable feature, and it could easily be dismissed as spectacle. What keeps it grounded is that the form doubles as the building's environmental system rather than sitting on top of one.

Why This Project Matters

The Adsequor asks a question that many hospitality towers avoid: what does a large building owe the ecosystem it lands in? Kaplan's answer is to make the tower responsible for collecting, treating and producing resources, while giving back ground and public access. Treating the wetland, the water, the climate and public life as one interconnected system is the right instinct for a delta under pressure.

As a thesis, the project's strength is its refusal to separate image from performance. The sweeping arms, the ribbed fins and the terraces all carry part of the regenerative agenda. Whether such a tower could be built on a fragile wetland is a fair question, but the proposal makes a convincing case that a skyscraper can act as infrastructure and public space at the same time, rather than an isolated object waiting for a sustainability label.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Naz Kaplan

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Project credits: The Adsequor by Naz Kaplan.