Wafra Living | AGi Architects

Wafra Living is a residential building that proposes an innovative housing organization in Kuwait. It represents a new kind of multi-family life as a social responsibility to the country's increasing housing needs. Design planning follows the guidelines of contemporary living requirements while balancing traditional norms, and also reintroducing urban living styles to the building level.

Wafra Living is designed as a high-rise building located behind the road with an L-shaped building mass, where this shape then defines the roadside. This shape was chosen not without reason but is intended to maximize privacy in the community, while still being able to provide sufficient natural light. The design of the space program is also equipped with public spaces, both indoors and outdoors.

The design concept of this building combines the domestic and collective scales that are private and public at different levels. The architecture defines the edges of the block and creates a series of open spaces in plots that are made available to the community for various uses. Cantilevers that hang on the sides of the building from the ground to draw street life into the building are more integrated into the building. The ground floor of the building opens onto the neighborhood with a variety of retail facilities accessible at street level, blending into the urban structure, then connecting to the high square via a sloping terraced garden.

The Division of spaces in the building also consists of 16 types of living typologies. They range from duplex units with two bedrooms, to units of four bedrooms which are distributed across five cores to serve a wide range of tenants. The building envelope provides a safe environment for its occupants, protecting them from the hustle and bustle of the street. From this level, one can see an aluminum net: a double skin that climbs up the internal facade containing emergency routes and hides various service rooms that are not in contact with the public. Behind the lattice are five cores, which connect the residential floors.