Guardian Towers
LAB architecture studio

Image courtesy LAB architecture studio

The Guardian Towers comprises two sites, a residential tower and an office tower, joined by a shared retail and services podium. The dual-tower complex, part of the Danet Abu Dhabi development in Abu Dhabi, is serviced by three levels of underground car parking.

The two towers, shifted in relation to each other, offer a diverse set of contextual alignments, both with the existing buildings to the north, and with the more symmetrically positioned buildings within Danet Abu Dhabi itself.


Image courtesy LAB architecture studio

The two towers also break down the rectangular massing of traditional mid-rises with a more fractured and offset form. The "offset/shift" of the design allows the project to portray a degree of spatial articulation, and visual complexity, that redefines the image of the mid-rise tower.

The structural logic of the towers, following a slightly tilted, folded and leaning surfaces, follows a conventional concrete frame column, core and slab arrangement, providing for an efficient and uncomplicated construction methodology.


Image courtesy LAB architecture studio

The glazed curtain-wall facades of the office tower, with its white screen-print gradient interlayer and opaque white spandrel panels, provides for a soft banding of vision panels to the offices. A similar effect is achieved on the residential tower with an external perforated aluminium screen, also in a gradient of sizes of perforations, with balconies as larger openings.

The Master Plan, by Al Qudra, envisions a dense urban mid-rise development, with more than 40 development sites.