With its pale geometric fins, suspended spiral staircases, and long facades, Siemens’s new Middle East headquarters in Masdar City is an ode to the architecture of efficiency. It is also a sign that Masdar, billed as the world’s first carbon neutral city in 2006, might finally be becoming more than just a visionary idea.
Originally conceived by Foster + Partners to stand on a podium above a network of driverless cars, Masdar had to revise its plans after the financial crash of 2008. Post recession, the city has dropped its zero carbon and waste taglines, and is a leaner and more pragmatic beast. Siemens’s building, designed by U.K. architects Sheppard Robson, is the first LEED Platinum–certified office building in the emirate. An eloquent expression of Masdar’s pared-down but pioneering ambitions, the structure offers an impressive 46 percent in energy savings (as per the Ashrae benchmark), a 50 percent reduction in water demand, and a 65 percent reduction in energy demand—all for the cost of a high-quality office building in Abu Dhabi. (...)