The building has 7 elevators, for convenient access to each floor.

AWARDS
Cayan Tower is a truly architectural vision certain to take its place as an icon not only in Dubai
but in the world through winning several international awards.

o Guinness World Records: The Tallest Twisted Tower is the world 2013

o CTBUH: Best Tall Building Award 2014

o 4th place in Emporis Skyscraper Award 2014

o Constructions week: Tower Project of the Year 2014

o Meed: Award for Innovation 2014

o Meed: Louis Berger Building Project 2014

o A+ Awards: Best Residential High-Rise 2014

o CNBC: Best International High Rise Architecture 2007

o CNBC: Best Development 2006

o International property awards: Best International Architecture 2006

Each floor rotates 1.2 degrees around a cylindrical elevator and service
core, which consulting partner George Efstathiou, FAIA, likens to a vertical
"spindle" at the building's center. In order to keep the interior layouts
consistent, the SOM team—led by design director Ross Wimer, FAIA,
who recently left the firm—looked at several ways to rotate the reinforced-
concrete structural columns of the Cayan Tower in tandem with the floor
slabs. One option was to make all of the columns tilt and twist—like
spiraling lines on a giant barber pole. That option was rejected, explains
SOM's structural engineering partner William Baker, because, over time, it
would have made the structure vulnerable to damage from additional
twisting by gravity, known as "secondary twist." The other problem was
that, "you can't have sloping columns and have mass-produced wall
panels," Efstathiou says. The team's solution was to differentiate between
columns leaning to the side and leaning forward or back, relative to any
given elevation of the building. By eliminating sideways incline in all but the
building's internal columns and corners, they gained greater stability and
rectangular façade bays. The roughly 3,000 perimeter columns stand
perfectly vertical—when seen from the front or back, that is—and "step"
between 12 and 14 inches to the side with every floor level. The stepped
columns transfer their load through a concrete slab that works like a pile
cap. Seen in side elevation, however, the perimeter columns lean forward
or back by as much as 10 degrees to meet the shifted floor slabs above
and below. The width, angle, and spacing of columns looks the same from
floor to floor, even as the floors themselves shift slowly, as they progress
higher, around a quarter circle. In fact, the same formwork was used for the
columns on each level, with only slight modifications to account for
diminishing load toward the top. Such economy of means defines the
tower's design and engineering, which, given its unusual structural needs,
became an epic exercise in "simplifying complexity," Baker says.
The tower's rotation also created a plumbing challenge for the M/E/P
engineers Khatib & Alami (also the project's architect-of-record). How to
organize the plumbing system when the bathrooms and kitchen keep
moving? Water and sewer pipes run from each apartment to the outer ring
of the building's central core, then run vertically down the few paths not
obstructed by ever-shifting apartment doors.