Sri Lankan towers set to smash record for Colombo's tallest residential building

In the heart of Sri Lanka’s largest city, two adjoining towers are on track to claim the title of Colombo’s tallest residential building.

Altair has all the hallmarks of a world-class luxury development – big-name architect, water views, prime city location, upmarket shopping precinct, lavish penthouses and a rooftop terrace with infinity pool. However, beyond the glitz and glamour, the inspiration for this soaring structure is infinitely more down-to-earth.

Fifty years ago, Moshe Safdie burst onto the international architecture scene with Habitat ’67, a revolutionary community and housing building in the Canadian city of Montreal.

Habitat ’67 was originally conceived as Safdie’s master’s thesis, drawing on the idea of a Mediterranean hill town in which residences are dotted along the slopes, allowing each home to have views.

The young architect, who was born in Haifa (now part of Israel) and moved to Canada with his family as a teenager, was invited to turn this vision into reality as a pavilion for the Expo 67 World’s Fair.

Using roughly 360 prefabricated concrete forms stacked in apparently haphazard – but actually highly considered – formation, the end result was about 150 terraced residences of different sizes and configurations in a wide building reaching up to 12 storeys high.

Safdie’s bold debut was a hit with the public but received mixed reviews from critics. Fans predicted the model could change the face of high-density urban living, incorporating gardens, fresh air, privacy and variety into affordable unit blocks.

In some respects, Habitat ’67 was a victim of its own success. Its cult status pushed its apartment prices out of the “affordable” category. As the American arts writer Carol Strickland observed in an article for the arts and politics publication The Clyde Fitch Report last month, nothing came of Safdie’s utopian plans for replicating the prototype of Habitat ’67’s “humane but dense housing” in New York, Puerto Rico and elsewhere.

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“Was he a one-hit wonder? A cumulative train of issues like pesky building codes and inability to industrialise the process sidelined his dreams,” Strickland wrote.

“I was shattered,” the architect says. “The system was not ready for the big revolution.”

Safdie went on to have a remarkable career, designing buildings including the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore. He was awarded the 2015 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal.

Safdie Architects is now based in Boston. During the past five decades, he has continued to explore concepts presented in his early experimental project, most recently in the luxury mixed-use development in Colombo.

“Altair will set new standards for Colombo, and perhaps even for the region as a whole,” Safdie said early in the construction phase. “At 69 storeys high, it will be considerably taller than any [residential] building in town, but height is not its prime contribution.”

Altair consists of two tower blocks. One is vertical and the other sloped, leaning upon the straight up-and-down building. The dramatic stepping structure of the Canadian project is reflected in the Colombo design, which offers expansive community gardens and shared outdoor spaces in the upper levels of the building and “open-to-the-sky” roof terraces for many residences.

The towers are oriented to the movement of the sun and to maximise airflow in the tropical climate, as well as take advantage of 270-degree views of Beira Lake and the Indian Ocean.

Ground-floor shops will line a lakefront pedestrian promenade. Restaurants on a mezzanine level will overlook the promenade.

Developer South City Projects  says every apartment will have Italian Botticino marble floors. Extensive home automation, Philippe Starck-designed bathroom fittings and double-glazed windows are standard inclusions, and a concierge desk will operate around-the-clock.

Apartments on the market include a three-bedroom offering over 196 square metres on level 58 for $1.097 million and a sixth-floor two-bedroom apartment over 151 metres for $696,000.

Altair is scheduled to open later this year, while Habitat ’67 now has its own postage stamp in Canada to mark its 50th anniversary.