The ‘Leaning Tower’ of the Middle East

Editor’s Note: This CNN Travel series is, or was, CNN — Under the dazzling blue sky, the glass-walled skyscraper that is Capital Gate twinkles in the sunlight as people bustle in and out of the airy lobby. The brief given to the engineers and architects was not to make the biggest or tallest building around, but to “challenge the rules of architecture and to build a structure that would put Abu Dhabi on the world map,” says Ahmed Al Mansoori, a lead engineer for Capital Gate and Director of Engineering at Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company. Nearly 10 years on, Capital Gate remains the world’s “farthest man-made leaning building,” according to Guinness World Records. Andaz Capital Gate Abu Dhabi A world first The gravitational pressure caused by the 18-degree incline is countered by the world’s first “pre-cambered core,” made up of 15,000 cubic meters of concrete reinforced with 10,000 tons of steel. Abu Dhabi’s natural landscape was the inspiration behind Capital Gate’s architecture – “in particular its windswept dunes and the rolling waves of the gulf,” says Al Mansoori.