AZURE_2014_07_08.pdf

winner
unbuilt
competition
entrY
media
headquarters
“A building that uses heliotropism as
a response to climate change and as its
primary urban form is fascinating.”
Charles Waldheim, juror
people’s
choice
winner
Location: Middle East
Firm: REX Archi tecture, New York
Team: Alberto Cumerlato, Tomas Janka,
Gabriel Jewell-Vitale, Roberto Otero,
Joshua Prince-Ramus, Aude Soffer, Alex
Tehranian and Cristina Webb
Joshua Prince-Ramus founded REX in 2006.
Among the firm’s best-known projects is
the Vakko Fashion and Power Media Center,
in Istanbul, which involved building a new
structure that incorporated the skeleton of
an unfinished and abandoned hotel.
rex-ny.com
unlike many buildings rising in the
Middle East, this competition entry
for two sister media companies
shuns the desire to be the tallest and
pointiest. Instead, it looks to modernist
sobriety, with two identical,
flat-roofed towers. The twins, conceived
by REX of New York, are not
short on technology; they are full
of astounding features that make
cloud-scraping engineering seem
like a fad of the past. Most notable
are the facades, which blossom into
a traditional Islamic motif while
blocking out the sun’s heat.
The 14.5-metre-wide sunshades,
sandwiched between floors, open
and close like umbrellas. In under
a minute, they simultaneously
retract and bloom again, in keeping
with the sun as it moves across the
sky. The design also calls for clear
windows – a rarity in desert cities,
where heavily tinted green glass is
the standard.
Internally, the two buildings
provide 240,200 square metres of
office space that occupies the upper
levels, with broadcasting studios
and such amenities as cafés, lounges
and health clubs clustered below.
Larger studios that require full
blackness are located underground.
If the project did get the green
light, its blooming facades would
also serve as a massive media screen.
REX has envisioned adding powerful
LEDs to the cap of each shade,
turning the two towers into a jumbo
screen for live broadcasts.
78 jul ⁄ aug 2014 az awards annual azuremagazine.com