SOM068

Aramco

Design/Completion 1993 Dhahran.Saudi Arabia 350,000 square feet Steel frame

Glass, stainless Steel, granite

The complex is planned in three phases, and incorporates new office and mixed-use buildings within an existing campus of technical, research, and administrative buildings. The focal point of the complex is a new 20-story corporate headąuarters tower consisting of two curvilinear pieces of 10 and 20 stories that enclose a 10-story central atrium.

The tower’s exterior wali is a collection of expressed components, materials, and shapes. The effects of the harsh desert sun are controlled by brises-soleil of vertical glass fins, stainless Steel trusses, and horizontal sunshades. The broad eastern facade is broken by a set of stacked three-story atria set against a 12-story black granite shear wali that ties the soft curving forms to the rectilinear geometry of the existing buildings.

A covered two-story galleria terminates in the atrium of the new corporate building and features a 200-foot-long exhibition wali.

1    View from the south

2    View from the west

84