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<p>Scope: Extension to existing Rem Koolhaas-designed headquarters to accommodate Qatar Foundation's workforce growth. Flexible workspace programming for individual work, team collaboration, and social/professional gatherings. Sustainability features integrated throughout.<br>Challenge: Expand iconic headquarters by world-renowned architect without competing with or diminishing original design. Create architecture that achieves unity between existing and new - blurring distinction while maintaining QF's elevated design standards. Accommodate significant workforce increase while reflecting QF's culture and values through spatial programming.<br>Approach: Complementary design strategy creates architectural unity rather than contrast - extension reads as cohesive expansion of original headquarters. Sustainability features inspired by Qatar's Islamic heritage reduce HVAC loads and enable facade cleaning water recycling. Flexible space programming supports diverse work modes - individual focus, team collaboration, and formal/informal gatherings - within single integrated environment.<br>Status: Competition winner</p>
Feasibility and spatial strategies
Urban planning and design
Landscape design
Infrastructure engineering
Traffic engineering
Laceco responded to the above objectives by:
Designing a consistent urban framework that nevertheless provided a diversity in the individual architectural character of buildings.
Curating a seamless pedestrian experience in a site that had a challenging topography and was exposed to dominant winds.
Anchoring the site along three platforms linked to each other by a continuous game of terraces, stairs, suspended bridges and esplanades that gently slope down the length of the development.
Conducting value engineering and cost optimization studies to preserve economic viability of the development.
Laceco responded to these objectives by designing a project that complements the existing design without competing with it, creating an architecture that projects unity and blurs the lines between the original headquarter and its extension; by integrating sustainability features inspired from Qatar‚ Islamic heritage, the HVAC load and recycle water for cleaning were reduced, and by programming flexible spaces that can be simultaneously used by QF employees for working individually, collaborating as a team, or holding social and professional gatherings.
Laceco also conducted value engineering exercises to optimize construction cost.
