Under its roof, the building combines an archeological excavation, market hall, urban open-air venue, and extraordinary shadow structure made of timber, with an integrated restaurant and walks offering wonderful views over the town.
The structural system is a hybrid structure consisting of timber, concrete, steel, and composite steel.
Timber Structure with Panels Made of Laminated Veneer Lumber
The most interesting and impressive part of the Metropol Parasol is the accessible timber structure, which is 492 ft long and up to 91.8 ft high. It consists of multi-layer glued timber panels of LVL type Kerto‑Q (produced by the Finnforest company).
Some structural innovations had to be made for the implementation. For example, the polyurethane coating, which is 0.07 to 0.11 inches thick; the connection details optimized for mounting; and the annealing of the epoxy resin used for gluing threaded bars in place, which was a world first in timber construction. The annealing became necessary to raise the safety level because temperatures of more than 140°F occur inside the timber structure in summer.
Both the structural engineer and the timber construction company decided to use a connection system with glued-in tension bars representing a method of connecting elements appropriate for achieving a high load-bearing capacity but having relatively low weight.
The timber structure consists of approximately 3,400 individual parts with a total of 88,286 ft3 of panels made of laminated veneer lumber used for the construction work.
Stress Analysis with RFEM in Timber Panels
As the panels are connected with releases in the intersection points around the vertical axis, the internal forces from the bearing capacity of the plates are almost always negligible.
Normally, the stress design is reduced to the stresses occurring within the plane of the timber sheet. The timber cross‑sections in the branching points where the timber gridshell is divided into a top and a bottom section were designed by Finnforest using RFEM and FE sheet models.
| Structural Engineering | Timber Construction, Detailed Structural Analysis and Design Finnforest, Aichach, Germany www.metsagroup.com/metsawood in cooperation with: Harrer Engineers, Karlsruhe PBB engineers, Ingolstadt APU engineering, Braunschweig Wevo Chemie, Ostfildern Borimir Radovic, Knittlingen Structural Engineering Arup & Partners International Ltd. Berlin and Madrid, Spain www.arup.com |
| Construction | Main Contractor SACYR S.A.U. Seville, Spain www.sacyr.com Timber Construction Finnforest, Aichach, Germany |
| Architecture | Jürgen Mayer H., Berlin, Germany www.jmayerh.de |
| Investor | Ayuntamiento de Sevilla, Spain |
