| Al Tijaria Tower | |
| Native Name: | Burj altijaria |
| Native Name Lang: | برج التجارية |
| Status: | Complete |
| Building Type: | Offices, shopping mall |
| Cost: | $122 million |
| Owner: | The Commercial Real Estate Company |
| Address: | Soor Street, Sharq, Kuwait[1] |
| Location Town: | Kuwait City |
| Location Country: | Kuwait |
| Coordinates: | 29.3705°N 47.9919°W |
| Map Type: | Kuwait |
| Start Date: | 2005 |
| Completion Date: | 2009 |
| Inauguration Date: | 2009[2] |
| Architectural: | 218m (715feet) |
| Tip: | 218m (715feet) |
| Top Floor: | 158m (518feet) |
| Floor Count: | 41[3] [4] |
| Elevator Count: | 8 |
| Parking: | 740[5] |
Al Tijaria Tower (ar|برج التجارية) is a skyscraper in Sharq, Kuwait. The tower is characterized by a two degree wrap between one floor and the other.
The tower is located across from the Al Shaheed Park, the building area is .[6]
The form of Al Tijaria Tower (also known as the Kuwait Trade Center) is inspired by a spiral or helix. The body of the tower “twists” by 80 degrees as it climbs from the ground level to the top-most occupied floor. The tower plate is organized with a circular-shaped core located in the center of the floor. A concentric ring of structural columns allows for variation in slab edge location while keeping columns vertically aligned from floor to floor. This slab edge adjustment creates a twisted exterior massing for the tower. The tower features internal, vertically stacked, six-story-high atrium gardens rising through the height of the tower. The stacked atrium gardens spin around the center of the plate, creating a dynamic twisted space rising through the tower.
The exterior cladding design of the tower is a smooth aluminum and glass unitized curtain wall system.[7] Materials include insulated blue-tinted vision and spandrel glass with selected use of silver aluminum panels. Glazing the atrium is insulated “clear” low-E glass (with custom ceramic frit pattern to control solar heat gain) supported by a stainless steel point-fixation system. Contrasting the tower, the podium is clad in a combination of natural stone and pre-cast concrete.
The Tower is composed of a five-story podium shopping mall, with an open-to-sky garden terrace on the podium roof, and an office tower rising above. The structural system of the shopping mall is a waffle slab with columns located on a grid. Office floors are reinforced concrete slabs supported on structural steel beams. The floor plates rotate 2.0 degrees clockwise as they rise. Horizontal stability was provided using a number of strong core walls together with a diameter core wall in the tower area. The twelve equally-spaced tower columns are reinforced concrete, or composite with steel built up sections.[8]