Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Appointment Year: 1994
Completion Year: 2000
Architects: Forster + Partners
Structural Engineer: Buro Happold
Client: King Faisal Foundation
Area: 240,000 sq.m / 25,83,336 sq.ft
Height: 267 m / 876 ft (approximately typical 89 residencial floor height)
Building Type: Commercial / Skyscraper / Multi-use
Building Usage: Hotel, Residential, Office Complex, Shopping Complex
Al Faisaliyah Complex is found within the city of Riyadh. Riyadh, which in Arabic means “The Gardens,” is the capital and largest city of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, located in the region of Nejd. It is also the provincial capital of Riyadh. It’s within the middle of the Arabian Peninsula, during a large plateau surrounded by a vast desert and therefore the oasis. The aridity of the major Saudi soil means the water has to be brought, in part, from the sea in the Persian Gulf.
With its thirty floors and at over two hundred and fifty meters high, Al Faisaliah used to be amongst the tallest building in Riyadh and it still remains as one of the most iconic structures in the city’s skyline. It is used as an identity for the city. It has been built entirely of reinforced concrete, Constructional Steel and Structural glazing. It has its concept taken from the Pyramids thought of in a Hyper Modernistic way, while its architecture strongly characterizes the urban landscape while representing the momentum of Riyadh toward modernity. The offices join the vast area located on the top level, which occupies most portions of the thirty floors. The most remarkable element of this structure is the sphere structure that is the Golden Glazed Globe consisting of three floors which is Saudi Arabia’s highest restaurant, enclosed in a great sphere of twenty-four meters in diameter which adds value to the user experience with spectacular seamless views of the Capital City.
Concept
The pyramid structure of the tower will make us more “friendly” if its edges take on a slight curvature. Although the pyramid was developed mainly in height, it is not without its share of homage to the great pyramids of Egypt. Like the pyramids of Egypt remain in history as the memory of one of the greatest civilizations in history, this new pyramid dominates the city of Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, which is today one of the countries with the most power and international influence, thanks to owning some of the largest oilfields in the world. No one is spared the large field located on the top floor of the tower in perfect balance but nevertheless seems to be rolling down to a valley and breath of wind. Figures such as the simple triangle and the circle also had an important meaning in the Egyptian civilization.
Complex
The skyscraper is a component of a bigger complex that has an excellent space, raised seven meters from the plane of the road, a luxury hotel with quite 200 rooms, a mall, a mega 200 thousand parking spaces, and a residential district with a few hundred apartments. Playing a key part in Riyadh’s urban development, the 240,000-square-metre Al Faisaliah Complex is centred around Saudi Arabia’s first skyscraper - a particular 267-metre-high office tower - alongside a five-star hotel, a banqueting and conference centre, luxury apartments and a three-storey retail mall. The scheme carefully balances cost-effectiveness and adaptability to supply buildings that are efficient in services, planning, and operation, and yet is aware of the center Eastern climate.
At the guts of the complex is that the office tower. Square in plan, the building is meant around a compact central core which tapers to some extent, with four main corner columns defining its unique silhouette. Punctuating stages up the building’s layered facade, observation decks correspond with giant K-braces, which transfer loads to the corner columns. Each section between these decks is clad in silver- anodized aluminium panels with cantilevered sunshading, which minimise glare, allowing the utilization of non-reflective, energy-efficient glass and providing maximum control over the interior environment. Above its 30 floors of office space, the tower houses a restaurant set within a golden glass sphere 200 metres above ground level. The observation deck below this globe provides a breath-taking panorama of Riyadh and therefore the surrounding landscape, while above it, at the building’s pinnacle, the tower narrows to a brightly lit lantern, topped by a stainless-steel finial.
The tower itself is about back from the King Fahd Highway to make a landscaped plaza. Beneath this, a banqueting hall can accommodate activities starting from Islamic wedding ceremonies for up to 2,000 people to conferences for up to 3,400. The high degree of flexibility of its internal spaces is achieved by a singular long-span arch system that provides a column-free space 57 metres wide and 81 metres long, with a moveable partition system that will divide the hall into a maximum of sixteen separate rooms. These areas are integrated into the remainder of the complex by a five-story lobby at the tower’s base, also linking the hotel to the north and therefore the apartments and mall to the south. Illuminating this space, a spectacular colored-glass wall by the artist Brian Clarke announces the doorway to the complex while referencing images from Riyadh’s desert and Islamic culture.
Spaces
At the top, in correspondence with the field, the envelope of cement takes a lighter consistency and cadences, with large openings that offer a wide panoramic view of the city. The innermost part of the building is occupied with elevators, escalators and technical areas.
On the top floor of the building is the vast area of 24 meters in diameter where the restaurant is distributed over three floors that make up the interior of the sphere. Below the plaza is developed, however, a space for a banquet hall, but whose use may change thanks to a structured interior that uses removable and mobile panels. This is an area that can accommodate up to three thousand people and comes as a huge open space, and that is totally supported by elements in between.
Structure and Materials
Another element that characterizes it is the course of the facades, whose tapered profile concludes with a marked narrowing, which at the top designs a sharp arc. The horizontal lines that make up the three blocks of the facade are some parapets that protrude from the plane of the facade to protect it from the harsh sun, which impacts during the 12 months of the year in these latitudes. The square of the tower suffers, therefore, a gradual transformation along the vertical development of the building. Even if it is seen from the outside, it is inevitable to realize how it is structured in three blocks of nine, ten and eleven floors, separated by one of the other crossbeams that transfer the loads to the pillars of the columns. To support the weight of this huge building, it was about a structure of reinforced concrete in almost all of the work. A material that has been used to further façades is the glass that gave the tower its particularly bright and light atmosphere, despite its impressive dimensions; other materials also used are local stone and timber, next to the glass used in a multilayer system.
References
Wikiarquitectura
Foster and Partners
Civil808
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