The American Concrete Institute (ACI) announced the winners of the 2019 Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards, who were honored at a Gala event during the Institute’s Concrete Convention & Exposition, Oct. 21, 2019, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The highest honor was presented to King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, located in Dhahran, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia.
Also known as Ithra, the Arabic word for “enrichment,” the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture is an 914,930 ft. building surrounded by a 2,368,000 ft Knowledge Park that creates a space to inspire the imagination. Features of the structure include post-tensioned slabs spanning 52 ft, sloped concrete walls and ramps, and twisted and inclined reinforced concrete columns with decorative concrete finish. The building is 295 ft tall and is supported on a 10 ft thick raft foundation. 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 honor the visions of the most creative projects in the concrete industry, while providing a platform to recognize concrete innovation, technology, and excellence across the globe. To be eligible for participation in the Excellence Awards, 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.
An independent panel of esteemed industry professionals judged projects and selected winners based on architectural and engineering merit, creativity, innovative construction techniques or solutions, innovative use of materials, ingenuity, sustainability, resilience and functionality.
Additional winning projects were selected from among several possible categories, and included:
Decorative Concrete
- 1st Place: Qatar National Library, Doha, Qatar.
- 2nd Place: Metro State University of Denver–Aerospace & Engineering Building: Denver, Colorado, United States.
High-Rise Buildings
- 1st Place: Generali Tower, Milano, Italy.
- 2nd Place: Statue of Unity, Gujarat, India.
Infrastructure
- 1st Place: I-91 Brattleboro Bridge–Concrete Bridges to Nature: Brattleboro, Vermont, United States.
- 2nd Place: Goethals Bridge Replacement Project: Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States.
Low-Rise Buildings
- 1st Place: Hamad Port Project–Design and Build of Visitors Centre, Doha Port, Doha, Qatar.
- 2nd Place: Anastasis Church, Ille-et-Vilaine, France.
Mid-Rise Buildings
- 1st Place: King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (ITHRA), Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia.
- 2nd Place: MGM National Harbor, Oxon Hill, Maryland, United States.
Repair & Restoration
- 1st Place: Palais d’Iéna (Restoration of the Façades), Paris, France.
- 2nd Place: Lake Peachtree Spillway Replacement: Peachtree, Georgia, United States.
