The Kio Towers

Fig. 2.14 shows one of the two 26-storey, 114m high buildings, of the Kio Towers, in Madrid, which are also known as Puerta de Europa (Gateway to Europe). The Kio Towers actually lean towards each other, each inclined at 15 degrees from the vertical.

The inclinations move the centres of mass of the buildings sideways tending to cause toppling effects on the buildings. One of the measures used to reduce these toppling effects was to add massive concrete counterweights to the basements of the buildings. This measure not only lowered the centres of the mass of each building and but also moved the centre of the mass towards a position above the centre of the base of the building.