Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), developed ADNOC Headquarters on Corniche Road in a prestigious area of Abu Dhabi, highlighting the company’s international influence and its economic centrality to the oil-producing region. The structure’s design makes the most of the site’s central location through careful massing of the tower and calculated placement of the courts, plazas, and landscaping surrounding the tower to allow for the superior vistas from the building.

The commercial office tower has a sleek and slender design, rising from a parallelogram-shaped site. The tower’s north-south orientation minimizes the ground-level footprint, leaving ample room for landscaped amenity space. Most public functions such as conference rooms, reception and restrooms are zoned towards the south facing façade which features a double glazed exterior skin that protects the building occupants from harsh solar exposure, and allows a more filtered daylight infiltration. The building’s most remarkable feature is an arciform square opening crowning the tower.

A unique engineering challenge faced was that the center of the tower’s mass is offset by three meters due to the fact that the south core walls are only counterbalanced by six slender composite columns. Structural columns filled with high strength concrete and 20% of original steel to achieve adequate stiffness.

A very unusual curved auditorium beside the tower acts as a contrasting stylistic facet to the boxy podium projecting out from the base of the tower. Extending south of the tower, a three-story rectangular podium houses retail space, the service loading area, a heritage museum, and the main lobby. The podium’s roof extends south across the access road to connect to a new mosque. To maximize flexibility, office spaces are thoughtfully organized using a modular approach that allows for the spaces to be easily modified and exchanged.