The international Iconic Award recognizes visionary architectural projects, innovative products and sustainable communication in all sectors of architecture, building and real estate as well as manufacturing industry. The King Fahad National Library impressed the judges with its lightweight textile façade following traditional Middle Eastern architectural patterns and combining them with a state of the art technology. It has therefore been named as winner of the Iconic Award 2014 in the Product–Façade category. This international prize is the only independent architecture and design prize which recognizes the interaction between individual construction services and the comprehensive and consistent showcasing of building products.
For the Iconic Award, international projects with a focus on embedding architecture in an urban, cultural and economic context were submitted in five main categories: Architecture, Interior, Product, Communication and Concept. The independent jury, consisting of internationally known representatives from the fields of architecture, interior design, design and brand communication, selected the prizewinning “icons of our time“. The King Fahad National Library project of Gerber Architekten is now recognized as one of the iconic buildings of our epoch.
This project sees Professor Eckhard Gerber and his Gerber Architekten team accomplishing one of the most important urban development and cultural projects in the capital, Riyadh. The design functions as the central driving force behind a piece of urban development and rearrangement, and combines the challenge of designing within the existing building stock with respect for Arabian culture. The symbolic cuboid shape of the new building surrounds the existing building on all sides, thus presenting the National Library as a new architectural image in the Riyadh cityscape without abandoning the old building, which now operates as an internal stack, making it the centre of knowledge within the new library as a whole.
The square new building is covered by a filigree textile façade following traditional Middle Eastern architectural patterns and linking them with state of the art technology. The key element of the façade was developed especially for the new building. It is a cladding made up of lozenge shaped textile awnings, which playfully combines revealing and concealing. White membranes, supported by a three-dimensional, tensile-stressed steel cable structure, act as sunshades and reinterpret the Arabian tent structure tradition in a modern, technological way. This meeting of old and new creates a uniform and dignified overall architectural appearance with an individual look. At night the façade gives out a soft white light and becomes the city’s cultural lighthouse. One particular challenge for the façade is the enormous temperature differences in Saudi Arabia. In summer the steel ropes can heat up to a temperature of 80°C and will expand. In winter the material can shrink because of nighttimes which can reach minus temperatures.
These effects had to be calculated to optimise the tension of the steel wires. The façade was combined with a ventilation and cooling system consisting of layered ventilation and floor cooling. In this way, thermal comfort was increased and energy consumption significantly reduced by using special methods and technologies for the first time in the Arab world. “The theme of sustainability using up-to-date energy concepts and rational building structures runs through all our activities as a matter of course.” (Prof. Eckhard Gerber) Besides the Iconic Award, the project recently won the MEED Award, the most important architectural award in the whole Gulf Region, in the “social project of the year 2014” category.
Gerber Architekten have been working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia since 2001, and are currently designing a series of further projects, now that the King Fahad National Library is completed. Last year, Gerber Architekten won the international competition for the Olaya Metro Station which will be the main station for the new metro in Riyadh. Another project under construction is the Prince Salman Science Oasis on Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Road, with a total of seven permanent exhibition galleries. A butterfly dome is also being planned, and a municipal library for which building will start construction in 2014. They have also won the competition for the new underground station in Mecca, near the Kaaba, and the competition for the Nobel Quran Oasis, a large museum for the Quran in the holy city of Madinah.
64
comment