Masters Tower Cebu is a 31-story hotel and office tower that will establish a destination within Cebu Business Park and bolster Cebu’s status as an increasingly international city. It will be the tallest tower in the district, with over 7,000 square meters of Class A office space and the first 5-star hotel in Cebu, Sofitel Cebu City.

SOM collaborated with local designers, consultants, and cultural specialists to create a contemporary design that draws on Cebu’s rich heritage. The tower’s exterior evokes the city’s tradition of wood craftsmanship. The delicate, shingled facade is composed of high-performance glass and aluminum forms that are painted to resemble a light, textured wood. Overlapping bands of slatted sun screens surround the exterior and pinch inward to reveal repeating levels of green space at each of the building’s four corners. These lush terraces rise the entire height of the building, providing a connection to nature from the interior spaces while supplying the hotel’s restaurants with a fresh food source. Distinctive design elements within the hotel and office spaces add a layer of warmth and tactility and showcase local artistry. The hotel’s drop-off and office lobby contain three-dimensional, woven feature walls that are composed of locally sourced wood and designed by Cebuano craftspeople. The Philippines contains two-thirds of the world’s biodiversity and ranks fifth worldwide in its number of plant species, and an artist-designed green wall in the office lobby puts this native ecology on display.

This palette of natural colors and materials continues into the office spaces. The tower’s cross-shaped floor plate allows for ample window area, giving each tenant a corner window with expansive views. Situated above the offices, and accessed from a private hotel shuttle lobby at the base of the building, is the hotel’s Sky Lobby. This grand, triple-height space contains hotel check-in, dining, and a bar, and features a 360-degree view of the ocean and mountains that surround Cebu. An atrium composed of horizontal wooden ribs extends to the tower’s roof, flooding the space with light and a warm materiality—a nod to Cebu’s shipbuilding tradition. Interior architecture firm Aston Design blends traditional Cebuano and French aesthetics in their design of the hotel interiors. The Sofitel extends to the roof with a bar, restaurant, garden, and pool. The very top of the tower, which features programmable LED lighting, is conceived as a crown for Cebu, known as the “Queen City of the South.”