Photo courtesy of www.enr.com.

Capital Gate tower is the first of its kind—a steel-framed building cantilevered around a concrete core pre-stressed to accommodate the gravitational, wind, and seismic forces resulting from the building’s distinctive lean. As Engineering News Record reports in the July 20, 2009, issue, the 33-story tower is one of the central icons in Abu Dhabi’s growing Capital Centre mixed-use development. Designed and engineered by RMJM Group Ltd., Edinburgh, at a gravity-defying 18-degree slant, the listing, twisting tower’s elliptical floor plates are staggered from the tenth floor up, a design that ensured that no two of the project’s steel members are alike. A structural steel perimeter diagrid encompasses 7,000 tons of steel and is clad in glass curtain wall panels, which will enclose offices on the first 16 floors and a 200-room, five-star hotel above. Click here to read the article.