The Liwa Tower or Al Nasser Headquarters forms VAA.ONL's latest milestone in corporate office design in the United Arab Emirates. The brief was as simple as it was clear, to create the maximum allowed GFA within the pre-defined urban envelop and a fixed budget. These contextual constraints form a challenge in maximising the required office space and creating a characteristic architectural appearance within the strict limitations of the client’s budget.
By using a state of the art design process VAA.ONL was able to create an architectural freedom of expression that integrates architecture, structure and decoration into one coherent design attitude. Unlike many new office buildings, the Liwa Tower eschews a glass curtain wall and instead presents an opaque exterior with a thousand customised windows, that provide daylight and stunning views over the city for the office workers, while keeping cooling loads at a minimum. The orange hue of the exterior neatly matches the desert colour palette and allows the building to stand out from its glassy neighbours. The elegantly shaped curvature of the tower gives it a different expression from every angle you look at the building. The structural logic is expressed in the architecture and becomes a feature in the interior. The decorative patterns of the façade form the architectural translation of the base surfaces of the volume. This integrated design approach establishes a real fusion between efficiency and architectural elegance.
Short bio Kas Oosterhuis
Professor Kas Oosterhuis is a visionary and an experienced practising architect, leading the innovation studio VAA.ONL and his Hyperbody Research Group at the TU Delft. Buildings are considered complex adaptive systems, both in terms of geometry and behaviour in time. The main focus of the current research is on robotic building in all phases of the design to production and the design to operation process. Projects like the A2 COCKPIT building in Utrecht, the WHALE mixed use cultural centre in Budapest and the LIWA tower in Abu Dhabi are living proof of the lean design-to-production approach, in terms of precision, assembly time, sustainability, costs, and architectural signature. In his book “Towards a New Kind of Building, a Designers Guide to Nonstandard Architecture” [NAi Publishers 2011] Oosterhuis reveals the fundaments of his personal design universe, which embraces the paradigm shift from standard to nonstandard architecture and from static to dynamic buildings as the initial condition. Oosterhuis delivered his TEDx lecture in 2012. In 2013 Oosterhuis was appointed editor-in-chief of the new scientific journal Next Generation Building.
/20
LIWA Tower context
LIWA Tower - context
LIWA Tower - context
LIWA Tower - facade perspective
LIWA Tower - facade perspective
LIWA Tower - facade perspective
LIWA Tower - facade perspective
LIWA Tower - night
LIWA Tower - top
LIWA Tower - under construction
LIWA Tower - bird's view render
LIWA Tower - isometric view
LIWA Tower - drawing section B
LIWA Tower - drawing ground floor
LIWA Tower - drawing level 2
LIWA Tower - drawing level 13
LIWA Tower - drawing level 18
LIWA Tower - interface with floor shaping parameters
ADNEC Capital Center district, Abu Dhabi
Northcroft Middle East, Abu Dhabi, UAE (Project & Development manager) Al Nasser Investments, Abu Dhabi, UAE (Client)
06/2014
21604 m2
prof. Kas Oosterhuis MSc, Ilona Lénárd, Gijs Joosen MSc
Marthijn Pool, Ronald Brandsma, Petr Vokal, Jan Gasparik, Tim McGinley
Al Rostamani Pegel
Architectural Consulting Group LLC (structural and MEP engineer), Bodycote plc (fire)
VAA.ONL
Curriculum
Professor Kas Oosterhuis is a visionary and an experienced practising architect, leading the innovation studio VAA.ONL and his Hyperbody Research Group at the TU Delft. Buildings are considered complex adaptive systems, both in terms of geometry and behaviour in time. The main focus of the current research is on robotic building in all phases of the design to production and the design to operation process. Projects like the A2 COCKPIT building in Utrecht, the WHALE mixed use cultural centre in Budapest and the LIWA tower in Abu Dhabi are living proof of the lean design-to-production approach, in terms of precision, assembly time, sustainability, costs, and architectural signature.
Oosterhuis delivered his TEDx lecture in 2012. In 2013 Oosterhuis was appointed editor-in-chief of the new scientific journal Next Generation Building.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
