The renovation includes the construction of a large new skylight above the main hall. The skylight's design is inspired by the original design, which was covered with an opaque slab in previous renovations.
The skylight consists of two different parts: the Lower Hall, a vault shape with a length of 42.97 ft and a width of 28.87 ft, and the High Hall, a trapezoidal dome with spherical corners of approximately 39.04 ft x 43.96 ft. It is crowned by a 3-foot-high pyramid of which the sides measure approximately 16 x 16 ft.
The structure consists of slender steel welded T-sections and small rectangular plates connecting the main beams and providing complete four-side supports of the glass panels. The glass panels work together structurally by providing stability to the slender sections at the four corners of the dome. A rigid tension ring all along the perimeter is obtained by welded RHS beams and a visible cable completing the dome’s ring. The rectangular pyramid on top of the dome is both a compression ring for the planar loads and a Vierendeel beam for the vertical loads. The structural members are welded between them in order to obtain a complete moment connection without visual impact.
The stability of the structure is verified considering the warping torsional degree of freedom, second order effects, and global and local imperfections.
| Location | Mandarin Oriental Ritz Hotel, Pl. de la Lealtad, 5, 28014 Madrid Spain |
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