Tornado Tower named Best Tall Building in Middle East

The Tornado Tower in Qatar has been awarded the accolade for Best Tall Building in the Middle East and Africa by the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

As the world’s leading authority on the design, construction and development of tall buildings, the CTBUH recognises projects that "contribute to the advancement of tall buildings, bringing fresh ideas and innovative processes".

The 52-storey Tornado Tower features more than 30,000m² of Wicona unitised curtain walling, installed as 6,000 glazed panels in 50 size variations.

The innovative unitised facade solution allows the curvature of this iconic building to be expressed without the need for curved glass. Trapezoidal panels and their collection of angles give the 200m high building its signature curve and hyperboloid shape that depicts a whirlwind in a desert storm.

The Wicona unitised facade were assembled and glazed off site, holding 34mm reflective glass for the vision areas and opaque glazing to conceal the building structure between floors.

The panels also support an external steel ‘lattice’. This outer structure is a key architectural feature and the lighting system installed at the junction points of the steelwork accentuates the form of the building at night to spectacular effect, using 35,000 different light combinations.