How do you deliver an ambitious tower on a modest budget?

Al Shoail Plaza Tower

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Located in central Riyadh, Al Shoail Plaza Tower represents a new direction for Absal Group’s commercial development. Situated on a restricted site in a busy city centre, the tower will comprise 25 floors of high grade office space, a large plaza at the front of the building and two levels of basement car parking.

Challenge

With the client’s brief to create a fresh and exciting design that sets new standards for its future projects, a key challenge was to devise an innovative tower that also kept within a strict budget and worked on a limited site in a built up location.

A further important consideration for the design of the tower was to integrate the need to create a comfortable internal climate in the extreme summer heat, with the client’s aim to include a high degree of building transparency.

Solution

Working closely with the architects, Buro Happold conducted a number of collaborative design sessions to devise the optimum solution for the project. The results of these enabled us to deliver a series of engineering and architectural options to realise the client’s design objectives, while meeting the feasibility requirements of the site.

Following on from our proposals, the design team selected a building arrangement featuring nine office modules stacked in a series of two storey boxes. The models are aligned both parallel and skewed to a side, emphasising the individuality of each space. In order to successfully deliver the building form, our team incorporated a core located to the rear of the building as well as heavy use of cantilevered support beams allowing the use of slender columns on the north facing facade. This solution provides both individuality in design as well as offering the best possible internal layout for occupants.

To overcome the harsh weather conditions, our engineers carefully specified the building’s orientation and the glazed facade to attain an acceptable level of solar gain, while achieving a light and open space. The east and west facing glazed facades are heavily shaded with vertical external fins to reduce peak daily cooling loads and minimise plant mechanical space requirements.

Value

Buro Happold’s 30 years of experience of delivering projects in Saudi Arabia has enabled us to successfully deliver the client’s aspirations within a strict development budget. Once completed Al Shoail Plaza Tower will offer an exceptional working environment with stunning views across Riyadh.