Office Building of Stadtwerke Kirchheim unter Teck, Germany

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Office Building Timber Structure with Reinforced Concrete Elements

With this project, the city shows that timber structures built for commerce and industry are definitely an alternative to conventional reinforced concrete structures. The new building of Stadtwerke Kirchheim, which is the municipal energy supplier providing utility services, is meant to serve as an example for other construction projects of this kind with regard to sustainable building without renouncing the amenities of modern designed buildings.

Structure

The aim was to design a fully sustainable office building. The upper floors of the new building are going to be carried out completely as a frame structure using cross-laminated timber. In order to ensure an appropriate bending and shear stiffness of the connections between the floor strips (which are made of solid wood), concrete gaps almost 12 inches wide have been inserted. These concrete gaps contain overlapping threaded bars screwed into the front ends of the timber panels. The cross-laminated timber plates have seven layers and a thickness of almost 8 inches (roof) and about 9.4 inches (main and first floors). The glued-laminated timber columns have dimensions of almost 12 x 12 inches and a maximum spacing of about 22 ft.

So-called spider and pillar connectors manufactured by the Italian company Rothoblaas provide the point supports, which can each absorb up to 5,000 kN. This innovative construction method for multi-story buildings is being implemented in Germany for the first time. The German Dlubal customer Furche Geiger Zimmermann Tragwerksplaner GmbH used RFEM to calculate the entire structure. It is very interesting how many projects have already been implemented using innovative timber structures.