The Origami / Kann Finch

Architects: Kann Finch, UAE
Location: Meydan city, Dubai UAE
Project Team: Jean-Sebastien Herr (associate/design architect), Damian Lambkin (Project architect), Claudio Nunez , Ulysses Lalu, Francis Contreras, Milica Vukasinovic, Clinton Bull, Jamie Madrazo, Mauricio Zulueta, Alaleh S
Interiors: Nicholas Tedford
Structure: E-construct
MEP: Jain Consultants
Building Envelope: MFT
Landscape: Kann Finch
Acoustics: WSP
Client: District development
Contractor: DCC, Dubai Contracting company
Project year: 2010
Construction area: 45,980 sqm

This proposition reconsiders the stereotypical residential tower, in pursuit of a unique structuring of a new language, that the vertical organization of apartment living might allow.

The formal constraints that the site demands are eroded to realize a rich expression of three dimensional image, surface and livability. The fundamental elements of the colonnaded street edges with the podium base establish the urban continuity upon which sits the tower form in its street structure.

The landscaped through site link to this base provides for a connected vertical green intervention that informs the physical structuring of the tower, whilst providing a garden outlook to the apartments. The basic tower is eroded to an ‘H’ plan with a central core. The legs of the H connected at every fifth level, generate extensive roof gardens at interplay with the vertical landscape that brings a multifaceted greening to the apartment outlook as well as assisting in the moderation of the vertical microclimate.

The twenty-six levels of the tower with its roof amenity, locate a repetitive five level sense that are structured as: one floor of three, two bed units, two, two storey four bed units and two floors of two, three bed units. Each unit enjoys an open quality that extends internal living areas to extensive balconies with fully operable uplifting window walls that provide a seamless indoor / outdoor experience.

The vertical surface of the tower to the East and the West are layered with a rich patterned, solid / glass screen that not only develops a unique expression appropriate to location and culture but provides privacy to the immediate tower neighbors to those facades.

The tower is further eroded at its second to fifth levels and the twenty second and twenty third levels to allows the vertical landscape to enrich the ‘H’ structure via its multifaceted planting frames, the landscape expression is as though an organism that has invaded the tower and caused the formal erosion.

This multi layered formal proposition, offers a quality of vertical living that at once is generous, unique and delightful. Its simple structure supports a lifestyle and experience, that tower inhabitation does not normally provide, whilst enriching the urban streetscape with a sculptural interplay of form, surface and light for both its resident and extended community.

This is a major contribution to a fresh urban language that addresses the ‘greening’ of our cities with responsible and unique architecture.