01 November 2019

Saudi-based King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture (Ithra) has been announced as the winner of the 2019 Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards by the American Concrete Institute (ACI), at a gala event held in Ohio, US.

Also known as Ithra (Arabic for enrichment), the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture is an 85,000-sq-m building located in Dhahran. It is surrounded by a 220,000-sq-m Knowledge Park that creates a space to inspiration. Key features of the structure include post-tensioned slabs spanning 15.9 m long, sloped concrete walls and ramps, and twisted and inclined reinforced concrete columns with decorative concrete finish. The building is 90-m tall and is supported on a 3-m -thick raft foundation, said the ACI.

Stability is provided through a reinforced concrete core acting as a propped cantilever. The columns supporting the elevated slabs are inclined and result in horizontal thrust forces at the head and base of each column lift. The post-tensioned slabs act as structural diaphragms to carry these forces back to the core. Construction was completed in the fall of 2017.

The ACI Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards were created to honour the visions of the most creative projects in the concrete industry, while providing a platform to recognise concrete innovation, technology, and excellence across the globe.

To be eligible for participation in the wwards, projects needed to be winners at a local ACI Chapter level and submitted by that Chapter or chosen by one of ACI’s international partners.  The winners were announced during ACI’s Concrete Convention & Exposition held recently in Cincinnati.

The ACI is now seeking entries for the 2020 Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards. The last date for receiving the entries has been set at April 6.  

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