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Status

Unbuilt

Date

2010

Location

Jeddah, KSA

Team

Fouad Samara
Lara Alam
Zeina Nawfal

Yin Yang

A not too common but interesting brief nonetheless: the client’s requirement for this project was to create, on one shared site, two corporate head office buildings for two of Saudi Arabia’s top companies. For us, the project immediately became one that needs to be made up of two clear and distinct components that come together to create a greater cohesive whole. An obvious analogy to yin yang. The shape of the buildings with their slanted sides is a modern interpretation of the traditional mud brick towers of Arabia (Byout El Libin) found in Baha, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen for example.

 

A cohesive composition

The architectural aim is to get away from the mid 20C approach of having a podium architecturally distinct from the tower(s) on top. Here, the podium and towers, and all access to and from the buildings main entrances located at the top of the podium, become a cohesive singular iconic architectural composition. The façade seems to have vertical slit windows only, but in fact, these are vertical clear glass windows (1.2×4.2m each) within a totally glazed façade with a black or white ceramic frit dot matrix.