Capital Gate, Abu Dhabi.

The Capital Gate building in the desert kingdom's capital, Abu Dhabi, has been certified by Guinness
World Records as the "World's Furthest Leaning Man-made Tower."
The 35-story Abu Dhabi building has an 18-degree slope, compared with four degrees for the freestanding bell tower.


But unlike the tower in Pisa, the Capital Gate building has been deliberately engineered to slant.




STRUCTURE
 
From its foundations right through its pinnacle, Capital Gate is a unique building and among the most technically challenging engineering projects in the world. Some key features stand out amongst others:



It’s gravity-defying 18 degree lean, widely believed to be the most inclined in the world The continuous twist of its form which ensures that the tower looks different from every angle The unique nature of the floor plate, each floor is uniqueThe foundation contains an incredibly dense  mesh of reinforced steel that sits above 490 piles, drilled 30 meters underground to accommodate gravitational, wind and seismic pressures.

The core of the building is a pre-cambered, ‘slanting’ core that pulls in the opposite direction to the lean.
 It straightens as the building grows, pulled into a vertical position by the change in the centre of gravity
of the building as concrete was poured onto subsequent floors.

The floor plates up to the 12th level are stacked vertically over one another. Between levels 12th and 29th the floor  plates stagger over each other, in relation to the lean and twist of the shell, by between 800 to 1400mm and then back to 900mm. Between the 29th storey and the top storey, the range is between 900 and 300mm in relation to the line of the façade.

Design


Nothing is standard about Capital Gate. Each room is different. Each pane of glass is different and every angle is different. It was designed to provide no symmetry so it inspires those within and outside the tower. Capital Gate was designed to be the most recognisable icon of the ADNEC/Capital Centre development. Further, it was designed to blend seamlessly with the National Day Grandstand, breathing new life into this historic  landmark for the UAE.

Soccer City Stadium design view

Soccer City  Stadium design view

 

The outside of the stadium is designed to have the appearance of an African pot, the cladding on the outside is a mosaic of fire and earthen colours with a ring of lights running around the bottom of the structure, simulating fire underneath the pot. No spectator will be more than 100 metres (330 ft) from the action and there are no restricted views in the stadium.

Designed by Boogertaman + Partners as the center of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the Soccer City Stadium utilizing concrete products extensively, both as complex structural elements as well as for aesthetic finishes. And the project won the “Concrete in Architecture award” for the innovative culturally identifiable form of the calabash (African pot) which stimulates a truly African image to the rest of the world.

The design of the stadium was selected from a series of concept designs ranging from acknowledgement of Jo’burg’s disappearing mine dumps; the kgotla (defined by the tree) of the African city state; the African map as a horizontal representation, which included the roof as a desert
 plane supported on tropical trees set within the mineral wealth of Southern Africa; to a representation of the protea, our national flower.

Soccer City fast facts
80 000m³ of concrete used;
9 000 tons of reinforcing steel used;
8 000 tons of structural steel used;
120 000m³ of soil;
1 350 piles driven into the bedrock;
Some piles 1,5m in diameter, 33m into bedrock;
Roof supported by 12 40m-high concrete shafts and 16 circular columns 1m in diameter;
Over 2 600 construction people on site;
88 851 seats;
11 million bricks used.

Architect Bob van Bebber is very proud of Soccer City

The huge concrete columns inside Soccer City make a bold statement

Soccer City is undergoing a revamp

Work stopped at 3pm to celebrate the construction teams' safety record

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modern building.... p i

This building is designed by the prestigious architect from Barcelona Enric Miralles and by Benedetta Tagliabue, who won the call for ideas for the Gas Natural Group's new head office. The proposal by the EMBT studio is characterised by a spectacular 20-storey glass tower which, given its sinuous, modern architecture has already become a landmark on the skyline of Barcelona.

A horizontal building projects out of the tower between the 5th and 10th storeys, lending the building a strong personality and which from an architectural point of view enables the skyscraper to integrate into the entire complex and the surrounding city.

Design

Soon