Centre Georges Pompidou-Metz, France

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Entire structure in RSTAB (© SJB.Kempter.Fitze)

Centre Georges Pompidou-Metz

Centre Georges Pompidou-Metz under construction (© SJB.Kempter.Fitze)

Functionality of timber structure (© SJB.Kempter.Fitze)

Customer Project

This article was translated by Google Translator

12 December 2010

Structural Design	Structural engineering timber construction SJB.Kempter.Fitze AG, Eschenbach, Germany www.sjb.ch.
Construction	Main Contractor Demathieu & Bard Paris, France www.demathieu-bard.fr Timber construction Holzbau Amann GmbH, Weilheim-Bannholz, Germany www.holzbau-amann.de
Architecture	Shigeru Ban Architects Europe Jean de Gastines Architectes
Investor	Metz Métropole, France www.metzmetropole.fr

The "Center Georges Pompidou-Metz" is a branch of the eponymous Parisian Museum of Contemporary Art, one of the most important in the world.

Structure

The building was designed by Shigeru Ban, a Japanese architect, and represents an oversized Chinese straw hat (external dimensions: 100 m x 100 m), where the girders are symbolizing the straw plaited in three directions, dividing the surface in regular hexagons and triangles.

The hat is pierced by three big tubes, consisting of reinforced concreted, stacked on top of each other. The top of the hat is crowned by a hexagonal steel tower.

The roof structure is made of timber beams and consists of intersecting multi‑layer chords. The curved glued-laminated beams are connected by prestressed threaded bars and disk springs in the points of intersection. In this way, the structural transmission of forces in the joints is ensured by friction.

The parallel running chords are connected to each other by plywood panels and screw threads. Thus, they have the effect of a Vierendeel truss with semi‑rigid connections.

Design

The complex system having approx. 41,000 members was designed by the Swiss company SJB.Kempter.Fitze, using RSTAB and the TIMBER, DYNAM, and RSBUCK add‑on modules.

The substructure in steel and reinforced concrete was completely considered with a "simplified" system in order to capture the effects of the mutual dependencies with sufficient accuracy. To calculate the internal forces in the connections and structural components, each cord and shear plate as well as the joint sections had to be modeled with the respective spatial orientation.

The loading situations were determined by CSTB (Center scientifique et technique du bâtiment) in extensive wind tunnel tests. In addition to the self‑weight, temperature and live loads, the calculation included 96 wind load cases, 80 snow load cases and the resulting membrane loads.

Finally, the 3D FEA software RFEM was used to model and design 216 connections between the wooden and the steel structures.

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