SOM NY - Offices Development - Kuwait City

Date: 14 Feb 2008

A 412 meter tall tower designed by architect Gary Haney of SOM NY which is planned for the centre of Kuwait City has been selected as the overall winner of this year's MIPIM Architectural Review Future Project Awards.

The designs for the Al Hamra Firdous Tower, which is still on the drawing board, also won the Tall Buildings category in the competition.

The landmark Tower is designed for the purity of its form, with the aim of maximising Gulf views while minimising solar heat gain on the office floors. The modern sculptural form is intended to express the illusion of elegant twisting ribbons, while providing near transparency on the north, east and west sides framed by a monolithic stone south wall orientated against the severe desert sun.

The international MIPIM Architectural Review Future Project Awards are designed to encourage the industry to strive for high design standards in respect of buildings and their relationship to context, and to stimulate discussion and debate around good design.

While the competition is designed to celebrate excellence in design for projects still on the drawing board or under completion, previous winners, such as the Citroën Champs-Elysées showroom in Paris by Manuelle Gautrand, have gone on to be celebrated and innovative buildings.

This year the competition attracted an unprecedented 200 entries, with 7 category winners chosen by an international jury selected from the cream of the architecture profession, and a further 19 projects chosen for commendation.

This year's project winners hail from Kuwait, Libya, India, the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Poland and Iran, with commended schemes from Republic of Latvia, Denmark, Singapore, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, Russia and Germany.

Tall Buildings Winner Al Hamra Firdous Tower Kuwait

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