Construction of the ÖkoFEN Headquarters, Saint Baldoph, France
Customer Project
In order to meet the increasing demand arising from growing staff numbers, the company OköFEN, which specializes in wood pellet boilers, conducted the construction of new premises for its French head office. This project is rooted in an environmental approach featuring a structure entirely made of French wood, biobased insulation in cellulose wadding, and a significant supply of natural light thanks to its multiple openings.
Investor | ÖkoFEN Real Estate |
Architect | Atelier 17C Architectes |
Engineering Office |
CBS-CBT |
Carpenter | Lifteam |
Model Parameters
Model
Design Process
This project features 2 buildings which are connected to each other by a metal footbridge.
The first part consists of a storage area measuring 46x62 m, made of truss frames of the Ariane© type (solid timber 80 mm wide and joints with plywood gusset and spikes) with ranges of 20 and 26 m and cantilevers of 5.6 m. The structure relies on foundations made of isolated studs, connected by prefabricated stringer beams, allowing the elevation from the ground of the non-load-bearing timber framing facades.
The second part consists of an office building extending from the ground floor to the first floor of approximately 10x30 m made of timber frame walls and roof boxes industrially prefabricated with cellulose wadding insulation, also factory-made. The timber frame is elevated from the ground by foundations made of prefabricated stringer beams. The floors of the southern offices are made of O'Portune slabs with a range of 10 m.
All the facades are covered with natural timber cladding.
Structural Design Software
The structural design of the 2 buildings was carried out using RFEM software. The building is located in a seismic region of magnitude 4, which required design checks under seismic loads generated with the RF-DYNAM Pro add-on.
The entire timber structure of the warehouse area was checked in the RF-TIMBER Pro add-on according to Eurocode 5.
The modeling of the office area was especially necessary for dimensioning the walls subjected to seismic loads. In order to generate this modeling, the timber frame walls were converted into equivalent members reproducing the stiffness of a wall. Such an approach enabled evaluation of the forces transmitted within each wall, hence justifying the bracing of the building.
The steel footbridge was also modeled in RFEM and the member design was performed thanks to the RF-STEEL EC3 add-on.
Project Location
Keywords
Timber structure RFEM RF-TIMBER Pro RF-DYNAM Pro RF-STEEL EC3
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New
Saving Models as Blocks in RFEM 6
In RFEM 6 it is possible to save selected objects, as well as whole structures, as blocks and reuse them in other models. Three types of blocks can be distinguished: non-parameterized, parameterized, and dynamic blocks (via JavaScript). This article will focus on the first block type (non-parameterized).

New
Timber Design | Strength and Stability | Cross-Section Resistance Features
- Design of tension, compression, bending, shear, torsion, and combined internal forces
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- Design of curved and tapered members
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- Where can find the option to hide the defined types (for example, design supports or effective lengths)?
- How do I create a user-defined Design Situation with my own chosen load combinations?
- How can I neglect torsion in the steel and timber design?
- How do I perform stability analysis to determine the critical load factor in RFEM 6?
- Where can I find the materials for the corresponding National Annexes in RFEM 6 and RSTAB 9?
- How does the "Orthotropic Plastic" material model work in RFEM?
- What is the meaning of the superposition according to the CQC rule in a dynamic analysis??
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- I would like to export nodal support forces of several load cases, load combinations and result combinations into an Excel spreadsheet in RFEM 6. How should I proceed?