- The 160-metre Capital Gate is also known as the “Leaning Tower of Abu Dhabi.”
- The building inclines 18 degrees westwards — more than four times the lean of the Tower of Pisa.
- Capital Gate also holds the Guinness World Record for the farthest manmade leaning building.
- For more stories visit Business Insider.
Millions of people flock to the city of Pisa in Italy to see its world-famous leaning tower. But while the Leaning Tower of Pisa might be the most iconic leaning building in the world, it’s not the most extreme.
That title belongs to Abu Dhabi’s Capital Gate.
In a new book called “Supertall,” architect Stefan Al dives into the world of skyscrapers and explores the design boundaries we push to build them — including intentionally tilted buildings like Capital Gate.
“While Italian engineers are toiling over how to reduce the lean of Pisa and avoid collapse, elsewhere, engineers are locked in a race to vie for the most leaning building,” Al wrote.
Capital Gate leans 18 degrees westwards, which is over four times that of the tower in Pisa, per Al’s book. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is inclined at around four degrees.
Nicknamed the “Leaning Tower of Abu Dhabi,” Capital Gate also holds the Guinness World Record for the “farthest manmade leaning building.” At 160 metres tall, the glass building is one of the city’s most iconic landmarks.
To achieve the tilt, Capital Gate was built with a “pre-cambered core,” Al wrote. The building’s core was built in the opposite direction of its incline in order to balance the forces out.
“When you go into a skyscraper, you tend to have the elevators and emergency stairs in the middle of it. And often what skyscraper designers do is they build very heavy walls around the elevators that are also meant to support the building,” Al told Insider.
In the case of Capital Gate, the upper part of the core was put under pressure when constructed, leaning in the opposite direction of the building to keep it stable, he added.
“Normally we associate leaning buildings with failure, like when something goes wrong and a structure could collapse,” Al said. “A building like that makes a dramatic statement and shows that they were able to defy nature in a way.”
“Supertall” was released on April 12, under the publisher W. W. Norton & Company.
