Alemara

Baghdad, Iraq

Alemara is a building that is born from the “Tigris” in Baghdad. The location that we choose is a neutral point in the river. What we want to do is to give to the people in Iraq a tower as a democratic symbol. In the old politic system of Iraq there was only one political party, now a day there are more parties that try to form a democratic system in the country. So we decide to use Alemara sky-scraper as public building for all the political parties.

To create this open and democratic tower we have several ambitions:

At first we want to create a new concept of horizontal program and horizontal relations in a vertical building. To do this, we redefine the “experience of the stairs”. This means that we explode the stair to the whole building. So the floors and their program are connected to each other like steps. All together they create a spiral.

We also want to redefine the plinth of the sky-scraper. So we make an open relation between the public space and the public building. The spiral floors of the tower extend to the surroundings of the tower. In this way there are no borders.

In a warm country, like Iraq, we have to think about the ventilation of the building. The typical houses of Iraq have a ventilation system which uses the temperature differences within de void of the courtyard. We use this way of ventilation within the skyscraper. Cool air from just above the Tigres is being moved up by the temperature difference. This cools the building.

To avoid heating by the sun, the façade is not as open as you aspect in a ‘normal’ skyscraper. We have layered different Arabic patterns to create a closed aesthetic effect. 

Alemara represents the result of an aesthetic organisation. A lot of aspects, such as the culture, the politic situation and the location, are used to reach the goal.