REX is pleased to release our Media Headquarters Buildings design. The 240,200 m² (2,600,000 sf) design for sister media companies features offices, studios, and common facilities (agora, amphitheater, auditorium, café, canteen, employee lounge, executive lounge, fine dining, gallery, health club, majlis, and theater).
Project description:
“Two sister Middle Eastern media companies sought to create conjoined headquarters buildings. Aside from the companies’ programmatic and area requirements for the headquarters, their demands were few: propose two elegant structures that make reference to traditional Arab architecture.
The companies also provided a long, slender precedent structure—approximately 100 m (330 ft) long x 22 m (72 ft) wide—for consideration that could simultaneously accommodate offices and the relatively small broadcast / news studios. REX took this slender precedent as its starting point.
To efficiently accommodate the two media companies’ program within the precedent footprint, offices are stacked over broadcast and news studios, which in turn are stacked over each company’s common facilities. The large studios which could not fit within the thin towers, and for which permanent blackout is desired, are organized below grade.
On the given site, a typical podium would compress the common facilities into an undifferentiated mass with limited views and daylight. To avoid this condition, the common spaces are amassed into the lower body of the narrow towers, creating an X-ray effect that reveals the unique components, provides them with commanding views, and preserves the design’s desired sobriety.
To shield the headquarters from the unrelenting Middle Eastern sun, both sides of each tower incorporate 14.5 m (47.5 ft) diameter, retractable sunshades. The geometry and overlap of the sunshades reference a traditional Arab Mashrabiya pattern, meeting the media companies’ shared desire for infusing the buildings with local iconography.
As the sun rotates past the solid southern cores, the entirety of the buildings’ western facades ‘blossom’ as their eastern facades simultaneously retract, within the span of a minute.
The headquarters’ instantaneous transformation forges a new kind of powerful iconography, one that rejects the tired—and ephemeral—pursuit of being the tallest.”Read more.
Ibrahim Abdelhady is an architect, academic, and media entrepreneur with over two decades of experience in architecture and digital publishing. He is the Founder and CEO of Arch2O.com, a leading platform in architectural media, renowned for showcasing innovative projects, student work, and critical discourse in design. Holding dual PhDs in Architecture, Dr. Abdelhady combines academic rigor with industry insight, shaping both future architects and architectural thought. He actively teaches, conducts research, and contributes to the global architecture community through his writing, lectures, and media ventures. His work bridges the gap between practice and academia, pushing the boundaries of how architecture is communicated in the digital age.