Office building on Balasta dambis
One of a very few high-rise buildings on the left bank of the River Daugava
Essentials
The office building on Balasta dambis is one of a very few high-rise buildings on the left bank of the River Daugava. Located in a close proximity of a prominent district Ķīpsala, building will substantially highlight and complement the silhouette of the city, making it more modern and more alike to the status of northern Europe metropole. The main construction volume of the complex is devoted to the central tower with its height of 23 floors (92 m) where office premises are to be located. In order to meet the growing demand for parking lots, in the first 4 floors of the building, that are spiral-shaped a multi-storey parking will be placed. At the level of the 4th floor, an outside garden will be created with trees reaching up to 10 m mark and serving as an excellent example on how to integrate nature into the city center. Within the project we were entrusted with a role of the general structural engineer, that meant elaboration of structural solutions and calculations of all main horizontal and vertical structures.
Structural scheme
The above-ground bearing part of the building is made of central core and surrounding one-span (12 m length) slabs. In order to implement such a constructive challenge, that is one of the most technically complex tasks for any constructor, the slabs were designed using post-tensioning technology. Moreover, the application of technology allowed rationally reduce width of the slab to 250 mm and diminish slab deflection.
Challenges
The main obstacle to be faced during structural design process was associated with the building's unconventional geometric shape at parking level. If classically a large part of the effective area is occupied by ramps, then in this case, in order to maximize the area allotted to its primary function, parking was created in a spiral form. Practically, this means that from one end of the building to the other, which is 45 m, the height difference of the slabs is approximately 1 m, therefore it is impossible to install continuous tendons, as it impacts tendon stressing capacity. To solve this, the slabs at the parking level were divided into smaller concreting sections and hence the smaller lengths of tendons, with their each section being separately fastened by anchors.
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