Work has been completed on the Foster + Partners-designed headquarters for the National Bank of Kuwait (NBK). The 300 meter (984 foot) tall skyscraper is defined by a curved façade of concrete fins, creating what the architects call a “distinctive landmark that stands out on the Kuwaiti skyline.”
The tower is located in Sharq, the city’s emerging financial district, and seeks to bring NBK’s corporate employees together under one roof. Given Kuwait’s extreme climate, the team notes that attention was given to providing an “energy efficient passive form,” creating what studio head Stefan Behling calls an “iconic design that signifies NBK’s unique presence and identity in the city.”
When viewed from the north, a series of structural concrete fins orientated along the sun path rise the full height of the building, creating a curved form. Inside, floorplates are tapered inwards towards the base to maximise floor space at upper levels, with the overhanging floorplates also providing self-shading to the floors below them. Meanwhile, a twin-lift strategy minimizes the size of cores to increase the usable floorplate area.
At the base of the tower, an 18 meter (59 foot) high atrium provides primary access to the 63 floors above. Amenities on the upper levels include a double-height restaurant, a gym, ballroom, auditorium, triple height boardroom, and a series of sky lobbies. Foster + Partners also designed the interior fit-out of the scheme, including distinctive pendent lights in the boardroom which form a “cloud-like cluster” above the board table.
“The form we’ve developed for the tower is driven by the needs of the bank and the internal spatial arrangement is tailored to its organisational requirements, whilst providing flexibility for future change and growth,” said Nikolai Malsch, Senior Partner at Foster + Partners. “We have created a customised working environment where everybody has their own unique space.”
News of the scheme comes weeks after Foster+ Partners completed an “innovative retrofit” of an old Spanish gas plant in Madrid, after unveiling plans for a timber department store in Tokyo. Earlier in 2022, the firm has unveiled plans for a new Manhattan headquarters for JPMorgan Chase, a retrofit of the Transamerica Pyramid Center in San Francisco, and a major master plan in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
6 Comments
“iconic design that signifies NBK’s unique presence and identity in the city”
This isn't an icon. It's a fetish.
You've got some weird sexual proclivities then Gary. ;)
Presumably he meant in this sense?
If you tilt your head it resembles a whale.
I love the whale vibe! Foster projects have very rigorous details. Would love to see how the fins meet the glazing. It looks like a unitized system?
I like seeing towers with more solid facade, less glass, and some sort of relation to climatic needs, so bravo to Foster.
That said, I'm not sure I like this building, the form looks quite strange from oblique angles, though the shot straight-on to the atrium is great.
...there's also the larger issue of designing and constructing massive energy-intensive buildings in the middle of the desert for rich clients and corporations, but that's contemporary architecture for you!
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