Al Tijaria Tower

Al Tijaria Tower (برج التجارية) is a skyscraper in Sharq, Kuwait. The tower is characterized by a two degree wrap between one floor and the other.

Profile
The tower is located across from the Al Shaheed Park, the building area is 4293.6 sqm.

The form of Al Tijaria Tower (also known as the Kuwait Trade Center) is inspired by a spiral or helix. The body of the tower “twists” by 80 degrees as it climbs from the ground level to the top-most occupied floor. The tower plate is organized with a circular-shaped core located in the center of the floor. A concentric ring of structural columns allows for variation in slab edge location while keeping columns vertically aligned from floor to floor. This slab edge adjustment creates a twisted exterior massing for the tower. The tower features internal, vertically stacked, six-story-high atrium gardens rising through the height of the tower. The stacked atrium gardens spin around the center of the plate, creating a dynamic twisted space rising through the tower.

The exterior cladding design of the tower is a smooth aluminum and glass unitized curtain wall system. Materials include insulated blue-tinted vision and spandrel glass with selected use of silver aluminum panels. Glazing the atrium is insulated “clear” low-E glass (with custom ceramic frit pattern to control solar heat gain) supported by a stainless steel point-fixation system. Contrasting the tower, the podium is clad in a combination of natural stone and pre-cast concrete.

The Tower is composed of a five-story podium shopping mall, with an open-to-sky garden terrace on the podium roof, and an office tower rising above. The structural system of the shopping mall is a waffle slab with columns located on a 9 x 9 m grid. Office floors are reinforced concrete slabs supported on structural steel beams. The floor plates rotate 2.0 degrees clockwise as they rise. Horizontal stability was provided using a number of strong core walls together with a 21 m diameter core wall in the tower area. The twelve equally-spaced tower columns are reinforced concrete, or composite with steel built up sections.