New York architectural firm Reiser + Umemoto have designed ‘Aeon II’ an office tower building located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

With ‘Aeon II’, the Dubai norm of slick curtain wall clad towers has been put aside in favor of a responsive cladding system in tune with the arid desert environment.

The folded plan-form of this 45-story building combines the inherent efficiency of parallel floor slabs with rich sculptural possibilities.

Project description from the architects:

‘With our Jumeriah Lake ‘Aeon’ project, the prominent L-shaped site and the background of closely spaced towers offer truly unique opportunity to develop something really different. The long site shape allows us to go horizontal rather then vertical.

This building will become the most prominent project in the development precisely because it is not yet another tower. In effect, the building will be seen as a sparkling and ever changing horizontal veil seen against a background of vertical towers.

Our concept is a 45-story folded plate building which combines the inherent efficiency of parallel floor slabs with the rich sculptural possibilities of folded form.

There are many benefits to this new configuration. While systematic and rational, each floor plate allows for unique office configurations, ranging from boutique to mid-size. Superlative views are created in the tips of the folds resulting in more corner offices.
Moreover, the folded form creates an inherently stiff outer surface, which frees the cores from the burden of lateral forces and radically reduces the roles of cores in shear capacity.

A new concept for the building skin is also being proposed. Rather then the typical curtain wall solution, we propose an economical floor to ceiling window-wall assembly which also allows for the economical creation of the buildings folded forms. The glazing steps rather then wraps and will be entirely standardized. The crowning glory of the building is the shimmering skin made of perforated metal panels. These will have a beneficial effect both aesthetically and environmentally, shading the building from glare and heat, yet allowing for directed views from within the offices.

As with the glazing, the skin panels and their fixings are standardized, only one type is used. The rich variation and quality of the outer fabric is created by following the folded building form. Thus while every built element is standard, the openings between are unique and continuously vary. ‘

Size: 58806 sq. m.
Type: Office Tower
Structure: Concrete core, tilting columns, perforated layered facade