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Morpheus wins CTBUH Award

Winner of three Awards for Excellence from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) including Best Tall Building 100-199 meters; Innovation; Fire & Risk Engineering, the Morpheus hotel, Macau has been named overall winner of the Fire & Risk Engineering category.

Founded in 1969, the non-profit CTBUH is the world’s leading resource focussing on the inception, design, construction, and operation of tall buildings and future cities.

With Fire & Risk Engineering by Arup, Morpheus combines dramatic public spaces and generous guest rooms with innovative engineering and formal cohesion.

ZHA designed the Morpheus as a vertical extrusion of site’s existing abandoned foundations; using this rectangular footprint to define a 40-storey building of two internal vertical circulation cores connected at podium and roof levels where the many guest amenities were required. Three horizontal vortices generate the voids through the atrium and define the hotel’s spectacular interior public spaces. In-between these voids, a series of bridges create unique spaces for the restaurants, bars and guest lounges.

Working with Buro Happold Engineering, ZHA designed the building’s structure to optimise the hotel’s interiors. The world’s first free-form high-rise exoskeleton, its rich pattern of structural members at lower levels progresses upwards to a less dense grid of lighter members at its summit.

Viviana Muscettola, ZHA's project director said, "The expertise of all members of the Morpheus team has created new possibilities for architecture. The comprehensive parametric model combined all of the hotel's aesthetic, structural and fabrication requirements and will radically change how our built environment is planned and constructed.”

Lawrence Ho, chairman and CEO of Melco Resorts explained, “From the very beginning, we shared ZHA’s vision and determination to push boundaries. Morpheus offers a journey of the imagination. From the curved exterior to the dramatic interior spaces, it pleases the eye and excites the senses: a contemporary masterpiece to be enjoyed by many generations to come.”

CTBUH Awards 2019 winners

Photograph by Ivan Dupont