188
EUROPA
2011.01.21
Project’s infrastructure and civil
engineering
The building’s design and structure requires
a special approach due not only to its
functional and formal complexity but also
to the need to take into account execution
sequences. Recommendations by the Interior
Ministry in terms of fire prevention compli-
cate calculations for the lantern and lounges
even further.
The façade on the
Rue de la Loi
side acts as a
wall-beam since it covers the railway tunnel
and part of the atrium’s floor is suspended
from it.
Distortions during and after construction,
of both the lantern and the façade structure
of the atrium are subject to quite tight
tolerances that affect the installation of the
window frames. The superstructure’s stability
study therefore involves steel structures
supporting the external and internal façades
and those of the lantern with its conference
rooms, the foyers with their hybrid steel and
concrete structures, the concrete newels
and the renovation of Block A of the existing
Résidence Palace
.
If the structural infrastructure works of the
Europa project have to be characterised,
it is first by the complexity and number of
civil engineering techniques that had to
be implemented and subsequently by the
multitude of constraints of all kinds that had
to be taken into account, particularly the si-
multaneous construction of the metro tunnel
that runs underground through and under
the
Résidence Palace
.
– On the
Rue de la Loi
side, the path of the
metro tunnel can be seen obliquely. In both
the existing building to be preserved and in the
new sections, transfer structures of with a span
in excess of 22 metres had to be built over the
tunnel. The infrastructure of these structures
was completed on behalf of Beliris by a sepa-
rate company, on the basis of the
Résidence
Palace
basement. Therefore account had to
be taken of these simultaneous works, which
made construction site areas inaccessible and
of their spreading over time.
WORK IN PROGRESS
