Al Tijaria Tower
# Al Tijaria Tower

Al Tijaria Tower (Arabic: برج التجارية) is a skyscraper in Sharq, Kuwait. The tower is characterized by a two degree wrap between one floor and the other.

## Profile

The tower is located across from the Al Shaheed Park, the building area is 4,293.6 $m^2$ (46,216 sq ft).

The form of Al Tijaria Tower (also known as the Kuwait Trade Center) is inspired by a spiral or helix. The body of the tower “twists” by 80 degrees as it climbs from the ground level to the top-most occupied floor. The tower plate is organized with a circular-shaped core located in the center of the floor. A concentric ring of structural columns allows for variation in slab edge location while keeping columns vertically aligned from floor to floor. This slab edge adjustment creates a twisted exterior massing for the tower. The tower features internal, vertically stacked, six-story-high atrium gardens rising through the height of the tower. The stacked atrium gardens spin around the center of the plate, creating a dynamic twisted space rising through the tower.

The exterior cladding design of the tower is a smooth aluminum and glass unitized curtain wall system. Materials include insulated blue-tinted vision and spandrel glass with selected use of silver aluminum panels. Glazing the atrium is insulated “clear” low-E glass (with custom ceramic frit pattern to control solar heat gain) supported by a stainless steel point-fixation system. Contrasting the tower, the podium is clad in a combination of natural stone and pre-cast concrete.

The Tower is composed of a five-story podium shopping mall, with an open-to-sky garden terrace on the podium roof, and an office tower rising above. The structural system of the shopping mall is a waffle slab with columns located on a 9 m × 9 m (30 ft × 30 ft) grid. Office floors are reinforced concrete slabs supported on structural steel beams. The floor plates rotate 2.0 degrees clockwise as they rise. Horizontal stability was provided using a number of strong core walls together with a 21 m (69 ft) diameter core wall in the tower area. The twelve equally-spaced tower columns are reinforced concrete, or composite with steel built up sections.

