Three torch-shaped towers rising above Baku's Highland Park have become the defining symbol of post-Soviet Azerbaijan's ambitions — their LED-clad facades programmed to simulate cascading flames visible across the Caspian at night. Designed by HOK and completed in 2012, the Flame Towers complex distributes hotel, residential, and office functions across its trio of curved glass forms, with the Fairmont Baku claiming the tallest of the three, its 318 rooms and suites stacked through floors whose floor-to-ceiling glazing frames panoramic views down to the Azerbaijani capital's neoclassical boulevard and the grey expanse of the Caspian beyond. The interiors strike a balance between the international confidence of Fairmont's house register and deliberate local gesture — rooms finished in warm taupe and champagne tones, deep-buttoned headboards rising to near-ceiling height in the upper suites, alongside darker, more businesslike guest floors with cove-lit coffered ceilings and textured wall panels in bronze and linen. The restaurant level deploys stacked horizontal screen dividers in dark metal, the repetitive geometry suggesting the fire motif abstracted into furniture rather than architecture, while an overhead installation of clustered organic forms adds texture to the ceiling plane. On the outdoor pool terrace, set high within the tower's shoulder and lined with terracotta-red sun loungers, a minaret from the Old City rises in the middle distance — the ancient walled city of Icherisheher, a UNESCO World Heritage site, framed almost theatrically against the Caspian sky.

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