HWL Engineering P.C.

About O-14

 

O-14 is an unique 22-story commercial building located along the waterfront of  the Dubai Creek. It was designed by famous architects, Professor Jesse Reiser (3rd from right), and Professor Nanako Umemoto (3rd from left). The project is the National Diamond award winner from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC).

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The perforated concrete exterior shell is its main architectural feature and also its primary structural system. This exoskeleton-sunscreen wall features 1,400 openings of different sizes, arranged in an apparently random pattern, which makes the structural analysis and design the exterior shell a big challenge. As the lead structural engineer, Dr. He (2nd from left) collaborated closely with the architect design team and developed an automatically finite element shell meshing procedure in configurating the entire façade.  The sizes and locations of the openings were carefully coordinated in order to make the wall effective in channeling both gravity and lateral loads down to the base of the building. Several iterative analyses determined the size and reinforcements of each solid shell element between the openings. The seemingly arbitrary arrangement of the openings in the wall creates a diagonal grid that enables its use as a gravity and lateral supporting system.